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39THE EXIM FAQ
40------------
41
42This is the FAQ for the Exim Mail Transfer Agent. Many thanks to the many
43people who provided the original information. This file would be amazingly
44cluttered if I tried to list them all. Suggestions for corrections,
45improvements, and additions are always welcome.
46
47This version of the FAQ applies to Exim 4.00 and later releases. It has been
48extensively revised, and material that was relevant only to earlier releases
49has been removed. As this caused some whole sections to disappear, I've taken
50the opportunity to re-arrange the sections and renumber everything except the
51configuration samples.
52
53References of the form Cnnn, Fnnn, Lnnn, and Snnn are to the sample
54configuration, filter, \^^local_scan()^^\, and ``useful script'' files. These
55are hyperlinked from the HTML version of this FAQ. They can also be found in
56the separately distributed directory called \(config.samples)\. The primary
57location is
58
59\?ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/email/exim/exim4/config.samples.tar.gz?\
60\?ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/email/exim/exim4/config.samples.tar.bz2?\
61
62There are brief descriptions of these files at the end of this document.
63
64Philip Hazel
65Last update: 31-March-2004
66
67
68The FAQ is divided into the following sections:
69
70 0. General Debugging
71 1. Building and Installing
72 2. Routing in general
73 3. Routing to remote hosts
74 4. Routing for local delivery
75 5. Filtering
76 6. Delivery
77 7. Policy controls
78 8. Rewriting addresses
79 9. Headers
80 10. Performance
81 11. Majordomo
82 12. Fetchmail
83 13. Perl
84 14. Dial-up and ISDN
85 15. UUCP
86 16. Modifying message bodies
87 17. Encryption (TLS/SSL)
88 20. Millennium
89 50. Miscellaneous
90 91. Mac OS X
91 92. FreeBSD
92 93. HP-UX
93 94. BSDI
94 95. IRIX
95 96. Linux
96 97. Sun sytems
97 98. Configuration cookbook
98 99. List of sample configurations
99
100
101
1020. GENERAL DEBUGGING
103
104Q0001: Exim is crashing. What is wrong?
105
106A0001: Exim should never crash. The author is always keen to know about
107 crashes, so that they can be diagnosed and fixed. However, before you
108 start sending me email, please check that you are running the latest
109 release of Exim, in case the problem has already been fixed. The
110 techniques described below can also be useful in trying to pin down
111 exactly which circumstances caused the crash and what Exim was trying to
112 do at the time. If the crash is reproducable (by a particular message,
113 say) keep a copy of that message.
114
115
116Q0002: Exim is not working. What is wrong? How can I check what it is doing?
117
118A0002: Exactly how is it not working? Check the more specific questions in the
119 other sections of this FAQ. Some general techniques for debugging are:
120
121 (1) Look for information in Exim's log files. These are in the \(log)\
122 directory in Exim's spool directory, unless you have configured a
123 different path for them. Serious operational problems are reported
124 in paniclog.
125
126 (2) If the problem involves the delivery of one or more messages, try
127 forcing a delivery with the \-M-\ option and also set the \-d-\
128 option, to cause Exim to output debugging information. For example:
129
130==> exim -d -M 0z6CXU-0005RR-00
131
132 The output is written to the standard error stream. You need to have
133 admin privileges to use \-M-\ and \-d-\.
134
135 (3) If the problem involves incoming SMTP mail, try using the \-bh-\
136 option to simulate an incoming connection from a specific host,
137 for example:
138
139==> exim -bh 10.9.8.7
140
141 This goes through the motions of an SMTP session, without actually
142 accepting a message. Information about various policy checks is
143 output. You will need to know how to pretend to be an SMTP client.
144
145 (4) If the problem involves lack of recognition or incorrect handling
146 of local addresses, try using the \-bt-\ option with debugging turned
147 on, to see how Exim is handling the address. For example,
148
149==> exim -d -bt z6abc
150
151 shows you how it would handle the local part \"z6abc"\.
152
153
154Q0003: What does the error \*Child process of address_pipe transport returned
155 69 from command xxx*\ mean?
156
157A0003: It means that when a transport called \%address_pipe%\ was run to pass an
158 email message by means of a pipe to another process running the command
159 xxx, the return code from that command was 69, which indicates some kind
160 of error (the success return code is 0).
161
162 The most common meaning of exit code 69 is ``unavailable'', and this often
163 means that when Exim tried to run the command \(xxx)\, it failed. One
164 cause of this might be incorrect permissions on the file containing the
165 command. See also Q0026.
166
167
168Q0004: My virtual domain setup isn't working. How can I debug it?
169
170A0004: You can use an exim command with \-d-\ to get it to show you how it is
171 processing addresses. You don't actually need to send a message; use the
172 \-bt-\ option like this:
173
174==> exim -d -bt localpart@virtualhost
175
176 This will show you which routers it is using. If the problem appears
177 to be with the expansion of an option setting, you can use the
178 \debug_print\ option on a router to get Exim to output the expanded
179 string values as it goes along.
180
181
182Q0005: Why is Exim not rejecting incoming messages addressed to non-existent
183 users at SMTP time?
184
185A0005: This is controlled by the ACL that is run for each incoming RCPT
186 command. It is defined by the \acl_smtp_rcpt\ option. You can check this
187 part of your configuration by using the \-bh-\ option to run a simulated
188 SMTP session, during which Exim will tell you what things it is
189 checking.
190
191
192Q0006: I've put an entry for \"*.my.domain"\ in a DBM lookup file, but it isn't
193 getting recognized.
194
195A0006: You need to request ``partial matching'' by setting the search type to
196 \partial-dbm\ in order for this to work.
197
198
199Q0007: I've put the entry \"*@domain.com"\ in a lookup database, but it isn't
200 working. The expansion I'm using is:
201
202==> ${lookup{${lc:$sender_address}}dbm{/the/file} ...
203
204A0007: As no sender address will ever be //*@domain.com// this will indeed have
205 no effect as it stands. You need to tell Exim that you want it to look
206 for defaults after the normal lookup has failed. In this case, change the
207 search type from \"dbm"\ to \"dbm*@"\. See the section on \*Default values in
208 single-key lookups*\ in the chapter entitled \*File and database
209 lookups*\ in the Exim manual.
210
211
212Q0008: If I run \"./exim -d -bt user@domain"\ all seems well, but when I send
213 a message from my User Agent, it does not arrive at its destination.
214
215A0008: Try sending a message directly to Exim by typing this:
216
217==> exim -v user@domain
218 <some message, could be empty>
219 .
220
221 If the message gets delivered to a remote host, but never arrives at its
222 final destination, then the problem is at the remote host. If, however,
223 the message gets through correctly, then the problem may be between your
224 User Agent and Exim. Try setting Exim's \log_selector\ option to include
225 \"+arguments"\, to see with which arguments the UA is calling Exim.
226
227
228Q0009: What does \*no immediate delivery: too many messages received in one SMTP
229 connection*\ mean?
230
231A0009: An SMTP client may send any number of messages down a single SMTP
232 connection to a server. Initially, an Exim server starts up a delivery
233 process as soon as a message is received. However, in order not to start
234 up too many processes when lots of messages are arriving (typically
235 after a period of downtime), it stops doing immediate delivery after a
236 certain number of messages have arrived down the same connection. The
237 threshold is set by \smtp_accept_queue_per_connection\, and the default
238 value is 10. On large systems, the value should be increased. If you are
239 running a dial-in host and expecting to get all your mail down a single
240 SMTP connection, then you can disable the limit altogether by setting
241 the value to zero.
242
243
244Q0010: Exim puts \*for \[address]\*\ in the ::Received:: headers of some, but not all,
245 messages. Is this a bug?
246
247A0010: No. It is deliberate. Exim inserts a ``for'' phrase only if the incoming
248 message has precisely one recipient. If there is more than one
249 recipient, nothing is inserted. The reason for this is that not all
250 recipients appear in the ::To:: or ::Cc:: headers, and it is considered a
251 breach of privacy to expose such recipients to the others. A common
252 case is when a message has come from a mailing list.
253
254
255Q0011: Instead of \^exim_dbmbuild^\, I'm using a homegrown program to build DBM
256 (or cdb) files, but Exim doesn't seem to be able to use them.
257
258A0011: Exim expects there to be a binary zero value on the end of each key used
259 in a DBM file if you use the \"dbm"\ lookup type, but not for the \"dbmnz"\
260 lookup type or for the keys of a cdb file. Check that you haven't
261 slipped up in this regard.
262
263
264Q0012: Exim is unable to route to any remote domains. It doesn't seen to be
265 able to access the DNS.
266
267A0012: Try running \"exim -d+resolver -bt \[remote address]\"\. The \-d-\
268 options turns on debugging output, and the addition of \"+resolver"\
269 will make it show the resolver queries it is building and the results of
270 its DNS queries. If it appears unable to contact any name servers, check
271 the contents and permissions of \(/etc/resolv.conf)\.
272
273
274Q0013: What does the error message \*transport system_aliases: cannot find
275 transport driver "redirect" in line 92*\ mean?
276
277A0013: \%redirect%\ is a router, not a transport. You have put a configuration
278 for a router into the transports section of the configuration file.
279
280
281Q0014: Exim is timing out after receiving and responding to the DATA command
282 from one particular host, and yet the client host also claims to be
283 timing out. This seems to affect only certain messages.
284
285A0014: This kind of problem can have many different causes.
286
287 (1) This problem has been seen with a network that was dropping all
288 packets over a certain size, which mean that the first part of the SMTP
289 transaction worked, but when the body of a large message started
290 flowing, the main data bits never got through the network. See also
291 Q0017.
292
293 (2) This can also happen if a host has a broken TCP stack and won't
294 reassemble fragmented datagrams.
295
296 (3) A very few ISDN lines have been seen which failed when certain data
297 patterns were sent through them, and replacing the routers at both end
298 of the link did not fix things. One of them was triggered by more than 4
299 X's in a row in the data.
300
301
302Q0015: What does the message \*Socket bind() to port 25 for address (any)
303 failed: address already in use*\ mean?
304
305A0015: You are trying to run an Exim daemon when there is one already running -
306 or maybe some other MTA is running, or perhaps you have an SMTP line in
307 \(/etc/inetd.conf)\ which is causing \(inetd)\ to listen on port 25.
308
309
310Q0016: I've set \"verify = header_syntax"\ in my ACL, but this causes Exim to
311 complain about header lines like \"To: Work: Jim <jims@email>,
312 Home: Bob <bobs@email>"\ which look all right to me. Is this a bug?
313
314A0016: No. Header lines such as ::From::, ::To::, etc., which contain addresses, are
315 structured, and have to be in a specific format which is defined in RFC
316 2822. Unquoted colons are not allowed in the ``phrase'' part of an email
317 address (they are OK in other headers such as ::Subject::). The correct
318 form for that header is
319
320==> To: "Work: Jim" <jims@email>, "Home: Bob" <bobs@email>
321
322 You will sometimes see unquoted colons in ::To:: and ::Cc:: headers, but only
323 in connection with name lists (called ``groups''), for example:
324
325==> To: My friends: X <x@y.x>, Y <y@w.z>;,
326 My enemies: A <a@b.c>, B <b@c.d>;
327
328 Each list must be terminated by a semicolon, as shown.
329
330
331Q0017: Whenever Exim tries to deliver a specific message to a particular
332 server, it fails, giving the error \*Remote end closed connection after
333 data*\ or \*Broken pipe*\ or a timeout. What's going on?
334
335A0017: \*Broken pipe*\ is the error you get on some OS when the remote host just
336 drops the connection. The alternative is \*connection reset by peer*\.
337 There are many potential causes. Here are some of them (see also Q0068):
338
339 (1) There are some firewalls that fall over on binary zero characters
340 in email. Have a look, e.g. with \"hexdump -c mymail | tail"\ to see if
341 your mail contains any binary zero characters.
342
343 (2) There are broken SMTP servers around that just drop the connection
344 after the data has been sent if they don't like the message for some
345 reason (e.g. it is too big) instead of sending a 5xx error code. Have
346 you tried sending a small message to the same address?
347
348 It has been reported that some releases of Novell servers running NIMS
349 are unable to handle lines longer than 1024 characters, and just close
350 the connection. This is an example of this behaviour.
351
352 (3) If the problem occurs right at the start of the mail, then it could
353 be a network problem with mishandling of large packets. Many emails are
354 small and thus appear to propagate correctly, but big emails will
355 generate big IP datagrams.
356
357 There have been problems when something in the middle of the network
358 mishandles large packets due to IP tunnelling. In a tunnelled link, your
359 IP datagrams gets wrapped in a larger datagram and sent over a network.
360 This is how virtual private networks (VPNs), and some ISP transit
361 circuits work. Since the datagrams going over the tunnel require a
362 larger packet size, the tunnel needs a bigger maximum transfer unit
363 (MTU) in the network handling the tunnelled packets. However, MTUs
364 are often fixed, so the tunnel will try to fragment the packets.
