Re: How do I get exim to work?

[Johann Spies <jhspies@alpha.futurenet.co.za>]

Thanks George,

I nearly got exim to work. But after waisting another 6 hours I do not
know how further.

I can now receive messages from the ISP into the /var/spool/exim/input
directory and read them there with emacs.  Mail rarely gets through to
/var/spool/mail/jhspies and when that happens, I cannot tell why the next
does not do the same.

Nothing was received by procmail although there was a ~/.forward file.

Sometimes it seems as if exim just sends the mail back to the ISP to be
received again when I dial up again.

I do not understand all the questions of the configuration script and do
not know what to answer.

After two years of using linux it seems to become more user unfriendly as
far as setting up mail is concerned.

My .fetchmailrc also have to change for exim but I do not know how.  At
one stage the following setting seemed to work, but not in all cases:

poll alpha.futurenet.co.za protocol pop3:
  	no dns
        user jhspies		\
	password "xxxxxx"	
#	smtphost localhost
	mda "exim -bm %s"

I had to uninstall exim and reinstall smail to send this mail.

Isn't there a howto on how to set up a single pc with a dialup connection
to an ISP  using exim, fetchmail and procmail?  I know I do not need
procmail if I use exim, but then I have to understand how exim works and I
cannot get it working for a basic system.

Sorry if I sound a bit grumpy, but I am a bit frustrated.  The reason why
I wanted to try out exim was because I get problems with a "Sender" field
when I use smail.  Some mail servers reject my mail as the following
message illustrates (irrelevant lines removed):
----------------------------

|------------------------- Failed addresses follow: ---------------------|
 <9411747@narga.sun.ac.za> ... transport smtp: 550 relaying mail to
narga.sun.ac.za is not allowed |------------------------- 

Sender: jhspies@Johann
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I have tried to prevent that by the following in my /etc/smail/transports:

smtp:   driver=tcpsmtp,
        max_addrs=100,              # limit on number of addresses
        -max_chars,
        inet,                  # use route-addr addresses for routing
        remove_header="Sender";
        use_bind,               # resolve MX and multiple A records
        defer_no_connect,       # try again if the nameserver is down
        -local_mx_okay,                 # fail an MX to the local host
        defnames                        # use standard domain searching

but that obviously did not work.


 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Johann Spies                                 Windsorlaan 19              |
| jhspies@alpha.futurenet.co.za                3201 Pietermaritzburg       |
| Tel/Faks Nr. +27 331-46-1310		       Suid-Afrika (South Africa)  |
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------

     "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, 
      believe also in me."          John 14:1