Exim-Configuration

[Chris]

Hi there,

I am using vexim on several servers for many years and I am very happy with it, thanks for the great work.
However, I am about to install it on 2 new Debian servers and noticed this remark in the README:

Exim configuration:
  NOTE: the configuration files supplied here are really old and should be
        revised. You probably should NOT really use them as-is, instead just
        look at them for inspiration. Actually, that file, as it is now, likely
        will not even work!

Since the exim4.conf.template in Debian Jessie is severely different from your vexim2/docs/configure
I don't think that the given inspiration will be enough for me to get the system running if the example
configuration really is that old now.

I was hoping you could give me some more information about what is outdated in the configuration files
or maybe tell me where I can get some configuration examples that help me setting up the system.

Thanks in advance for any help you are able to provide!

Chris

[Rimas Kudelis]

Hi Chris,

since you're using Debian, you may begin by looking at
https://github.com/avleen/vexim2/tree/master/docs/debian-conf.d .

I had this idea that we should ship a working configuration, and have it
all kept in in just one place instead of two (that is, to provide a
script which would either compile the configure file from multiple bits,
or generate the necessary Debian files from the single file), but I
never had enough time and/or motivation to actually do that (nor am I
decided about which way is better).

If you find something missing or not working in these files, patches
and/or bugreports are welcome. One thing that I'm pretty sure will not
work on Jessie as-is is the headers_remove directive in
router/250_vexim_virtual_domains. It seems you will have to comment it
out until Debian ships Exim 4.86.

Regards,

Rimas

[Chris]

Hi Rimas,

thank you very much for the fast reply. I compared the files in
debian-conf.d with the "configuration" combined with "vexim-*.conf"
in docs and noticed many differences. There is no Mailman-router
in the conf.d for example.

I also noticed that all those files have recently been edited and that rises
my hope that they are not that outdated and should work with a few
minor adjustments.

Since I am used to the single-file configuration and since it looks like
everything I need is still in the "configuration" I would stick with that
unless you tell me that it would be a bad idea.

Is there anything in the "conf.d" that is missing in the "configuration"
or could there be any other problems?

Best regards,

Chris

[Rimas Kudelis]

Hi Chris,

2015.06.16 19:26, Chris wrote:

thank you very much for the fast reply. I compared the files in
debian-conf.d with the "configuration" combined with "vexim-*.conf"
in docs and noticed many differences. There is no Mailman-router
in the conf.d for example.

Like you read, I'm not sure if the configure file actually works. I did put things into it which I also put into other files, but I didn't test them. So you may try, but be aware that it might not work.

Regarding the Mailman router, I would expect Mailman package to provide the hooks necessary for Mailman to work, doesn't it? Well, I just checked, and they do provide example configuration in /usr/share/doc/mailman/mailman-install/. What you see in our configure file seems like a simple copy-paste from there.

Having in mind that Vexim does not depend on Mailman in any way, it looks normal to me that we don't provide our copies of their config.

Regarding other differences: if you look at the history of configure, you'll notice that it hasn't had any major changes since 2004, when Exim 3 was still current. The file itself was probably a copy of what Avleen was using on FreeBSD, so  it's no wonder it differs so much from what Debian provides with Exim 4.

Meanwhile, files under debian-conf.d are made to tie as much as possible with the config files provided by exim4-config package in Debian. If you see any unexpected functionality differences between stuff described in debian-conf.d and stuff described in configure, it's probably a bug.

I also noticed that all those files have recently been edited and that rises
my hope that they are not that outdated and should work with a few
minor adjustments.

Since I am used to the single-file configuration and since it looks like
everything I need is still in the "configuration" I would stick with that
unless you tell me that it would be a bad idea.

To be honest, I've never tried to use the single-file config option in Debian, and I have no idea how that works (or particularly, if/how other packages could hook their parts into that file). However, I do think it's probably smarter to just paste bits from debian-conf.d files into their respective places in your configure, than to use the really old file that we are providing.

Is there anything in the "conf.d" that is missing in the "configuration"
or could there be any other problems?

As I said above, "configure" has been around since Exim 3, mostly unchanged. It might work, but it's likely lacking a lot of stuff you may want.

I'd be interested in a pull request with an update for it, by the way. Just sayin'. ;)

Regards,

Rimas