Re: Exim config...

[Glen Mehn <glen@burningman.com>]

Andy Swallow wrote:
> I'm sure this isn't an original question, but never mind...
>
> Regarding the exim config (using woody, stable):
>
> Ok, so if I'm offline and I send an email, it gets queued and waits 
> patiently until I connect. Various addresses are re-written so that it 
> can send properly. But then if it's on the queue for a long time (which 
> often happens), exim sends a reminder email to the sender. Exactly which 
> message headers need to be re-written so that a) there is no problem 
> sending the message, but b) these reminder messages get sent to the 
> localhost address and not the external address?

what I do on my laptop is change the retry settings so that exim only 
tries to redeliver once an hour if not connected. I *think* what you 
want to do is set the from: address to be you@yourlaptop.yourdomain, and 
your reply-to: to be you@yourdomain, then make sure that 
yourlaptop.yourdomain is in local_domains.

> Also, the exim daemon usually pauses for about 5-10 seconds, for example 
> when I type 'mailq'. Is this something to do with the /etc/hosts file or 
> not? It's not a major problem of course, but any comments would be welcome.

Well, for this case, `man exim` says:

       If Exim is called under the name mailq, it behaves as if the
       option -bp were present before any other options. This is for
       compatibility  with some systems that contain a command of that
       name in one of the standard libraries, symbolically linked to
       /usr/lib/sendmail.


...and then...


       -bp    List  the contents of the mail queue on the current
              output. If the -bp option is followed by a list  of
              message  ids,  then just those messages are listed.
              By default this option may only be used by an admin
              user.   The queue_list_requires_admin option can be
              set false to allow any user to see the queue.

              Each message on the queue is displayed  as  in  the
              following example:

               25m     2.9K    0t5C6f-0000c8-00    <alice@wonder­
              land.fict.book>
                 red.king@looking-glass.fict.book
                 <other addresses>

              The first line contains the amount of time the mes­
              sage  has  been  on the queue (in this case 25 min­
              utes), the size of the message (2.9K),  the  unique
              identifier for the message, and the message sender,
              as contained in the envelope. If the message  is  a
              delivery  error  message,  the  sender  address  is
              empty, and appears as <>. If the message is  frozen
              (attempts  to  deliver  it  are suspended) then the
              text '*** frozen ***' is displayed at  the  end  of
              this line.

              The recipients of the message (taken from the enve­
              lope, not the headers) are displayed on  subsequent
              lines.  Those  addresses  to  which the message has
              already been delivered are marked with  the  letter
              D.   If an original address gets expanded into sev­
              eral addresses via an alias or  forward  file,  the
              original is displayed with a 'D' only when deliver­
              ies for all of its child addresses are completed.


I'd suspect that if you had a large mail queue, that it'd have to scan 
the whole thing before reporting what's on it.

hope this was helpful,

cheers

glen


--
Glen Mehn	glen@burningman.com
"if you ever swallow the universe, remember to spit the dragon
	back out.xx.		--swan