Re: Exim doesn't start (woody)

[Shyamal Prasad <shyamal.prasad@sbcglobal.net>]

    "Rob" == Rob French <fulcrum99lists@earthlink.net> writes:

    Rob> Hello, I'm using woody. I have exim running has my MTA (MDA?
    Rob> whichever). Anyhow, exim doesn't seem to load at boot
    Rob> time. However, if I run '/etc/init.d/exim start' it runs just
    Rob> fine. Why isn't it running at boot? Is there an option
    Rob> somewhere I'm missing? What errors should I look for?

The default exim installation does not run exim as a daemon. Instead
/etc/inetd.conf knows to start exim for port 25 service on demand. The
boot script /etc/init.d/exim looks in inetd.conf and if it finds an
entry for smtp it does not start the exim daemon.

So, perhaps, you are missing nothing and there are no errors. The best
test is, with no exim daemon running, telnet to localhost on port 25
(smtp). If you get a connection, inetd is doing the right thing.

If you want exim to start at boot time, edit inetd.conf and comment
out the line

smtp            stream  tcp     nowait  mail    /usr/sbin/exim exim -bs

and you should find that exim will start on boot. Ask yourself why you
want this though (do you really get that much mail?).

Of course, you might have a real problem that is beyond all this, but
I'm guessing that this is the likely cause of what you are seeing.

Cheers!
Shyamal