365
366 If the systems outside the tunnel are using path MTU discovery, (most
367 Sun Sparc Solaris machines do by default), and set the DF (don't
368 fragment) bit because they don't send packets larger than their \(local)\
369 MTU, then ICMP control messages will be sent by the routers at the
370 ends of the tunnel to tell them to reduce their MTU, since the tunnel
371 can't fragment the data, and has to throw it away. If this mechanism
372 stops working, e.g. a firewall blocks ICMP, then your host never
373 knows it has hit the maximum path MTU, but it has received no ACK on
374 the packet either, so it continues to resend the same packet and the
375 connection stalls, eventually timing out.
376
377 You can test the link using pings of large packets and see what works:
378
379==> ping -s host 2048
380
381 Try reducing the MTU on the sending host:
382
383==> ifconfig le0 mtu 1300
384
385 Alternatively, you can reduce the size of the buffer Exim uses for SMTP
386 output by putting something like
387
388==> DELIVER_OUT_BUFFER_SIZE=512
389
390 in your \(Local/Makefile)\ and rebuilding Exim (the default is 8192).
391 While this should not in principle have any effect on the size of
392 packets sent, in practice it does seem to have an effect on some OS.
393
394 You can also try disabling path MTU discovery on the sending host. On
395 Linux, try:
396
397==> echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_no_pmtu_disc
398
399 For a general discussion and information about other operating systems, see
400 \?http://www.netheaven.com/pmtu.html?\. If disabling path MTU discovery
401 fixes the problem, try to find the broken or misconfigured
402 router/firewall that swallows the ICMP-unreachable packets. Increasing
403 timeouts on the receiving host will not work around the problem.
404
405
406Q0018: Why do messages not get delivered down the same connection when I do
407 something like: \"exim -v -R @aol.com"\? For other domains, I do this and
408 I see the appropriate \*waiting for passed connections to get used*\
409 messages.
410
411A0018: Recall that Exim does not keep separate queues for each domain, but
412 operates in a distributed fashion. Messages get into its `waiting for
413 host x' hints database only when a delivery has been tried, and has had
414 a temporary error. Here are some possibilities:
415
416 (1) The messages to \(aol.com)\ got put in your queue, but no previous
417 delivery attempt occured before you did the \-R-\. This might have been
418 because of your settings of \queue_only_load\, \smtp_accept_queue\, or any
419 other option that caused no immediate delivery attempt on arrival. If
420 this is the case, you can try using \-qqR-\ instead of \-R-\.
421
422 (2) You have set \connection_max_messages\ on the smtp transport, and
423 that limit was reached. This would show as a sequence of messages
424 down one connection, then another sequence down a new connection, etc.
425
426 (3) Exim tried to pass on the SMTP connection to another message, but
427 that message was in the process of being delivered to \(aol.com)\ by some
428 other process (typically, a normal queue runner). This will break the
429 sequence, though the other delivery should pass its connection on to
430 other messages if there are any.
431
432 (4) The folk at \(aol.com)\ changed the MX records so the host names have
433 changed - or a new host has been added. I don't know how likely this is.
434
435 (5) Exim is not performing as it should in this regard, for some reason.
436 Next time you have mail queued up for \(aol.com)\, try running
437
438==> exim_dumpdb /var/spool/exim wait-remote_smtp
439
440 to see if those messages are listed among those waiting for the relevant
441 \(aol.com)\ hosts.
442
443
444Q0019: There seems to be a problem in the string expansion code: it doesn't
445 recognize references to headers such as \"${h_to}"\.
446
447A0019: The only valid syntax for header references is (for example) \"$h_to:"\
448 because header names are permitted by RFC 2822 to contain a very wide
449 range of characters. A colon (or white space) is required as the
450 terminator.
451
452
453Q0020: Why do connections to my machine's SMTP port take a long time to respond
454 with the banner, when connections to other ports respond instantly? The
455 delay is sometimes as long as 30 seconds.
456
457A0020: These kinds of delay are usually caused by some kind of network problem
458 that affects outgoing calls made by Exim at the start of an incoming
459 connection. Configuration options that cause outgoing calls are:
460
461 (1) \rfc1413_hosts\ and \rfc1413_query_timeout\ (for \*ident*\ calls).
462 Firewalls sometimes block ident connections so that they time out,
463 instead of refusing them immediately. This can cause this problem.
464 See Q5023 for a discussion of the usefulness of \*ident*\.
465
466 (2) The \host_lookup\ option, the \host_reject_connection\ option, or a
467 condition in the ACL that runs at connection time requires the
468 remote host's name to be looked up from its IP address. Sometimes
469 these DNS lookups time out. You can get this effect with ACL
470 statements like this:
471
472==> deny hosts = *.x.example
473
474 If at all possible, you should use IP addresses instead of host
475 names in blocking lists in order to to avoid this problem.
476
477 You can use the \-bh-\ option to get more information about what is
478 happening at the start of a connection. However, note that the \-bh-\
479 option does not provide a complete simulation. In particular, no
480 \*ident*\ checks are done, so it won't show up a delay problem that is
481 related to (1) above.
482
483
484Q0021: What does \*failed to create child process to send failure message*\ mean?
485 This is a busy mail server with \smtp_accept_max\ set to 500, but this
486 problem started to occur at about 300 incoming connections.
487
488A0021: Some message delivery failed, and when Exim wanted to send a bounce
489 message, it was unable to create a process in which to do so. Probably
490 the limit on the maximum number of simultaneously active processes has
491 been reached. Most OS have some means of increasing this limit, and in
492 some operating systems there is also a limit per uid which can be
493 varied.
494
495
496Q0022: What does \*No transport set by system filter*\ in a log line mean?
497
498A0022: Your system filter contains a \"pipe"\ or \"save"\ or \"mail"\ command,
499 but you have not set the corresponding option which specifies which
500 transport is to be used. You need to set whichever of
501 \system_filter_pipe_transport\, \system_filter_file_transport\ or
502 \system_filter_reply_transport\ is relevant.
503
504
505Q0023: Why is Exim refusing to relay, saying \*failed to find host name from IP
506 address*\ when I have the sender's IP address in an ACL condition? My
507 configuration contains this ACL statement:
508
509==> accept hosts = lsearch;/etc/mail/relaydomains:192.168.96.0/24
510
511A0023: When checking a host list, the items are tested in left-to-right
512 order. The first item in your list is a lookup on the incoming host's
513 name, so Exim has to determine the name from the incoming IP address in
514 order to perform the test. If it can't find the host name, it can't do
515 the check, so it gives up. You would have discovered what was going
516 on if you had run a test such as
517
518==> exim -bh 192.168.96.131
519
520 The solution is to put all explicit IP addresses first in the list.
521 Alternatively, you can split the ACL statement into two like this:
522
523==> accept hosts = lsearch;/etc/mail/relaydomains
524 accept hosts = 192.168.96.0/24
525
526 If the host lookup fails, the first \"accept"\ fails, but then the
527 second one is considered.
528
529
530Q0024: When I run \"exim -bd -q10m"\ I get \*PANIC LOG: exec of exim -q failed*\.
531
532A0024: This probably means that Exim doesn't know its own path so it can't
533 re-exec itself to do the first queue run. Check the output of
534
535==> exim -bP exim_path
536
537
538Q0025: I can't seem to get a pipe command to run when I include a \"${if"\
539 expansion in it. This fails:
540
541==> command = perl -T /usr/local/rt/bin/rtmux.pl \
542 rt-mailgate helpdesk \
543 ${if eq {$local_part}{rt} {correspond}{action}}
544
545A0025: You need some internal quoting in there. Exim expands each individual
546 argument separately. Because you have (necessarily) got spaces in your
547 \"${if"\ item, you have to quote that argument. Try
548
549==> command = perl -T /usr/local/rt/bin/rtmux.pl \
550 rt-mailgate helpdesk \
551 "${if eq {$local_part}{rt} {correspond}{action}}"
552
553 \**Warning:**\ If command starts with an item that requires quoting,
554 you cannot just put it in quotes, because a leading quote means that the
555 entire option setting is being quoted. What you have to do is to quote
556 the entire value, and use internally escaped quotes for the ones you
557 really want. For example:
558
559==> command = "\"${if ....}\" arg1 arg2"
560
561 Any backslashes in the expansion items will have to be doubled to stop
562 them being interpreted by the string reader.
563
564
565Q0026: I'm trying to get Exim to connect an alias to a pipe, but it always
566 gives error code 69, with the comment \*(could mean service or program
567 unavailable)*\.
568
569A0026: If your alias entry looks like this:
570
571==> alias: |"/some/command some parameters"
572
573 change it to look like this:
574
575==> alias: "|/some/command some parameters"
576
577
578Q0027: What does the error \*Spool file is locked*\ mean?
579
580A0027: This is not an error. All it means is that when an Exim delivery
581 process (probably started by a queue runner process) looked at a message
582 in order to start delivering it, it found that another Exim process was
583 already busy delivering it. On a busy system this is quite a common
584 occurrence. If you set \"-skip_delivery"\ in the \log_selector\ option,
585 these messages are omitted from the log.
586
587 The only time when this message might indicate a problem is if it is
588 repeated for the same message for a very long time. That would suggest
589 that the process that is delivering the message has somehow got stuck.
590
591
592Q0028: Exim is reporting IP addresses as 0.0.0.0 or 255.255.255.255 instead of
593 their correct values. What's going on?
594
595A0028: You are using a version of Exim built with gcc on an IRIX box.
596 See Q9502.
597
598
599Q0029: I can't seem to figure out why PAM support doesn't work correctly.
600
601A0029: There is a problem using PAM with shadow passwords when the calling
602 program is not running as \/root/\. Exim is normally running as the
603 Exim user when authenticating a remote host. See this posting for one
604 way round the problem:
605
606 \?http://www.exim.org/mailman/htdig/exim-users/Week-of-Mon-20010917/030371.html?\
607
608 Another solution can be found at \?http://www.e-admin.de/pam_exim/?\.
609
610 PAM 0.72 allows authorization as non-\/root/\, using setuid helper programs.
611 Furthermore, in \(/etc/pam.d/exim)\ you can explicitelly specify that
612 this authorization (using setuid helpers) is only permitted for certain
613 users and groups.
614
615
616Q0030: I'm trying to use a query-style lookup for hosts that are allowed to
617 relay, but it is giving really weird errors.
618
619A0030: Does your query contain a colon character? Remember that host lists are
620 colon-separated, so you need to double any colons in the query. This
621 applies even if the query is defined as a macro.
622
623
624Q0031: Exim is rejecting connections from hosts that have more than one IP
625 address, for no apparent reason.
626
627A0031: You are using Solaris 7 or earlier, and have \"nis dns files"\ in
628 \(/etc/nsswitch.conf)\. Change this to \"dns nis files"\ to avoid hitting Sun
629 bug 1154236 (a bad interaction between NIS and the DNS).
630
631
632Q0032: Exim is failing to find the MySQL library, even though is it present
633 within \\LD_LIBRARY_PATH\\. I'm getting this error:
634
635==> /usr/local/bin/exim: fatal: libmysqlclient.so.6: open failed:
636 No such file or directory
637
638A0032: Exim is suid, and \\LD_LIBRARY_PATH\\ is ignored for suid binaries on a
639 Solaris (and other?) systems. What you should be doing is adding
640 \"-R/local/lib/mysql"\ to the same place in the compilation that you added
641 \"-L/local/lib/mysql"\. This tells the binary where to look without
642 needing a path variable.
643
644
645Q0033: What does the error \*lookup of host "xx.xx.xx" failed in yyy router*\
646 mean?
647
648A0033: You configured a \%manualroute%\ router to send the message to xx.xx.xx. When
649 it tried to look up the IP address for that host, the lookup failed
650 with a permanent error. As this is a manual routing, this is a
651 considered to be a serious error which the postmaster needs to know
652 about (maybe you have a typo in your file), and there is little point
653 in keeping on trying. So it freezes the message.
654
655 (1) Don't set up routes to non-existent hosts.
656
657 (2) If you must set up routes to non-existent hosts, and don't want
658 freezing, set the \host_find_failed\ option on the router to do something
659 other than freeze.
660
661
662Q0034: Exim works fine on one host, but when I copied the binary to another
663 identical host, it stopped working (it could not resolve DNS names).
664
665A0034: Is the new host running exactly the same operating system? Most
666 importantly, are the versions of the dynamically loaded libraries
667 (files with names like \(libsocket.so.1)\) the same on both systems? If not,
668 that is probably the cause of the problem. Either arrange for the
669 libraries to be the same, or rebuild Exim from source on the new host.
670
671
672Q0035: I set a \"hosts"\ condition in an ACL to do a lookup in a file of IP
673 addresses, but it doesn't work.
674
675A0035: Did you remember to put \"net-"\ at the start of the the search type? If
676 you set something like this:
677
678==> accept hosts = lsearch;/some/file
679
680 Exim searches the file for the host name, not the IP address. You need
681 to set
682
683==> accept hosts = net-lsearch;/some/file
684
685 to make it use the IP address as the key to the lookup.
686
687
688Q0036: Why do I get the error \*Permission denied: creating lock file hitching
689 post*\ when Exim tries to do a local delivery?
