Re: kissing exim
On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 02:42:15AM -0800, Joseph Carter wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 05:59:31AM +0000, Anthony Rowe wrote:
> > Debian installs with Exim as the default mta but many users (especially
> > dial-up users) only need the mta to hand their mail to a smarthost.
> > sSMTP is easily configured to hand over outgoing mail to an ISP's smtp
> > server, since that is the only thing sSMTP does. Exim is very difficult
> > to configure to do this (even by selecting option #2 for dialup in
> > eximconfig).
>
> An easy Debian installation project might ignore this in favor of giving
> you a more intelligent wizard-type thing for setting up mail on your
> system and use ssmtp when it's all that's needed and exim/postfix/whatever
> when a bigger MTA is called for. But for the most part Debian's policies
> are better followed than not and ssmtp might belong better in a dialup
> networking task.
A dialup networking task is what I would like to see here. Configuring
Exim to hand mail to a smarthost proved to be too difficult for me. The
questions in Eximconfig option #2 for dialup when answered to the best
of my ability, always failed to generate a good configuration for Exim.
The best I ever managed was to have Exim configured to behave as though
my box was my ISP. Editing the Exim config file by hand was a daunting
task because so many config options deal with issues that I have no clue
about. sSMTP writes a good configuration for my purposes, by asking only
three clear questions. It should be possible for eximconfig to do the
same - if "dialup" is chosen as the config option.
My problem is more with the choice of tool than with exim's quality
(which I do not question) or with eximconfig's useability (which I
should file a bug against - if I was chiefly concerned with using exim).
In keeping with the unix way of having many small applications to do
specific tasks, a dialup user (especially a newbie) should indeed be
able to select a task such as "dialup" and then select the mta best
suited to their needs. Mail is a basic function for a networked box and
a newbie, having selected "dialup" should be able to have an mta that is
"right" for the selected task - configured and functional with ease.
sSMTP may be a better choice than Exim in this case.
Kind regards,
Anthony Rowe
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