Re: [exim4] Testing and making sense of smtp output
[I may be misunderstanding how your mail system works but your Date:
header doesn't look right]
On Sun 19 Oct 2014 at 00:53:44 +0200, lee wrote:
> Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> writes:
>
> > On Fri 17 Oct 2014 at 03:15:49 +0200, lee wrote:
> >
> >> There is no mentioning of /etc/mailname here. Perhaps that's an
> >> ideosyncrasy of the automatic configuration.
> >
> > No. It's because there is no connection between /etc/mailname and
> > primary_hostname.
>
> Then how does it happen that Debian manages to configure exim in such a
> way that the contents of /etc/mailname are being used instead of the
> hostname? Is that another option exim has, and if so, how's it called?
The contents of mailname are not used for the HELO.
If /etc/mailname exists exim will not touch it when it is installed. If
it does not exist it makes the assumption that canonical_hostname in the
hosts file is correct and uses that as the mailname. The installation is
at priority low or medium (I forget which) and no questions are asked.
Suppose the hosts file has
127.0.1.1 debian.lan debian
This probably doesn't matter for most things the machine is used for but
for an MTA it may be crucial. Any unqualified address will be qualified
with debian.lan; user becomes user@debian.lan. You can see the possible
routeing problems which could arise for a mail envelope with this in the
To or From.
Exim also HELOs with debian.lan; it looks like mailname and the HELO are
connected but it is only an artifact of the install procedure.
> I seem to vaguely remember an option to specify the HELO string, and I
> couldn't find it anymore because I don't remember how it's called.
primary_hostname is used as the HELO but Debian doesn't set it. Also,
the exim maintainers aren't very keen on your using it in a configuration
file.
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