690
691A0036: Your configuration specifies that local mailboxes are all held in
692 single directory, via configuration lines like these (taken from the
693 default configuration):
694
695==> local_delivery:
696 driver = appendfile
697 file = /var/mail/$local_part
698
699 and the permissions on the directory probably look like this:
700
701==> drwxrwxr-x 3 root mail 512 Jul 9 13:48 /var/mail/
702
703 Using the default configuration, Exim runs as the local user when doing
704 a local delivery, and it uses a lock file to prevent any other process
705 from updating the mailbox while it is writing to it. With those
706 permissions the delivery process, running as the user, is unable to
707 create a lock file in the \(/var/mail(\ directory. There are two solutions
708 to this problem:
709
710 (1) Set the \"write"\ and \"sticky bit"\ permissions on the directory, so
711 that it looks like this:
712
713==> drwxrwxrwt 3 root mail 512 Jul 9 13:48 /var/mail/
714
715 The \"w"\ allows any user to create new files in the directory, but
716 the \"t"\ bit means that only the creator of a file is able to remove
717 it. This is the same setting as is normally used with the \(/tmp)\
718 directory.
719
720 (2) Arrange to run the local_delivery transport under a specific group
721 by changing the configuration to read
722
723==> local_delivery:
724 driver = appendfile
725 file = /var/mail/${local_part}
726 group = mail
727
728 The delivery process still runs under the user's uid, but with the
729 group set to \"mail"\. The group permission on the directory allows
730 the process to create and remove the lock file.
731
732 The choice between (1) and (2) is up to the administrator. If the
733 second solution is used, users can empty their mailboxes by updating
734 them, but cannot delete them.
735
736 If your problem involves mail to \/root/\, see also Q0507.
737
738
739Q0037: I am experiencing mailbox locking problems with Sun's \"mailtool"\ used
740 over a network.
741
742A0037: See Q9705 in the Sun-specific section below.
743
744
745Q0038: What does the error message \*error in forward file (filtering not
746 enabled): missing or malformed local part*\ mean?
747
748A0038: If you are trying to use an Exim filter, you have forgotten to enable
749 the facility, which is disabled by default. In the \%redirect%\ router
750 (in the Exim run time configuration file) you need to set
751
752==> allow_filter = true
753
754 to allow a \(.forward)\ file to be used as an Exim filter. If you are not
755 trying to use an Exim filter, then you have put a malformed address in
756 the \(.forward)\ file.
757
758
759Q0039: I have installed Exim, but now I can't mail to \/root/\ any more. Why is
760 this?
761
762A0039: Most people set up \/root/\ as an alias for the manager of the host. If
763 you haven't done this, Exim will attempt to deliver to \/root/\ as if it
764 were a normal user. This isn't really a good idea because the delivery
765 process would run as \/root/\. Exim has a trigger guard in the option
766
767==> never_users = root
768
769 in the default configuration file. This prevents it from running as \/root/\
770 when doing any deliveries. If you really want to run local deliveries as
771 \/root/\, remove this line, but it would be better to create an alias for
772 \/root/\ instead.
773
774
775Q0040: How can I stop undeliverable bounce messages (e.g. to routeable, but
776 undeliverable, spammer senders) from clogging up the queue for days?
777
778A0040: If at all possible, you should try to avoid getting into this situation
779 in the first place, for example, by verifying recipients so that you
780 do not accept undeliverable messages that lead to these bounces.
781 You can, however, configure Exim to discard failing bounce messages
782 early. Just set \ignore_bounce_errors_after\ to specify a (short) time
783 to keep them for.
784
785
786Q0041: What does the message \*unable to set gid=ddd or uid=ddd (euid=ddd):
787 local delivery to ... transport=ttt*\ mean?
788
789A0041: Have you remembered to make Exim setuid \/root/\? It needs root privilege if
790 it is to do any local deliveries, because it does them ``as the user''.
791 Note also that the partition from which Exim is running (where the
792 binary is installed) must not have the \nosuid\ mount option set. You
793 can check this by looking at its \(/etc/fstab)\ entry (or \(/etc/vfstab)\,
794 depending on your OS).
795
796
797Q0042: My ISP's mail server is rejecting bounce messages from Exim, complaining
798 that they have no sender. The SMTP trace does indeed show that the
799 sender address is \"<>"\. Why is the Sender on the bounce message empty?
800
801A0042: Because the RFCs say it must be. Your ISP is at fault. Send them this
802 extract from RFC 2821 section 6.1 (\*Reliable Delivery and Replies by
803 Email*\):
804
805 If there is a delivery failure after acceptance of a message, the
806 receiver-SMTP MUST formulate and mail a notification message. This
807 notification MUST be sent using a null (\"<>"\) reverse path in the
808 envelope. The recipient of this notification MUST be the address
809 from the envelope return path (or the ::Return-Path:: header line).
810 However, if this address is null (\"<>"\), the receiver-SMTP MUST NOT
811 send a notification.
812
813 The reason that bounce messages have no sender is so that they
814 themselves cannot provoke further bounces, as this could lead to a
815 unending exchange of undeliverable messages.
816
817
818Q0043: What does the error \*Unable to get interface configuration: 22 Invalid
819 argument*\ mean?
820
821A0043: This is an error that occurs when Exim is trying to find out the all the
822 IP addresses on all of the local host's interfaces. If you have lots of
823 virtual interfaces, this can occur if there are more than around 250 of
824 them. The solution is to set the option \local_interfaces\ to list just
825 those IP addresses that you want to use for making and receiving SMTP
826 connections.
827
828
829Q0044: What does the error \*Failed to create spool file*\ mean?
830
831A0044: Exim has been unable to create a file in its spool area in which to
832 store an incoming message. This is most likely to be either a
833 permissions problem in the file hierarchy, or a problem with the uid
834 under which Exim is running, though it could be something more drastic
835 such as your disk being full.
836
837 If you are running Exim with an alternate configuration file using a
838 command such as \"exim -C altconfig..."\, remember that the use of -C
839 takes away Exim's root privilege.
840
841 Check that you have defined the spool directory correctly by running
842
843==> exim -bP spool_directory
844
845 and examining the output. Check the mode of this directory. It should
846 look like this, assuming you are running Exim as user \/exim/\:
847
848==> drwxr-x--- 6 exim exim 512 Jul 16 12:29 /var/spool/exim
849
850 If there are any subdirectories already in existence, they should have
851 the same permissions, owner, and group. Check also that you haven't got
852 incorrect permissions on superior directories (for example, \(/var/spool)\).
853 Check that you have set up the Exim binary to be setuid \/root/\. It should
854 look like this:
855
856==> -rwsr-xr-x 1 root xxx 502780 Jul 16 14:16 exim
857
858 Note that it is not just the owner that must be \/root/\, but also the third
859 permission must be \"s"\ rather than \"x"\.
860
861
862Q0045: I see entries in the log that mention two different IP addresses for the
863 same connection. Why is this? For example:
864
865==> H=tip-mp8-ncs-13.stanford.edu ([36.173.0.189]) [36.173.0.156]
866
867A0045: The actual IP address from which the call came is the final one.
868 Whenever there's something in parentheses in a host name, it is what the
869 host quoted as the domain part of an SMTP HELO or EHLO command. So in
870 this case, the client, despite being 36.173.0.156, issued the command
871
872==> EHLO [36.173.0.189]
873
874 when it sent your server the message. This is, of course, very
875 misleading.
876
877
878Q0046: A short time after I start Exim I see a defunct zombie process. What
879 is causing this?
880
881A0046: Your system must be lightly loaded as far as mail is concerned. The
882 daemon sets off a queue runner process when it is started, but it only
883 tidies up completed child processes when it wakes up for some other
884 reason. When there's nothing much going on, you occasionally see
885 defunct processes like this waiting to be dealt with. This is
886 perfectly normal.
887
888
889Q0047: On a reboot, or a restart of the mail system, I see the message \*Mailer
890 daemons: exim abandoned: unknown, malformed, or incomplete option
891 -bz sendmail*\. What does this mean?
892
893A0047: \-bz-\ is a Sendmail option requesting it to create a `configuration freeze
894 file'. Exim has no such concept and so does not support the option. You
895 probably have a line like
896
897==> /usr/lib/sendmail -bz
898
899 in some start-up script (e.g. \(/etc/init.d/mail)\) immedately before
900
901==> /usr/lib/sendmail -bd -q15m
902
903 The first of these lines should be commented out.
904
905
906Q0048: Whenever exim restarts it takes up to 3-5 minutes to start responding on
907 the SMTP port. Why is this?
908
909A0048: Something else is hanging onto port 25 and not releasing it. One place
910 to look is \(/etc/inetd.conf)\ in case for any reason an SMTP stream is
911 configured there.
912
913
914Q0049: What does the log message \*no immediate delivery: more than 10 messages
915 received in one connection*\ mean?
916
917A0049: A remote MTA sent a number of messages in a single SMTP session. Exim
918 limits the number of immediate delivery processes it creates as a
919 result of a single SMTP connection, in order to avoid creating a zillion
920 processes on systems that can have many incoming connections. If you are
921 dialing in to collect mail from your ISP, you should probably set
922 \smtp_accept_queue_per_connection\ to some number larger than 10, or
923 arrange to start a queue runner for local delivery (using \-ql-\)
924 immediately after collecting the mail.
925
926
927Q0050: I am getting complaints from a customer who uses my Exim server for
928 relaying that they are being blocked with a \*Too many connections*\
929 error.
930
931A0050: See \smtp_accept_max\, \smep_accept_max_per_host\ and \smtp_accept_reserve\.
932
933
934Q0051: When I try \"exim -bf"\ to test a system filter, I received the following
935 error message: \*Filter error: unavailable filtering command "fail" near
936 line 8 of filter file*\.
937
938A0051: Use the \-bF-\ option to test system filters. This gives you access to the
939 freeze and fail actions.
940
941
942Q0052: What does \*ridiculously long message header*\ in an error report mean?
943
944A0052: There has to be some limit to the length of a message's header lines,
945 because otherwise a malefactor could open an SMTP channel to your host,
946 start a message, and then just send characters continuously until your
947 host ran out of memory. (Exim stores all the header lines in main
948 memory while processing a message). For this reason a limit is imposed
949 on the total amount of memory that can be used for header lines. The
950 default is 1MB, but this can be changed by setting \\HEADER_MAXSIZE\\ in
951 \(Local/Makefile)\ before building Exim. Exceeding the limit provokes
952 the ``ridiculous'' error message.
953
954
955Q0053: Exim on my host responds to a connection with \"220 *****..."\ and
956 won't understand \\EHLO\\ commands.
957
958A0053: This is the sign of a Cisco Pix ``Mailguard'' sitting in front of your
959 MTA. Pix breaks ESMTP and only does SMTP. It is a nuisance when you have
960 a secure MTA running on your box. Something like ``no fixup protocol
961 smtp 25'' in the Pix configuration is needed. It may be possible to do
962 this by logging into the Pix (using \^telnet^\ or \^ssh^\) and typing
963 \"no fixup smtp"\ to its console. (You may need to use other commands
964 before or after to set up configuration mode and to activate a changed
965 configuration. Consult your Pix documentation or expert.) See also
966 Q0078.
967
968
969Q0054: I'm getting an Exim configuration error \*unknown rewrite flag
970 character (m) in line 386*\ but I haven't used any flags on my rewriting
971 rules.
972
973A0054: You have probably forgotten to quote a replacement string that contains
974 white space.
975
976
977Q0055: What does the error \*Failed to open wait-remote_smtp database: Invalid
978 argument*\ mean?
979
980A0055: This is something that happens if you have existing DBM hints files when
981 you install a new version of Exim that is compiled to use a different or
982 upgraded DBM library. The simplest thing to try is
983
984==> rm /var/spool/exim/db/*
985
986 This removes all the hints files. Exim will start afresh and build new
987 ones. If the symptom recurs, it suggests there is some problem with your
988 DBM library.
989
990
991Q0056: We are using Exim to send mail from our web server. However, whenever a
992 user sends an email it gets sent with the return path (envelope sender)
993 //apache@server_name.com// because the PHP script is running as
994 \/apache/\.
995
996A0056: You need to include \/apache/\ in the \trusted_users\ configuration option.
997 Only trusted users are permitted to specify senders when mail is passed
998 to Exim via the command line.
999
1000
1001Q0057: We've got people complaining about attachments that don't show up
1002 as attachments, but are included in the body of the message.
1003
1004A0057: These symptoms can be seen when some software passes a CRLF line
1005 terminated message via the command line to an MTA that expects lines to
1006 be terminated by LF only, and so preserves the CRs as data. If you can
1007 identify the software that is doing this, try setting the \-dropcr-\
1008 option on the command it uses to call Exim. Alternatively, you can set
1009 \drop_cr\ in the configuration file, but then that will apply to all
1010 input.
1011
1012
1013Q0058: What does the error \*failed to open DB file \(/var/spool/exim/db/retry)\:
1014 File exists*\ mean?
1015
1016A0058: This error is most often caused when a hints file that was written with
1017 one version of the Berkeley DB library is read by another version.
1018 Sometimes this can happen if you change from a binary version of Exim to
1019 a locally compiled version. Or it can happen if you compile and install
1020 a new version of Exim after changing Berkeley DB versions. You can find
1021 out which version your Exim is using by running:
1022
1023==> ldd /usr/sbin/exim
1024
1025 The solution to the problem is to delete all the files in the
1026 \(/var/spool/exim/db)\ directory, and let Exim recreate them.
