re: exim config...

[Andy Swallow <andy@localhost>]

Let me re-phrase the question a little...

I don't mind about how often sendmail retries to flush the queue. That doesn't 
matter. And the queue is never particularly big anyway. But what does often 
happen is that I send an email, while offline, and forget all about actually 
dialing up to send it fully. So it waits in the queue.

If you type 'mailq' then each message in the queue is listed in the form,

message id <sender@address>
	recipient-list

If there is any problem with the message, then exim sends a warning message to 
sender@address. I would like to keep sender@address as "andy@localhost", so 
that a warning message (for instance when the message has been on the queue 
far too long) is sent to me directly. However, if sender@address is a local 
address, this causes problems when exim tries to send the message into the big 
wide world, since andy@localhost is an unrouteable address.

I do already use exim's re-writing rules to translate my local address into my 
proper email address, referring to the /etc/email-addresses file. Flags can be 
specified with these rules to say exactly which address headers are 
re-written, and which are left as they are. What is the difference between the 
"From" header, the "Envelope-from" header, and the "sender" header??? The 
"reply-to" header doesn't seem to matter too much, at least not until the 
recipient gets the message. It seems to be the "From" header that determines 
address that exim uses as the address of the sender. I've tried setting it to 
re-write only at transport time, but that doesn't seem to work. Maybe I'm 
doing it wrong.

How do I keep hold of the local address for warning messages, and yet enable 
the system to successfully send the email once an internet connection is up 
and running?

Thanks again...

Andy