Re: default MTA
On Wednesday, June 12, 2013 16:04:06, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On 12-06-13 16:59, Marc Haber wrote:
> > On Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:38:28 +0100, Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org>
> >
> > wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 08:00:17AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> >>> To this exim expert, configuring exim is done as follows:
> >>>
> >>> zcat /usr/share/doc/exim4/examples/example.conf.gz >
> >>> /etc/exim4/exim4.conf
>
> [...]
>
> > I violently object to people recommending this to novices.
>
> Yes, me too. It only works for me because I know exim pretty well, and
> then the single-file approach is more transparent than any approach
> involving generated files.
>
> However, it's a large file containing many details which are
> uninteresting to users who want a simple system. In that case, an
> abstraction layer is a good thing.
Yes.
> That being said, personally I *do* recommend that people with less
> common needs read the excellent exim documentation and start off the
> example.conf file; if your needs are uncommon, making the investment to
> learn how exim works pays off a lot more than trying to twist an
> abstraction layer into doing things it wasn't meant to do. And once you
> do know how it works, any abstraction layer (IMO) just gets in the way.
I think that's true.
One snag I ran into concerning the abstraction layer concerned customizing the
"split file" configuration via conf.d/ files. Upon upgrades dpkg recongizes
the changes in configuration files and prompts the user; choosing not to
replace the file with the maintain'er sversion drops a new .dpkg-dist file
next to the modified one, which is expected. However what's _not_ expected is
to use both the customized configuration file as well as the .dpkg-dist one.
:-/ Unfortunately in my experience, that's what happens. And in this
condition Exim may fail to start, or might start and then reject mail with a
temporary failure. I therefore consider the "split configuration" to be
dangerous.
I had another look at this: it appears that in /usr/sbin/update-exim4.conf,
the cat_parts() function doesn't avoid files containing ".dpkg-", but this
funtionality might be able to be added to the run_parts() function that
cat_parts() uses.
On servers I'm still using the abstraction via the "single config" method, but
I've repeatedly been tempted to use a straight exim4.conf file. [I probably
should.]
-- Chris
--
Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle@coredump.us
GPG Key: 4096R/0x1E759A726A9FDD74
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