1027
1028
1029Q0059: When my Outlook Express 6.0 client sends a STARTTLS command to begin a
1030 TLS session, Exim doesn't seem to receive it. The Outlook log shows
1031 this:
1032
1033==> SMTP: 14:19:27 [tx] STARTTLS
1034 SMTP: 14:19:27 [rx] 500 Unsupported command.
1035
1036 but the Exim debugging output shows this:
1037
1038==> SMTP<< EHLO xxxx
1039 SMTP>> 250-yyyy Hello xxxx [nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn]
1040 250-SIZE 52428800
1041 250-PIPELINING
1042 250-AUTH CRAM-MD5 PLAIN LOGIN
1043 250-STARTTLS
1044 250 HELP
1045 SMTP<< QUIT
1046
1047A0059: Turn off scanning of outgoing email in Norton Antivirus. If you aren't
1048 running Norton Antivirus, see if you are running some other kind of SMTP
1049 proxying, either on the client or on a firewall between the client and
1050 server. ``Unsupported command'' is not an Exim message.
1051
1052
1053Q0060: Why am I getting the error \*failed to expand \"/data/lists/lists/${lc"\
1054 for require_files: \"${lc"\ is not a known operator*\ for this setting:
1055
1056==> require_files = MAILMAN_HOME/lists/${lc:$local_part}/config.db
1057
1058A0060: The value of \"require_files"\ is a \*list*\ in which each item is
1059 separately expanded. You need either to double the colon, or switch to
1060 a different list separator.
1061
1062
1063Q0061: What does the error \*Too many ``Received'' headers - suspected mail
1064 loop*\ mean?
1065
1066A0061: Whenever a message passes through an MTA, a ::Received:: header gets
1067 added. Exim counts the number of these headers in incoming messages. If
1068 there are more than the value of \received_headers_max\ (default 30),
1069 Exim assumes there is some kind of mail routing loop occurring. For
1070 example, host A passes the message to host B, which immediately passes
1071 it back to host A. Check the ::Received:: headers and the mail logs to
1072 determine exactly what is going on.
1073
1074 One common cause of this problem is users with accounts on both systems
1075 who set up each one to forward to the other, thinking that will cause
1076 copies of all messages to be delivered on both of them.
1077
1078
1079Q0062: When I try to start an Exim daemon it crashes. I ran a debugger and
1080 discovered that the crash is happening in the function \^^getservbyname()^^\.
1081 What's going on?
1082
1083A0062: What have you got in the file \(/etc/nsswitch.conf)\? If it contains this
1084 line:
1085
1086==> services: db files
1087
1088 try removing the \"db"\. (Your system is trying to look in some kind of
1089 database before searching the file \(/etc/services)\.)
1090
1091
1092Q0063: When I try to start an Exim daemon, nothing happens. There is no
1093 process, and nothing is written to the Exim log.
1094
1095A0063: Check to see if anything is written to \(syslog)\. This problem can be
1096 caused by a permission problem that stops Exim from writing to its log
1097 files, especially if you've specified that they should be written
1098 somewhere other than under Exim's spool directory. You could also try
1099 running the daemon with debugging turned on.
1100
1101
1102Q0064: When I run \"exim -d test@domain"\ it delivers fine, but when I send a
1103 message from the \^mail^\ command, I get \*User unknown*\ and the mail
1104 is saved in \(dead.letter)\.
1105
1106A0064: It looks as if Exim isn't being called by \^mail^\; instead it is
1107 calling some other program (probably Sendmail). Try running the command
1108
1109==> /usr/sbin/sendmail -bV
1110
1111 (If you get \*No such file or directory*\ or \*Command not found*\ you
1112 are running Solaris or IRIX. Try again with \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\.) The
1113 output should be something like this:
1114
1115==> Exim version 4.05 #1 built 13-Jun-2002 10:27:15
1116 Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2002
1117
1118 If you don't see this, your Exim installation isn't fully operational.
1119 If you are running FreeBSD, see Q9201. For other systems, see Q0114.
1120
1121
1122Q0065: When (as \/root/\) I use -C to run Exim with an alternate configuration
1123 file, it gives an error about being unable to create a spool file when
1124 trying to run an \%autoreply%\ transport. Why is this?
1125
1126A0065: When Exim is called with -C, it passes on -C to any instances of itself
1127 that it calls (so that the whole sequence uses the same config file). If
1128 it's running as \/exim/\ when it does this, all is well. However, if it
1129 happens as a consequence of a non-privileged user running \%autoreply%\,
1130 the called Exim gives up its root privilege. Then it can't write to the
1131 spool.
1132
1133 This means that you can't use -C (even as \/root/\) to run an instance of
1134 Exim that is going to try to run \%autoreply%\ from a process that is
1135 neither \/root/\ nor \/exim/\. Because of the architecture of Exim (using
1136 re-execs to regain privilege), there isn't any way round this
1137 restriction. Therefore, the only way you can make this scenario work is
1138 to run the \%autoreply%\ transport as \/exim/\ (that is, the user that
1139 owns the Exim spool files). This may be satisfactory for autoreplies
1140 that are essentially system-generated, but of course is no good for
1141 autoreplies from unprivileged users, where you want the \%autoreply%\
1142 transport to be run as the user. To get that to work with an alternate
1143 configuration, you'll have to use two Exim binaries, with different
1144 configuration file names in each. See S001 for a script that patches
1145 the configuration name in an Exim binary.
1146
1147
1148Q0066: What does the message \*unable to set gid=xxx or uid=xxx*\ mean?
1149
1150A0066: This message is given when an Exim process is unable to change uid or
1151 gid when it needs to, because it does not have root privilege. This is a
1152 serious problem that prevents Exim from carrying on with what it is
1153 doing. The two most common situations where Exim needs to change uid/gid
1154 are doing local deliveries and processing users' filter files. There are
1155 two common causes of this error:
1156
1157 (1) You have forgotten to make the exim binary setuid to \/root/\. This
1158 means that it can never change uid/gid in any situation. Also, the
1159 setuid binary must reside on a disk partition that does not have the
1160 \"nosuid"\ mount option set.
1161
1162 (2) The exim binary is setuid, but you have configured Exim so that,
1163 while trying to verify an address at SMTP time, it runs a router
1164 that needs to change uid/gid. Because Exim runs as \/exim/\ and not
1165 \/root/\ while receiving messages, the router is unable to change
1166 uid and therefore it cannot operate. The usual example of this is a
1167 \%redirect%\ router for users' filter files.
1168
1169 Setting the \user\ or \check_local_user\ options on a \redirect\
1170 router causes this to happen (except in the special case when the
1171 redirection list is provided by the \data\ option and does not
1172 contain \":include:"\).
1173
1174 The solution is to set \no_verify\ on the router that is causing the
1175 problem. This means that it is skipped when an address is being
1176 verified. In ``normal'' configurations where the router is indeed
1177 handling users' filter files, this is quite acceptable, because you
1178 do not usually need to process a filter file in order to verify that
1179 the local part is valid. See, for example, the \%userforward%\
1180 router in the default configuration.
1181
1182
1183Q0067: What does the error \*too many unrecognized commands*\ mean?
1184
1185A0067: There have been instances of network abuse involving mail sent out by
1186 web servers. In most cases, unrecognizable commands are sent as part of
1187 the SMTP session. A real MTA never sends out such invalid commands. Exim
1188 allows a few unrecognized commands in a session to permit humans who are
1189 testing to make a few typos (it responds with a 5xx error). However, if
1190 Exim receives too many such commands, it assumes that it is dealing with
1191 an abuse of some kind, and so it drops the connection.
1192
1193
1194Q0068: Exim times out when trying to connect to some hosts, though those hosts
1195 are known to be up and running. What's the problem?
1196
1197A0068: There could be a number of reasons for this (see also Q0017). The
1198 obvious one is that there is a networking problem between the hosts.
1199 If you can ping between the hosts or connect in other ways, the problem
1200 might be caused by ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) being enabled
1201 in your kernel. ECN uses TCP flags originally assigned to TOS - it's a
1202 "new" invention, and some hosts and routers are known to be confused if
1203 a client uses it. If you are running Linux, you can turn ECN off by
1204 running this command:
1205
1206==> /bin/echo "0" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
1207
1208 This has also been reported to cure web connection problems from Mozilla
1209 and Netscape browsers in Linux when there were no problems with Windows
1210 Netscape browsers.
1211
1212
1213Q0069: What does the error \*SMTP data timeout (message abandoned) on connection
1214 from...*\ mean?
1215
1216A0069: It means that there was a timeout while Exim was reading the contents of
1217 a message on an incoming SMTP connection. That is, it had successfully
1218 accepted a MAIL command, one or more RCPT commands, and a DATA command,
1219 and was in the process of reading the data itself. The length of timeout
1220 is controlled by the \smtp_receive_timeout\ option.
1221
1222 If you get this error regularly, the cause may be incorrect handling of
1223 large packets by a router or firewall. The maximum size of a packet is
1224 restricted on some links; routers should split packets that are larger.
1225 There is a feature called ``path MTU discovery'' that enables a sender
1226 to discover the maximum packet size over an entire path (multiple
1227 Internet links). This can be broken by misconfigured firewalls and
1228 routers. There is a good explanation at \?http://www.netheaven.com/pmtu.html?\.
1229 Reducing the MTU on your local network can sometimes work round this
1230 problem. See Q0017 (3) for further discussion.
1231
1232
1233Q0070: What does the error \*SMTP command timeout on connection from...*\ mean?
1234
1235A0070: Exim was expecting to read an SMTP command from the client, but no
1236 command was read within the \smtp_receive_timeout\ time limit.
1237
1238
1239Q0071: What does the error \*failed to open DB file \(/var/spool/exim//db/retry)\:
1240 Illegal argument*\ mean?
1241
1242A0071: See Q0058. The cause of this error is usually the same.
1243
1244
1245Q0072: Exim will deliver to normal aliases, and aliases that are pipes or
1246 files, but it objects to aliases that involve \":include:"\ items,
1247 complaining that it can't change gid or uid. Why is this?
1248
1249A0072: See Q0066 for a general answer. The problem happens during verification
1250 of an incoming SMTP message, not during delivery itself. In this
1251 particular case, you must have set up your aliasing router with a \user\
1252 setting. This causes Exim to change uid/gid when reading \":include:"\
1253 files. If you do not need the detailed verification provided by the
1254 router, the easy solution is to set \no_verify\ so that the router isn't
1255 used during verification.
1256
1257 Otherwise, if you set \user\ on the router in order to provide a user
1258 for delivery to pipes or files, one solution is to put the \user\
1259 setting on the transports instead of on the router. You may need to
1260 create some special transports just for this router. The alternative is
1261 to supply two different routers, one with \user\ and \no_verify\, and
1262 the with \verify_only\ but no \user\ setting.
1263
1264
1265Q0073: I'm seeing log file corruption, with parts of log lines getting mangled
1266 by other log entries.
1267
1268A0073: The only time this has been seen is when several servers were writing to
1269 the same log files over NFS. Exim assumes that its log file is on local
1270 disk, and using NFS, especially for more than one server, will not work.
1271
1272
1273Q0074: What does the error message \*remote delivery process count got out of
1274 step*\ mean?
1275
1276A0074: Exim uses subprocesses for remote deliveries; this error means that the
1277 master process expected to have a child process running, but found there
1278 were none. Prior to release 4.11, this error could be caused by running
1279 Exim under \^strace^\ on a Linux system, because stracing causes
1280 children to be ``stolen'' such that a parent that tries to wait for
1281 ``any of my children'' is told that it has none. Current releases of
1282 Exim have code to get round this problem.
1283
1284
1285Q0075: I'm using LDAP, and some email addresses that contain special characters
1286 are causing parsing errors in my LDAP lookups.
1287
1288A0075: You should be using \"${quote_ldap:$local_part}"\ instead of just
1289 \"$local_part"\ in your lookups.
1290
1291
1292Q0076: I've configured Exim to use \^syslog^\ for its logs, with the main and
1293 reject logs sent to different files, but whenever a message is rejected,
1294 I get one message on the reject log and two messages on the main log.
1295
1296A0076: You are probably putting your reject items into the main log as well;
1297 remember \^syslog^\ levels are inclusive (for example, \"mail.info"\
1298 includes all higher levels, so a \"mail.notice"\ message will be caught
1299 by a \"mail.info"\ descriptor).
1300 Test this by running the command:
1301
1302==> logger -p mail.notice test
1303
1304 and seeing which logs it goes into.
1305
1306
1307Q0077: I've installed Exim and it is delivering mail just fine. However, when I
1308 try to read mail from my PC I get \*connection rejected*\ or \*unable to
1309 connect*\.
1310
1311A0077: See Q5021.
1312
1313
1314Q0078: Exim is logging the unknown SMTP command \"XXXX"\ from my client hosts,
1315 and they are unable to authenticate.
1316
1317A0078: This is a sign of a Cisco PIX firewall getting in the way. It does not
1318 support ESMTP, and turns EHLO commands into XXXX. You should configure
1319 the Pix to leave SMTP alone; see Q0053 for how to do this.
1320
1321
1322Q0079: Our new PIX firewall is causing problems with incoming mail. How can
1323 this be fixed?
