[Popcon-developers] Bug#741104: popularity-contest: Silently fails to send anything if no MTA configured

[Francesco Poli]

On Mon, 13 Oct 2014 22:10:20 +0200 Bill Allombert wrote:

[...]
> The trick is listed in the FAQ:
> 
>   Q) How can I prevent popularity-contest from sending reports via email?
>   
>   A) This is not recommended. Reports are sent by email only when the HTTP
>   submission fails, which is generally caused by a temporary lack of internet
>   connectivity. By contrast, reports sent by email are stored in the mail server
>   queue until the internet connectivity is back.
>   
>   Nevertheless, you can prevent popularity-contest from sending reports via email
>   by adding
>   MAILTO= 
>   to /etc/popularity-contest.conf
> 
> I would like to the warning above that sometimes HTTP submissions on servers
> using NTP because too many systems try to report at the same tie, which
> overload the popcon server. We are working on a fix.
[...]

Hello Bill,
I use popularity-contest on most Debian boxes I administer and I have
experienced this issue where the MTA is configured to only deal with
local mail.

On one such system, I get the bounce basically once a week.
Since I haven't changed the default configuration of
popularity-contest, this means that the HTTP method almost always fails
and the SMTP method is tried (in vain). Do I understand correctly?
Please note that the system is not up and running 24/7, and uses
anacron: hence, the HTTP method is not tried always at the same time.
Nonetheless, it seems to almost always fail!   :-(

Is there any progress on the fix you are working on?

Questions:
 • is the HTTP method tried only once?
 • does the SMTP fallback kick in immediately afterwards?
 • could the HTTP method be tried more than once?
 • what would happen, if I added
   MAILTO=
   to /etc/popularity-contest.conf?



-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/popcon-developers/attachments/20160320/f23db3eb/attachment.sig>