Honesty about some exim mistakes
Just thought I'd share a fun little experience I recently had with
EXIM.
I had been having some trouble navigating the exim multi-file config,
attempting to change my local mailserver into a real internet-capable
server. Exim4 came installed already when I first installed debian, and
I wasn't sure how to properly reinstall. Apt-get remove and install of
all associated programs never prompted me to reconfigure. Well let's
just say that through some rash thinking and so forth the /etc/exim4
directory 'got' deleted.
Yeah.
So, I go to apt-get remove && install the programs (and dependent
programs such as subversion-tools), expecting those config files to be
restored to a pristine state by the .debs.
No dice. exim4-config failed to configure due to the lack of, tada,
/etc/exim4
thus causing exim4, exim4-base, and exim4-daemon-heavy to ALSO fail. So
the files I need to be autocreated by dpkg fail because of the fact
that they don't exist. something is fishy about this.
Well it of course FINALLY hit me that I should have just used
dpkg-reconfigure instead of apt-get remove et al. Attempts to do this
fail with the same messages, of course.
I was able to rectify this situation by dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config
--force, setting that to the multi-file setup (it continued to fail due
to a missing file if I told it to use the monolithic single-file
structure), and then removing and reinstalling exim4-config,
exim4-base, exim4, etc. (i had to remove because exim4-config was
considered installed but broken, and wouldn't let any other packages
install)
Now I've got my mail server running, and all it took was an hour and a
half of complete idiocy and associated frustation!
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