1324
1325A0079: See Q0053 and Q0078. If some messages get through and others do not,
1326 see also Q0017.
1327
1328
1329Q0080: Am I to understand that the database lookups must only return one value?
1330 They can not return a list of values? The documentation seems to
1331 indicate that it's possible to return a list.
1332
1333A0080: Lookups can be used in two different situations, and what they return is
1334 different in the two cases. (Be thankful Exim 3 is gone; there was yet
1335 another case!)
1336
1337 (1) You can use a lookup in any expanded string. The syntax is
1338
1339==> ${lookup ..... }
1340
1341 In this case, whatever is looked up replaces the expansion item. It
1342 may be one value or a list of values. Whether a single value or a
1343 list is acceptable or not depends on where you are using the string
1344 expansion. If it is for an option that expects just one value, then
1345 only one value is allowed (for example).
1346
1347 (2) You can make use of the lookup mechanism to test whether something
1348 (typically a host name or IP address) is in a list. For example,
1349
1350==> hosts = a : b : c
1351
1352 in an ACL tests whether the calling host's name matches ``a'', or
1353 ``b'', or ``c''. Now, suppose you want to keep the list of names in
1354 a database, or cdb file, or NIS map, or... By writing
1355
1356==> hosts = pgsql;select ....
1357
1358 you are saying to Exim: ``Run this lookup; if it succeeds, behave as
1359 if the host is in the list; if it fails, the host is not in the
1360 list.'' You are using the indexing mechanism of the database as a
1361 fast way of checking a list. A simpler example is
1362
1363==> hosts = lsearch;/some/file
1364
1365 where the file contains the list of hosts to be searched.
1366
1367 The complication happens when a list is first expanded before being
1368 interpreted as a list. This happens in a lot of cases. You can therefore
1369 write either of these:
1370
1371==> hosts = cdb;/some/file
1372 hosts = ${lookup{something}cdb{/some/file}}
1373
1374 but they have different meanings. The first means ``see if the host name
1375 is in the list in this file''. The second means ``run this lookup and
1376 use the result of the lookup as a list of host items to check''. In the
1377 second case, the list could contain multiple values (colon separated),
1378 and one of those values could even be ``cdb;/some/file''.
1379
1380 Flexibility does lead to complexity, I'm afraid.
1381
1382
1383Q0081: What does \*error in redirect data: included file xxxx is too big*\
1384 mean?
1385
1386A0081: You are trying to include a very large file in a redirection list, using
1387 the \":include:"\ feature. Exim has a built-in limit on the size, as a
1388 safety precaution. The default is 1 megabyte. If you want to increase
1389 this, you have to rebuild Exim. In your \(Local/Makefile)\, put
1390
1391==> MAX_INCLUDE_SIZE = whatever
1392
1393 and then rebuild Exim. The value is a number of bytes, but you can give
1394 it as a parenthesized arithmetic expression such as \"(3*1024*1024)"\.
1395 However, an included file of more than a megabyte is likely to be quite
1396 inefficient. How many addresses does yours contain? You get the best
1397 performance out of Exim if you arrange to send mailing list messages
1398 with no more than about 100 recipients (in order to get parallelism in
1399 the routing).
1400
1401
1402Q0082: What does \*relocation error: /lib/libnss_dns.so.2: symbol
1403 __libc_res_nquery, version GLIBC_PRIVATE not defined in file
1404 libresolv.so.2 with link time reference*\ mean?
1405
1406A0082: You have updated \^glibc^\ while an Exim daemon is running. Stop and
1407 restart the daemon.
1408
1409
1410Q0083: Netscape on Unix is sending messages containing an unqualified user name
1411 in the ::Sender:: header line, which Exim is rejecting because I have
1412 set \"verify = header_syntax"\. How can I fix this?
1413
1414A0083: The only thing you can do in Exim is to set the
1415 \sender_unqualified_hosts\ option to allow unqualified sender addresses
1416 form the relevant hosts; of course, this applies to all sender
1417 addresses, not just the ::Sender:: header line.
1418
1419 Alternatively, you can configure Netscape not to include the header line
1420 in the first place. Add the following line to the
1421 \($HOME/.netscape/preferences.js)\ and \($HOME/.netscape/liprefs.js)\
1422 files:
1423
1424==> user_pref("mail.suppress_sender_header", true);
1425
1426 Netscape \*must*\ be shutdown while doing this.
1427
1428
1429Q0084: I want to set up an alias that pipes a message to \^gpg^\ and then pipes
1430 the result to \^mailx^\ to resubmit the message, but when I use my
1431 tested command in an alias file, I get an error from \^gpg^\.
1432
1433A0084: Probably you are using a shell command with two pipe symbols in it. An
1434 alias like this:
1435
1436==> gpg-xxx: "|gpg <options> | mailx <options"
1437
1438 does not work, because Exim does not run pipes under a shell by default.
1439 You must call a shell explicitly if you want to make use of the shell's
1440 features for double-piping, either by piping to \"/bin/sh"\ with a
1441 suitable \"-c"\ option, or by piping to a shell script.
1442
1443
1444Q0085: I see a lot of \*rejected EHLO ... syntactically invalid argument(s)*\.
1445 I know it's because of the underscore in the host name, but is there a
1446 switch to allow Exim to accept mail from such hosts?
1447
1448A0085: Yes. Add this to your configuration:
1449
1450==> helo_allow_chars = _
1451
1452 For more seriously malformed host names, see \helo_accept_junk_hosts\.
1453 See also Q0732.
1454
1455
1456Q0086: What does \*SMTP protocol violation: synchronization error (next input
1457 sent too soon)*\ mean?
1458
1459A0086: SMTP is a ``lock-step'' protocol, which means that, at certain points in
1460 the protocol, the client must wait for the server to respond before
1461 sending more data. Exim checks for correct behaviour, and issues this
1462 error if the client sends data too soon. This protects against
1463 malefactious clients who send a bunch of SMTP commands (usually to
1464 transmit spam) without waiting for any replies.
1465
1466 This error is also provoked if the client is trying to start up a TLS
1467 session immediately on connection, without using the STARTTLS command.
1468 See Q1707 for a discussion of this case.
1469
1470
1471Q0087: What does \*rejected after DATA: malformed address: xx@yy may not follow
1472 <xx@yy> : failing address in "from" header*\ mean? (I've obscured the
1473 real email addresses.)
1474
1475A0087: Your DATA ACL contains
1476
1477==> verify = header_syntax
1478
1479 and an incoming message contained the line
1480
1481==> From: xx@yy <xx@yy>
1482
1483 This is syntactically invalid. The contents of an address in a header
1484 line are either just the address, or a ``phrase'' followed by an address
1485 in angle brackets. In the latter case, the ``phrase'' must be quoted if
1486 it contains special characters such as @. The following are valid
1487 versions of the bad header:
1488
1489==> From: xx@yy
1490 From: "xx@yy" <xx@yy>
1491
1492 though why on earth anything generates this kind of redundant nonsense I
1493 can't think.
1494
1495
1496Q0088: The Windows mailer SENDFILE.EXE sometimes hangs while trying to send a
1497 message to Exim 4, and eventually times out. It worked flawlessly with
1498 Exim 3. What has changed?
1499
1500A0088: Exim 4 sets an obscure TCP/IP parameter called TCP_NODELAY. This
1501 disables the "Nagle algorithm" for the TCP/IP transmission. The Nagle
1502 algorithm can improve network performance in interactive situations such
1503 as a human typing at a keyboard, by buffering up outgoing data until the
1504 previous packet has been acknowledged, and thereby reducing the number
1505 of packets used. This is not relevant for mail transmission, which
1506 mostly consists of quite large blocks of data; setting TCP_NODELAY
1507 should improve performance. However, it seems that some Windows clients
1508 do not function correctly if the server turns off the Nagle algorithm.
1509 If you are using Exim 4.23 or later, you can set
1510
1511==> tcp_nodelay = false
1512
1513 This stops Exim setting TCP_NODELAY on the sockets created by the
1514 listening daemon.
1515
1516
1517Q0089: What does the error \*kernel: application bug: exim(12099) has SIGCHLD
1518 set to SIG_IGN but calls wait()*\ mean?
1519
1520A0089: This was a bad interaction between a relatively recent change to the
1521 Linux kernel and some ``belt and braces'' programming in Exim. The
1522 following explanation is taken from Exim's change log:
1523
1524 When Exim is receiving multiple messages on a single connection, and
1525 spinning off delivery processess, it sets the SIGCHLD signal handling to
1526 SIG_IGN, because it doesn't want to wait for these processes. However,
1527 because on some OS this didn't work, it also has a paranoid call to
1528 \^waitpid()^\ in the loop to reap any children that have finished. Some
1529 versions of Linux now complain (to the system log) about this
1530 ``illogical'' call to \^waitpid()^\. I have therefore put it inside a
1531 conditional compilation, and arranged for it to be omitted for Linux.
1532
1533 I am pretty sure I caught all the places in Exim where this happened.
1534 However, there are still occasional reports of this error. I have not
1535 heard of any resolutions, but my current belief is that they are caused
1536 by something that Exim calls falling foul of the same check. There was
1537 at one time a suspicion that the IPv6 stack was involved.
1538
1539
1540Q0090: I can't seem to get a pipe command to run when I include a \"${lookup"\
1541 expansion in it.
1542
1543A0090: See Q0025.
1544
1545
1546Q0091: Why is Exim giving the error \*Failed to send message from address_reply
1547 transport*\ when I run it using -C to specify an alternate
1548 configuration?
1549
1550A0091: See Q0065.
1551
1552
1553
15541. BUILDING AND INSTALLING
1555
1556Q0101: I'm having a problem with an Exim RPM.
1557
1558A0101: Normally the thing to do if you have a problem with an RPM package is
1559 to contact the person who built the package first, not the person who
1560 made the software that's in the package. You can usually find out who
1561 made a package using the following command:
1562
1563==> rpm --query --package --queryformat '%{PACKAGER}\n' <rpm-package-file>
1564
1565 where \[rpm-package-file]\ is the actual file, e.g. \(exim-3.03-2.i386.rpm)\.
1566 Or, if the package is installed on your system:
1567
1568==> rpm --query --queryformat '%{PACKAGER}\n' <package-name>
1569
1570 where \[package-name]\ is the name component of the package, e.g. \"exim"\.
1571 If the packager is unable or unwilling to help, only then should you
1572 contact the actual author or associated mailing list of the software.
1573
1574 If you discover through the querying process that you can't tell who
1575 the person (or company or group) is who built the package, or that they
1576 no longer exist at the given address, then you should reconsider
1577 whether you want a package from an unknown source on your system.
1578
1579 If you discover through the querying process that you yourself are the
1580 person who built the package, then you should either (a) contact the
1581 author or associated mailing list, or (b) reconsider whether you ought
1582 to be building and distributing RPM packages of software you don't
1583 understand.
1584
1585 Similar rules of thumb govern other binary package formats, including
1586 debs, tarballs, and POSIX packages.
1587
1588
1589Q0102: I can't get Exim to compile with Berkeley DB version 2.x or 3.x.
1590
1591A0102: Have you set \"USE_DB=yes\" in \(Local/Makefile)\? This causes Exim to use the
1592 native interface to the DBM library instead of the compatibility
1593 interface, which needs a header called \(ndbm.h)\ that may not exist on your
1594 system.
1595
1596
1597Q0103: I'm getting an \*undefined symbol*\ error for \"hosts_ctl"\ when I try to
1598 build Exim. (On some systems this error is \*undefined reference to
1599 'hosts_ctl'*\.)
1600
1601A0103: You should either remove the definition of \\USE_TCP_WRAPPERS\\ or add
1602 \"-lwrap"\ to your \\EXTRALIBS\\ setting in Local/Makefile.
1603
1604
1605Q0104: I'm about to upgrade to a new Exim release. Do I need to ensure the
1606 spool is empty, or take any other special action?
1607
1608A0104: It depends on where you are coming from.
1609
1610 (1) If you are changing to release 4.00 or later from a release prior to
1611 4.00, you will need to make changes to the run time configuration file.
1612 See the file \(doc/Exim4.upgrade)\ for details. If you are coming from
1613 before release 3.00, you should also see \(doc/Exim3.upgrade)\.
1614
1615 (2) If you are upgrading from an Exim 4 release to a later release, you
1616 do not need to take special action. New releases are made backwards
1617 compatible with old spool files and hints databases, so that upgrading
1618 can be done on a running system. All that should be necessary is to
1619 install a new binary and then HUP the daemon.
1620
1621
1622Q0105: What does the error \*install-info: command not found*\ mean?
1623
1624A0105: You have set \\INFO_DIRECTORY\\ in your \(Local/Makefile)\, and Exim is trying
1625 to install the Texinfo documentation, but cannot find the command called
1626 \(install-info)\. If you have a version of Texinfo prior to 3.9, you
1627 should upgrade. Otherwise, check your installation of Texinfo to see why
1628 the \(install-info)\ command is not available.
1629
1630
1631Q0106: Exim doesn't seem to be recognizing my operating system type correctly,
1632 and so is failing to build.
1633
1634A0106: Run the command \"scripts/os-type -generic"\. The output should be one of
1635 the known OS types, and should correspond to your operating system. You
1636 can see which OS are supported by obeying \"ls OS/Makefile-*"\ and looking
1637 at the file name suffixes.
1638
1639 If there is a discrepancy, it means that the script is failing to
1640 interpret the output from the \"uname"\ command correctly, or that the
1641 output is wrong. Meanwhile, you can build Exim by obeying
1642
1643==> EXIM_OSTYPE=xxxx make
1644
1645 instead of just \"make"\, provided you are running a Bourne-compatible
1646 shell, or otherwise by setting \\EXIM_OSTYPE\\ correctly in your
1647 environment. It is probably best to start again from a clean
1648 distribution, to avoid any wreckage left over from the failed attempt.
1649
1650
1651Q0107: Exim fails to build, complaining about the absence of the \"killpg"\
1652 function.
1653
1654A0107: This function should be present in all modern flavours of Unix. If you
1655 are using an older version, you should be able to get round the problem
1656 by inserting
1657
1658==> #define killpg(pgid,sig) kill(-(pgid),sig)
1659
1660 into the file called \(OS/os.h-xxx)\, where xxx identifies your operating
1661 system, and is the output of the command \"scripts/os-type -generic"\.
1662
1663
1664Q0108: I'm getting an unresolved symbol \"ldap_is_ldap_url"\ when trying to build
1665 Exim.
1666
1667A0108: You must have specified \"LOOKUP_LDAP=yes"\ in the configuration. Have you
1668 remembered to set \"-lldap"\ somewhere (e.g. in \\LOOKUP_LIBS\\)? You need that
1669 in order to get the LDAP library scanned when linking.
1670
1671
1672Q0109: I'm getting an unresolved symbol \"mysql_close"\ when trying to build Exim.
1673
1674A0109: You must have specified \"LOOKUP_MYSQL=yes"\ in the configuration. Have you
1675 remembered to set \"-lmysqlclient"\ somewhere (e.g. in \\LOOKUP_LIBS\\)? You
1676 need that in order to get the MySQL library scanned when linking.
1677
1678
1679Q0110: I'm trying to build Exim with PAM support. I have included \"-lpam"\ in
1680 \\EXTRALIBS\\, but I'm still getting a linking error:
1681
1682==> /lib/libpam.so: undefined reference to `dlerror'
1683 /lib/libpam.so: undefined reference to `dlclose'
1684 /lib/libpam.so: undefined reference to `dlopen'
1685 /lib/libpam.so: undefined reference to `dlsym'
1686
1687A0110: Add \"-ldl"\ to \\EXTRALIBS\\. In some systems these dynamic loading functions
1688 are in their own library.
1689
1690
1691Q0111: I'm getting the error \*db.h: No such file or directory*\ when I try to
1692 build Exim.
1693
1694A0111: This problem has been seen with RedHat 7.0, but could also happen in
1695 other environments. If your system is using the DB library, you
1696 need to install the DB development package in order to build Exim.
1697 The package is called something like \"db3-devel-3.1.14-16.i386.rpm"\ for
1698 Linux systems, but you should check which version of DB you have
1699 installed (current releases are DB 4).
1700
1701
1702Q0112: I'm getting the error \*/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -ldb*\ when I try to
1703 build Exim.
1704
1705A0112: This is probably the same problem as Q0111.
1706
1707
1708Q0113: I've compiled Exim and I've managed to start it but there was one
1709 problem - it always complained that \(libmsqlclient.so.10)\ was not found,
1710 even though this file is in \(/usr/local/lib/mysql/)\.
1711
1712A0113: Solaris: ensure you have this in your \(Local/Makefile)\:
1713
1714==> LOOKUP_LIBS=-L/usr/local/lib/mysql -R/usr/local/lib/mysql
1715
1716 Net/Open/FreeBSD: Run this command (or ensure it gets run automatically
1717 at boot time):
1718
1719==> ldconfig -m /usr/local/lib/mysql
1720
1721 Linux: add \(/usr/local/lib/mysql)\ to \(/etc/ld.so.conf)\ and re-run \(ldconfig)\.
1722 Alternatively, add
1723
1724==> -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/usr/local/lib/mysql
1725
1726 to EXTRA_LIBS and then re-link (this is similar to the Solaris solution
1727 above). This will probably also work on other systems that use GNU
1728 Binutils.
1729
1730
1731Q0114: How can I remove Sendmail from my system? I've built Exim and run \"make
1732 install"\, but it still doesn't seem to be fully operational.
1733
1734A0114: If you are running FreeBSD, see Q9201. Otherwise, you need to arrange
1735 that whichever of the paths \(/usr/sbin/sendmail)\ or \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\
1736 exists on your system is changed to refer to Exim. For example, you
1737 could use these commands (as \/root/\):
1738
1739==> mv /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail.original
1740 chmod u-s /usr/sbin/sendmail.original
1741 ln -s /path/to/exim /usr/sbin/sendmail
1742
1743 The second command removes the setuid privilege from the old MTA, as a
1744 general safety precaution. In the third command, substitute the actual
1745 path to the Exim binary for \(/path/to/exim)\.
1746
1747
1748Q0115: What does \*Can't open \(../scripts/newer)\: No such file or directory*\
1749 mean? I got it while trying to build Exim.
1750
1751A0115: You are using FreeBSD, or another OS that has a \^make^\ command which
1752 tries to optimize the running of commands. Exim's \(Makefile)\ contains
1753 targets with sequential commands like this:
1754
1755==> buildpcre:
1756 @cd pcre; $(MAKE) SHELL=$(SHELL) AR="$(AR)" $(MFLAGS) CC="$(CC)" \
1757 CFLAGS="$(CFLAGS) $(PCRE_CFLAGS)" \
1758 RANLIB="$(RANLIB)" HDRS="$(PHDRS)" \
1759 INCLUDE="$(INCLUDE) $(IPV6_INCLUDE) $(TLS_INCLUDE)"
1760 @if $(SHELL) $(SCRIPTS)/newer pcre/libpcre.a exim; then \
1761 /bin/rm -f exim eximon.bin; fi
1762
1763 The second command assumes that the \"cd pcre"\ in the first command is
1764 no longer in effect. If you have \"-j3"\ in your default set of
1765 \"MAKEFLAGS"\, FreeBSD \^make^\ tries to optimize, and ends up up with both
1766 commands in the same shell process. The result is that \"$(SCRIPTS)"\
1767 (which has a value of \"../scripts"\) is not found.
1768
1769 The simplest solution is to force \^make^\ to use backwards compatibility
1770 mode with each command in its own shell, by using the \-B\ flag. To
1771 ensure that this happens throughout the build, it's best to export it in
1772 your environment:
1773
1774==> MAKEFLAGS='-B'
1775 export MAKEFLAGS
1776 make
1777
1778
1779Q0116: I have tried to build Exim with Berkeley DB 3 and 4, but I always get
1780 errors.
1781
1782A0116: One common problem, especially when you have several different versions
1783 of BDB installed on the same host, is that the header files and library
1784 files for BDB are not in a standard place. You therefore need to tell
1785 Exim where they are, by setting INCLUDE and DBMLIB in your
1786 \(Local/Makefile)\. For example, I use this on my workstation when
1787 I want to build with DB 4.1:
1788
1789==> INCLUDE=-I/opt/local/include/db-4.1
1790 DBMLIB=/opt/local/lib/db-4.1/libdb.a
1791
1792 Specifying the complete library file like this will cause it to be
1793 statically linked with Exim. You'll have to check to see where these
1794 files are on your system. For example, on FreeBSD 5, the header is in
1795 \(/usr/local/include/db4)\ and the library is in \(/usr/local/lib)\ and
1796 called \(libdb4)\. In that environment, you could use:
1797
1798==> INCLUDE=-I/usr/local/include/db4
1799 DBMLIB=-L/usr/local/lib -ldb4
1800
1801 This time, DBMLIB is specifying the library directory (\(/usr/local/lib)\)
1802 and the name of the library (\(db4)\) separately. The name of the actual
1803 library file is \(/usr/local/lib/libdb4.something)\. If the library was
1804 compiled for dynamic linking, that will be used.
1805
1806
1807Q0117: Is there a quick walk-through of an Exim install from source anywhere?
1808
1809A0117: Here! This is a contribution from a RedHat user, somewhat edited. On
1810 other operating systems things may be slightly different, but the
1811 general approach is the same.
1812
1813 (1) Install the db needed for Exim. This needs to be done first if you
1814 don't have a DBM library installed. Go to \?http://www.sleepycat.com?\
1815 and download \(db-4.1.25.tar.gz)\, or whatever the current release is.
1816 Then:
1817
1818==> gunzip db-4.1.25.tar.gz
1819 tar -xvf db-4.1.25.tar
1820 cd db-4.1.25
1821 cd build_unix
1822 ../dist/configure
1823 make
1824 make install
1825
1826 (2) Add a user for use by Exim, unless you want to use an existing user
1827 such as \/mail/\:
1828
1829==> adduser exim
1830
1831 (3) Now you can prepare to build Exim. Go to \?http://www.exim.org?\ or
1832 one of its mirrors, or the master ftp site
1833 \?ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/email/exim/exim4?\, and download
1834 \(exim-4.20.tar.gz)\ or whatever the current release is. Then:
1835
1836==> gunzip exim-4.20.tar.gz
1837 tar -xvf exim-4.20.tar
1838 cd exim-4.20
1839 cp src/EDITME Local/Makefile
1840 cp exim_monitor/EDITME Local/eximon.conf
1841
1842 (4) Edit \(Local/Makefile)\:
1843
1844 Comment out EXIM_MONITOR= unless you want to install the Exim
1845 monitor (it requires X-windows).
1846
1847 Set the user you want Exim to use for itself:
1848
1849==> EXIM_USER=exim
1850
1851 If your DBM library is Berkeley DB, set up to use its native interface:
1852
1853==> USE_DB=yes
1854
1855 Make sure Exim's build can find the DBM library and its headers. If
1856 you've installed Berkeley DB 4 you'll need to have settings like this
1857 in \(Local/Makefile)\:
1858
1859==> INCLUDE=-I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.1/include
1860 DBMLIB=/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.1/lib/libdb.a
1861
1862 (Check that the first directory contains the db.h file and that the
1863 second library exists.)
1864
1865 You don't need to change anything else, but you might want to review
1866 the default settings in the ``must specify'' section.
1867
1868 (4) Build Exim by running the \/make/\ command.
1869
1870 (5) Install Exim by running, as \/root/\:
1871
1872==> make install
1873
1874 You \*must*\ be \/root/\ to do this. You do not have to be root for any of
1875 the previous building activity.
1876
1877 (6) Run some tests on Exim; see if it will do local and remote
1878 deliveries. Change the configuration if necessary (for example,
1879 uncommenting \group\ on the \%local_delivery%\ transport if you don't
1880 use a ``sticky bit'' directory).
1881
1882 (7) Change Sendmail to Exim (of course you need to have had Sendmail
1883 installed to do this).
1884
1885==> /etc/init.d/sendmail stop
1886 mv /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail.org
1887 ln -s /usr/exim/bin/exim /usr/sbin/sendmail
1888 /etc/init.d/sendmail start
1889
1890 (8) Check the Exim log. Either use the Exim monitor, or:
1891
1892==> tail -f /var/spool/exim/log/mainlog
1893
1894
1895Q0118: I've set \"LOOKUP_INCLUDE=-I/client/include"\ in Local/Makefile, but the
1896 compilation of \^exim_dumpdb^\ is ignoring this option and failing. Why?
1897
1898A0118: LOOKUP_INCLUDE is the special include file for lookup modules in Exim
1899 (e.g. mysql, LDAP). Confusingly, it doesn't apply to basic DBM code
1900 which is used also for other things. Try setting INCLUDE and DBMLIB
1901 instead. For example:
1902
1903==> USE_DB=yes
1904 INCLUDE=-I/client/include
1905 DBMLIB=/client/lib/libdb.a
1906
1907
1908Q0119: I know there are some 3rd-party patches for Exim, for exiscan and
1909 other things. Where are they?
1910
1911A0119: Exiscan is at \?http://duncanthrax.net/exiscan-acl/?\.
1912[[br]]
1913 Scanexi is at \?http://w1.231.telia.com/~u23107873/scanexi.html?\
1914[[br]]
1915 A sample \^^local_scan()^^\ function for interfacing to \^uvscan^\ is
1916 at \?http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/~mb/local_scan/?\.
1917[[br]]
1918 An interface to SpamAssassin at SMTP time is at
1919 \?http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html?\.
1920[[br]]
1921 A mini-HOWTO (PDF file) about scanning and virus scanning, and some RPMs
1922 can be found at \?http://www.timj.co.uk/linux/exim.php?\.
1923
1924
1925
19262. ROUTING IN GENERAL
1927
1928Q0201: How can I arrange that messages larger than some limit are handled by
1929 a special router?
1930
1931A0201: You can use a \condition\ option on the router line this:
1932
1933==> condition = ${if >{$message_size}{100K}{yes}{no}}
1934
1935
1936Q0202: Can I specify a list of domains to explicitly reject?
1937
1938A0202: Set up a named domain list containing the domains in the first section
1939 of the configuration, for example:
1940
1941==> domainlist reject_domains = list:of:domains:to:reject
1942
1943 You can use this list in an ACL to reject any SMTP recipients in those
1944 domains. You can also give a customized error message, like this:
1945
1946==> deny message = The domain $domain is no longer supported
1947 domains = +reject_domains
1948
1949 If you also want to reject these domains in messages that are submitted
1950 from the command line (not using SMTP), you need to set up a router to
1951 do it, like this:
1952
1953==> reject_domains:
1954 driver = redirect
1955 domains = +reject_domains
1956 allow_fail
1957 data = :fail: The domain $domain is no longer supported
1958
1959
1960Q0203: How can I arrange to do my own qualification of non-fully-qualified
1961 domains, and then pass them on to the next router?
1962
1963A0203: If you have some list of domains that you want to qualify, you can do
1964 this using a redirect router. For example,
1965
1966==> qualify:
1967 driver = redirect
1968 domains = *.a.b
1969 data = ${quote:$local_part}@$domain.c.com
1970
1971 This adds \".c.com"\ to any domain that matches \"*.a.b"\.
1972 If you want to do this in conjunction with a \%dnslookup%\ router, the
1973 \widen_domains\ option of that router may be another way of achieving
1974 what you want.
1975
1976
1977Q0204: Every system has a \"nobody"\ account under which httpd etc run. I would
1978 like to know how to restrict mail which comes from that account to users
1979 on that host only.
1980
1981A0204: Set up a first router like this:
1982
1983==> fail_nobody:
1984 driver = redirect
1985 senders = nobody@your.domain
1986 domains = ! +local_domains
1987 allow_fail
1988 data = :fail: Nobody may not mail off-site
1989
1990 This assumes you have defined \+local_domains\ as in the default
1991 configuration.
1992
1993
1994Q0205: How can I get Exim to deliver to me locally and everyone else at the same
1995 domain via SMTP to the MX record specified host?
1996
1997A0205: Create an \%accept%\ router to pick off the one address and pass it to
1998 an appropriate transport. Put this router before the one that does MX
1999 routing:
2000
2001==> me:
2002 driver = accept
2003 domains = dom.com
2004 local_parts = me
2005 transport = local_delivery
2006
2007 In the transport you will have to specify the \user\ option. An
2008 alternative way of doing this is to add a condition to the router that
2009 does MX lookups to make it skip your address. Subsequent routers can then
2010 deliver your address locally. You'll need a condition like this:
2011
2012==> condition = \
2013 ${if and {{eq{$domain}{dom.com}}{eq{$local_part}{me}}}{no}{yes}}
2014
2015
2016Q0206: How can I get Exim to deliver certain domains to a different SMTP port
2017 on my local host?
2018
2019A0206: You must set up a special \%smtp%\ transport, where you can specify the
2020 \port\ option, and then set up a router to route the domains to that
2021 transport. There are two possibilities for specifying the host:
2022
2023 (1) If you use a \%manualroute%\ router, you can specify the local host
2024 in the router options. You must also set
2025
2026==> self = send
2027
2028 so that it does not object to sending to the local host.
2029
2030 (2) If you use a router that cannot specify hosts (for example, an
2031 \%accept%\ router with appropriate conditions), you have to specify
2032 the host using the \hosts\ option of the transport. In this case,
2033 you must also set \allow_localhost\ on the transport.
2034
2035
2036Q0207: Why does Exim lower-case the local-part of a non-local domain when
2037 routing?
2038
2039A0207: Because \caseful_local_part\ is not set (in the default configuration)
2040 for the \%dnslookup%\ router. This does not matter because the local
2041 part takes no part in the routing, and the actual local part that is
2042 sent out in the RCPT command is always the original local part.
2043
2044
2045
20463. ROUTING TO REMOTE HOSTS
2047
2048Q0301: What do \*lowest numbered MX record points to local host*\ and \*remote
2049 host address is the local host*\ mean?
2050
2051A0301: They mean exactly what they say. Exim expected to route an address to a
2052 remote host, but the IP address it obtained from a router was for the
2053 local host. If you really do want to send over TCP/IP to the local host
2054 (to a different version of Exim or another MTA, for example), see Q0206.
2055
2056 More commonly, these errors arise when Exim thinks it is routing some
2057 foreign domain. For example, the router configuration causes Exim to
2058 look up the domain in the DNS, but when Exim examines the DNS output,
2059 either the lowest numbered MX record points at the local host, or there
2060 are no MX records, and the address record for the domain contains an
2061 IP address that belongs to the local host.
2062
2063 There has been a rash of instances of domains being deliberately set up
2064 with MX records pointing to \"localhost"\ (or other names with A records
2065 that specify 127.0.0.1), which causes this behaviour. You can use the
2066 \ignore_target_hosts\ option to get Exim to ignore these records. The
2067 default contiguration does this. For more discussion, see Q0319. For
2068 other cases:
2069
2070 (1) If the domain is meant to be handled as a local domain, there
2071 is a problem with the configuration, because it should not then have
2072 been looked up in the DNS. Check the \domains\ settings on your
2073 routers.
2074
2075 (2) If the domain is one for which the local host is providing a
2076 relaying service (called ``mail hubbing''), possibly as part of a
2077 firewall, you need to set up a router to tell Exim where to send
2078 messages addressed to this domain, because the DNS directs them to
2079 the local host. You should put a router like this one before the one
2080 that does DNS lookups:
2081
2082==> hubbed_hosts:
2083 driver = manualroute
2084 transport = remote_smtp
2085 route_list = see discussion below
2086
2087 The contents of the \route_list\ option depend on how many hosts you
2088 are hubbing for, and how their names are related to the domain name.
2089 Suppose the local host is a firewall, and all the domains in
2090 \(*.foo.bar)\ have MX records pointing to it, and each domain
2091 corresponds to a host of the same name. Then the setting could be
2092
2093==> route_list = *.foo.bar $domain
2094
2095 If there isn't a convenient relationship between the domain names
2096 and the host names, you either have to list each domain separately,
2097 or use a lookup expansion to look up the host from the domain, or
2098 put the routing information in a file and use the \route_data\
2099 option with a lookup expansion.
2100
2101 (3) If neither (1) nor (2) is the case, the lowest numbered MX record or
2102 the address record for the domain should not be pointing to your
2103 host. You should arrange to get the DNS mended.
2104
2105
2106Q0302: Why does Exim say \*all relevant MX records point to non-existent hosts*\
2107 when MX records point to IP addresses?
2108
2109A0302: MX records cannot point to IP addresses. They are defined to point to
2110 host names, so Exim always interprets them that way. (An IP address is a
2111 syntactically valid host name.) The DNS for the domain you are having
2112 problems with is misconfigured.
2113
2114 However, it appears that more and more DNS zones are breaking the rules
2115 and putting IP addresses on the RHS of MX records. Exim follows the
2116 rules and rejects this, but other MTAs do support it, so the
2117 \allow_mx_to_ip\ was regretfully added at release 3.14 to permit this
2118 heinous activity.
2119
2120
2121Q0303: How do I configure Exim to send all messages to a central server? I
2122 don't want to do any local deliveries at all on this host.
2123
2124A0303: Use this as your first and only router:
2125
2126==> send_to_gateway:
2127 driver = manualroute
2128 transport = remote_smtp
2129 route_list = * central.server.host
2130
2131
2132Q0304: How do I configure Exim to send all non-local mail to a gateway host?
2133
2134A0304: Replace the \%dnslookup%\ router in the default configuration with the
2135 following:
2136
2137==> send_to_gateway:
2138 driver = manualroute
2139 domains = !+local_domains
2140 transport = remote_smtp
2141 route_list = * gate.way.host
2142
2143 If there are several hosts you can send to, you can specify them as a
2144 colon-separated list.
2145
2146
2147Q0305: How can I arrange for mail on my local network to be delivered directly
2148 to the relevant hosts, but all other mail to be sent to my ISP's mail
2149 server? The local hosts are all DNS-registered and behave like normal
2150 Internet hosts.
2151
2152A0305: Set up a first router to pick off all the domains for your local
2153 network. There are several ways you might do this. For example
2154
2155==> local_network:
2156 driver = dnslookup
2157 transport = remote_smtp
2158 domains = *.mydomain.com
2159
2160 This does a perfectly conventional DNS routing operation, but only for
2161 the domains that match \(*.mydomain.com)\. Follow this with a `smart
2162 host' router:
2163
2164==> internet:
2165 driver = manualroute
2166 domains = !+local_domains
2167 transport = remote_smtp
2168 route_list = * mail.isp.net
2169
2170 This routes any other non-local domains to the smart host.
2171
2172
2173Q0306: How do I configure Exim to send all non-local mail to a central server
2174 if it cannot be immediately delivered by my host? I don't want to have
2175 queued mail waiting on my host.
2176
2177A0306: Add to the \%remote_smtp%\ transport the following:
2178
2179==> fallback_hosts = central.server.name(s)
2180
2181 If there are several names, they must be separated by colons.
2182
2183
2184Q0307: The \route_list\ setting \"^foo$:^bar$ $domain"\ in a \%manualroute%\
2185 router does not work.
2186
2187A0307: The first thing in a \route_list\ item is a single pattern, not a list of
2188 patterns. You need to write that as \"^(foo|bar)$ $domain"\.
2189 Alternatively, you could use several items and write
2190
2191==> route_list = foo $domain; bar $domain
2192
2193 Note the semicolon separator. This is because the second thing in each
2194 item can itself be a list - of hosts.
2195
2196
2197Q0308: I have a domain for which some local parts must be delivered locally,
2198 but the remainder are to be treated like any other remote addresses.
2199
2200A0308: One possible way of doing this is as follows: Assuming you are using a
2201 configuration that is similar to the default one, first exclude your
2202 domain from the first router by changing it to look like this:
2203
2204==> non_special_remote:
2205 driver = dnslookup
2206 domains = ! +local_domains : ! special.domain
2207 transport = remote_smtp
2208 ignore_target_hosts = 127.0.0.0/8
2209 no_more
2210
2211 Then add a second router which handles the local parts that are not to
2212 be delivered locally:
2213
2214==> special_remote:
2215 driver = dnslookup
2216 domains = special.domain
2217 local_parts = ! lsearch;/list/of/special/localparts
2218 transport = remote_smtp
2219 ignore_target_hosts = 127.0.0.0/8
2220 no_more
2221
2222 The remaining local parts will fall through to the remaining routers,
2223 which can delivery them locally.
2224
2225
2226Q0309: How can I configure Exim on a firewall machine so that if mail arrives
2227 addressed to a domain whose MX points to the firewall, it is forwarded
2228 to the internal mail server, without having to have a list of all the
2229 domains involved?
2230
2231A0309: As your first router, have the standard \%dnslookup%\ router from the
2232 default configuration, with the added option
2233
2234==> self = pass
2235
2236 This will handle all domains whose lowest numbered MX records do not
2237 point to your host. Because of the \no_more\ setting, if it encounters
2238 an unknown domain, routing will fail. However, if it hits a domain whose
2239 lowest numbered MX points to your host, the \self\ option comes into
2240 play, and overrides \no_more\. The \"pass"\ setting causes it to pass
2241 the address on to the next router. (The default causes it to generate an
2242 error.)
2243
2244 The only non-local domains that reach the second router are those with
2245 MX records pointing to the local host. Set it up to send them to the
2246 internal mail server like this:
2247
2248==> internal:
2249 driver = manualroute
2250 domains = ! +local_domains
2251 transport = remote_smtp
2252 route_list = * internal.server
2253
2254
2255Q0310: If a DNS lookup returns no MX records why doesn't Exim just bin the
2256 message?
2257
2258A0310: If a DNS lookup returns no MXs, Exim looks for an address record, in
2259 accordance with the rules that are defined in the RFCs. If you want to
2260 break the rules, you can set \mx_domains\ in the \%dnslookup%\ router, but
2261 you will cut yourself off from those sites (and there still seem to be
2262 plenty) who do not set up MX records.
2263
2264
2265Q0311: When a DNS lookup for MX records fails to complete, why doesn't Exim
2266 send the messsage to the host defined by the A record?
2267
2268A0311: The RFCs are quite clear on this. Only if it is known that there are no
2269 MX records is an MTA allowed to make use of the A record. When an MX
2270 lookup fails to complete, Exim does not know whether there are any MX
2271 records or not. There seem to be some name servers (or some
2272 configurations of some name servers) that give a ``server fail'' error when
2273 asked for a non-existent MX record. Exim uses standard resolver calls,
2274 which unfortunately do not distinguish between this case and a timeout,
2275 so all Exim can do is try again later.
2276
2277
2278Q0312: Is it possible to use a conditional expression for the host item in a
2279 \route_list\ for \%manualroute%\ router? I tried the following, but it
2280 doesn't work:
2281
2282==> route_list = * ${if match{$header_from:}{\N.*\.usa\.net$\N} \
2283 {<smarthost1>}{<smarthost2>}
2284
2285A0312: The problem is that the second item in \route_list\ contains white
2286 space, which means that it gets terminated prematurely. To avoid this,
2287 you must put the second item in quotes:
2288
2289==> route_list = * "${if match{$header_from:}{\N.*\.usa\.net$\N} \
2290 {<smarthost1>}{<smarthost2>}}"
2291
2292
2293Q0313: I send all external mail to a smart host, but this means that bad
2294 addresses also get passed to the smart host. Can I avoid this?
2295
2296A0313: Assuming you have DNS availability, set up a conventional \%dnslookup%\
2297 router to do the routing, but in the \%remote_smtp%\ transport set this:
2298
2299==> hosts = your.smart.host
2300 hosts_override
2301
2302 This will override the hosts that the router finds so that everything
2303 goes to the smart host, but any non-existent domains will be failed by
2304 the router.
2305
2306
2307Q0314: I have a really annoying intermittent problem where attempts to mail to
2308 valid sites are rejected with \*unknown mail domain*\. This only happens a
2309 few times a day and there is no particular pattern to the sites it
2310 rejects. If I try to lookup the same domain a few minutes later then it
2311 is OK.
2312
2313A0314: This is almost certainly a problem with the DNS resolver or the the
2314 domain's name servers.
2315
2316 (1) Have you linked Exim against the newest DNS resolver library that
2317 comes with Bind? If you are using SunOS4 that may be your problem, as
2318 the resolver that comes with that OS is known to be buggy and to give
2319 intermittent false negatives.
2320
2321 (2) Effects like this are sometimes seen if a domain's name servers get
2322 out of step with each other.
2323
2324
2325Q0315: I'd like route all mail with addresses that can't be resolved (the DNS
2326 lookup times out) to a relay machine.
2327
2328A0315: Set \pass_on_timeout\ on your \%dnslookup%\ router, and add below it a
2329 \%manualroute%\ router that routes all relevant domains to the relay.
2330
2331
2332Q0316: I would like to forward all incoming email for a particular domain to
2333 another host via SMTP. Whereabouts would I configure that?
2334
2335A0316: Use this as your first router:
2336
2337==> special:
2338 driver = manualroute
2339 transport = remote_smtp
2340 route_list = the.particular.domain the.other.host
2341
2342 You will also need to adjust the ACL for incoming SMTP so that this
2343 domain is accepted for relaying. If you are using the default
2344 configuration, there is a domain list called \relay_domains\ that is
2345 set up for this.
2346
2347
2348Q0317: What I'd like to do is have alternative smart hosts, where the one to be
2349 used is determined by which ISP I'm connected to.
2350
2351A0317: The simplest way to do this is to arrange for the name of the smart host
2352 du jour to be placed in a file when you connect, say \(/etc/smarthost)\.
2353 Then you can read this file from a \%manualroute%\ router like this:
2354
2355==> smarthost:
2356 driver = manualroute
2357 transport = remote_smtp
2358 route_list = * ${readfile{/etc/smarthost}{}}
2359
2360 The second argument of the \"readfile"\ item is a string that replaces
2361 any newline characters in the file (in this case, with nothing).
2362 By keeping the data out of the main configuration file, you avoid having
2363 to HUP the daemon when it changes.
2364
2365
2366Q0318: Exim won't route to a host with no MX record.
2367
2368A0318: More than one thing may cause this.
2369
2370 (1) Are you sure there really is no MX record? Sometimes a typo results
2371 in a malformed MX record in the zone file, in which case some name
2372 servers give a SERVFAIL error rather than NXDOMAIN. Exim has to treat
2373 this as a temporary error, so it can't go on to look for address records.
2374 You can check for this state using one of the DNS interrogation commands,
2375 such as \(nslookup)\, \(host)\, or \(dig)\.
2376
2377 (2) Is there a wildcard MX record for \(your)\ domain? Is the
2378 \search_parents\ option on in your \%dnslookup%\ router? If the answer to
2379 both these questions is ``yes'', that is the cause of the problem. When
2380 the DNS resolver fails to find the MX record, it tries adding on your
2381 domain if \search_parents\ is true, and thereby finds your wildcard MX
2382 record. For example:
2383
2384 . There is a wildcard MX record for \(*.a.b.c)\.
2385
2386 . There is a host called \(x.y.z)\ that has an A record and no MX record.
2387
2388 . Somebody on the host \(m.a.b.c)\ domain tries to mail to \(user@x.y.z)\.
2389
2390 . Exim calls the DNS to look for an MX record for \(x.y.z)\.
2391
2392 . The DNS doesn't find any MX record. Because \search_parents\ is true,
2393 it then tries searching the current host's parent domain, so it
2394 looks for \(x.y.z.a.b.c)\ and picks up the wildcard MX record.
2395
2396 Setting \search_parents\ false makes this case work while retaining the
2397 wildcard MX record. However, anybody on the host \(m.a.b.c)\ who mails to
2398 \(user@n.a)\ (expecting it to go to \(user@n.a.b.c)\) now has a problem. The
2399 \widen_domains\ option of the \%dnslookup%\ router may be helpful in this
2400 circumstance.
2401
2402
2403Q0319: I have some mails on my queues that are sticking around longer than
2404 the retry time indicates they should. They are all getting frozen
2405 because some remote admin has set their MX record to 127.0.0.1.
2406
2407A0319: The admin in question is an idiot. Exim will always freeze such messages
2408 because they are apparently routed to the local host. To bounce these
2409 messages immediately, set
2410
2411==> ignore_target_hosts = 127.0.0.1
2412
2413 on the \%dnslookup%\ router. This causes Exim to completely ignore any hosts
2414 with that IP address. In fact, there are quite a number of IP addresses
2415 that should never be used. Here is a suggested configuration list for
2416 the IPv4 ones:
2417
2418==> # Don't allow domains whose single MX (or A) record is a
2419 # "special-use IPv4 address", as listed in RFC 3330.
2420 ignore_target_hosts = \
2421 # Hosts on "this network"; RFC 1700 (page 4) states that these
2422 # are only allowed as source addresses
2423 0.0.0.0/8 : \
2424 # Private networks, RFC 1918
2425 10.0.0.0/8 : 172.16.0.0/12 : 192.168.0.0/16 : \
2426 # Internet host loopback address, RFC 1700 (page 5)
2427 127.0.0.0/8 : \
2428 # "Link local" block
2429 169.254.0.0/16 : \
2430 # "TEST-NET" - should not appear on the public Internet
2431 192.0.2.0/24 : \
2432 # 6to4 relay anycast addresses, RFC 3068
2433 192.88.99.0/24 : \
2434 # Network interconnect device benchmark testing, RFC 2544
2435 198.18.0.0/15 : \
2436 # Multicast addresses, RFC 3171
2437 224.0.0.0/4 : \
2438 # Reserved for future use, RFC 1700 (page 4)
2439 240.0.0.0/4
2440
2441
2442Q0320: How can I arrange for all mail to \*user@some.domain*\ to be forwarded
2443 to \*user@other.domain*\?
2444
2445A0320: Put this as your first router:
2446
2447==> forward:
2448 driver = redirect
2449 domains = some.domain
2450 data = ${quote:$local_part}@other.domain
2451
2452
2453Q0321: How can I tell an Exim router to use only IPv4 or only IPv6 addresses
2454 when it finds both types in the DNS?
2455
2456A0321: You can do this by making it ignore the addresses you don't want. This
2457 example ignores all IPv6 addresses and all IPv4 addresses in the 127
2458 network:
2459
2460==> ignore_target_hosts = <; 0000::0000/0 ; 127.0.0.0/8
2461
2462 To ignore all IPv4 addresses, use
2463
2464==> ignore_target_hosts = 0.0.0.0/0
2465
2466 See Q0319 for a general discussion of \ignore_target_hosts\.
2467
2468
2469Q0322: How can I reroute all messages bound for 192.168.10.0 and 10.0.0.0 to
2470 a specific mail server?
2471
2472A0322: That is an odd requirement. However, there is an obscure feature in
2473 Exim, originally implemented for packet radio people, that perhaps can
2474 help. Check out the \translate_ip_address\ generic router option.
2475
2476
2477
24784. ROUTING FOR LOCAL DELIVERY
2479
2480Q0401: I need to have any mail for \(virt.dom.ain)\ that doesn't match one of the
2481 aliases in \(/usr/lib/aliases.virt)\ delivered to a particular address, for
2482 example, \(postmaster@virt.dom.ain)\.
2483
2484A0401: Adding an asterisk to a search type causes Exim to look up ``*'' when the
2485 normal lookup fails. So if your aliasing router is something like this:
2486
2487==> virtual:
2488 driver = redirect
2489 domains = virt.dom.ain
2490 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/usr/lib/aliases.virt}}
2491 no_more
2492
2493 you should change \"lsearch"\ to \"lsearch*"\, and put this in the alias
2494 file:
2495
2496==> *: postmaster@virt.dom.ain
2497
2498 This solution has the feature that if there are several unknown
2499 addresses in the same message, only one copy gets sent to the
2500 postmaster, because of Exim's normal de-duplication rules.
2501
2502 NOTE: This solution works only if there is also an entry for \(postmaster)\
2503 in the alias file, ultimately resolving to an address that is not in
2504 \(virt.dom.ain)\. See also Q0434.
2505
2506
2507Q0402: How do I arrange for all incoming email for \(*@some.domain)\ to go into one
2508 pop3 mail account? The customer doesn't want to add a list of specific
2509 local parts to the system.
2510
2511A0402: Set up a special transport that writes to the mailbox like this:
2512
2513==> special_transport:
2514 driver = appendfile
2515 file = /pop/mailbox
2516 envelope_to_add
2517 return_path_add
2518 delivery_date_add
2519 user = exim
2520
2521 The file will be written as the user \"exim"\. Then arrange to route all
2522 mail for that domain to that transport, with a router like this:
2523
2524==> special_router:
2525 driver = accept
2526 domains = some.domain
2527 transport = special_transport
2528
2529
2530Q0403: How do I configure Exim to send messages for unknown local users to a
2531 central server?
2532
2533A0403: Assuming you are using something like the default configuration, where
2534 local users are processed by the later routers, you should add the
2535 following router at the end:
2536
2537==> unknown:
2538 driver = manualroute
2539 transport = remote_smtp
2540 route_list = * server.host.name
2541 no_verify
2542
2543 However, you should if possible try to verify that the user is known on
2544 the central server before accepting the message in the first place. This
2545 can be done by making use of Exim's ``call forward'' facility.
2546
2547
2548Q0404: How can I arrange for messages submitted by (for example) Majordomo to
2549 be handled specially?
2550
2551A0404: You can use the \condition\ option on a router, with a setting such as
2552
2553==> condition = ${if and {{eq {$sender_host_address}{}} \
2554 {eq {$sender_ident}{majordom}}} {yes}{no}}
2555
2556 This first tests for a locally-submitted message, by ensuring there is
2557 no sending host address, and then it checks the identity of the user
2558 that ran the submitting process.
2559
2560
2561Q0405: On a host that accepts mail for several domains, do I have to use fully
2562 qualified addresses in \(/etc/aliases)\ or do I have to set up an alias
2563 file for each domain?
2564
2565A0405: You can do it either way. The default aliasing router contains this line:
2566
2567==> data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
2568
2569 which is what does the actual lookup. To make it look up the complete
2570 address instead of just the local part, use
2571
2572==> data = ${lookup{$local_part@$domain}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
2573
2574 If you want to use a separate file for each domain, use
2575
2576==> data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases/$domain}}
2577
2578
2579Q0406: Some of my users are using the \(.forward)\ to pipe to a shell command which
2580 appends to the user's INBOX. How can I forbid this?
2581
2582A0406: If you allow your users to run shells in pipes, you cannot control which
2583 commands they run or which files they write to. However, you should point
2584 out to them that writing to an INBOX by arbitrary commands is not
2585 interlocked with the MTA and MUAs, and is liable to mess up the contents
2586 of the file.
2587
2588 If a user simply wants to choose a specific file for the delivery of
2589 messages, this can be done by putting a file name in a \(.forward)\ file
2590 rather than using a pipe, or by using the \"save"\ command in an Exim
2591 filter file.
2592
2593 You can set \forbid_pipe\ on the router, but that will prevent them from
2594 running any pipe commands at all. Alternatively, you can restrict which
2595 commands they may run in their pipes by setting the \allow_commands\
2596 and/or \restrict_to_path\ options in the \%address_pipe%\ transport.
2597
2598
2599Q0407: How can I arrange for a default value when using a query-style lookup
2600 such as LDAP or NIS+ to handle aliases?
2601
2602A0407: Use a second query in the failure part of the original lookup, like
2603 this:
2604
2605==> data = ${lookup ldap\
2606 {ldap://x.y.z/l=yvr?aliasaddress?sub?(&(mail=$local_part@$domain))}\
2607 {$value}\
2608 {\
2609 ${lookup ldap \
2610 {ldap://x.y.z/l=yvr?aliasaddress?sub?(&(mail=default@$domain))}}\
2611 }}
2612
2613 Of course, if the default is a fixed value you can just include it
2614 directly.
2615
2616
2617Q0408: If I don't fully qualify the addresses in a virtual domain's alias file
2618 then mail to aliases which also match the local domain get delivered to
2619 the local domain.
2620
2621A0408: Set the \qualify_preserve_domain\ option on the \%redirect%\ router.
2622
2623
2624Q0409: I want mail for any local part at certain virtual domains to go
2625 to a single address for each domain.
2626
2627A0409: One way to to this is
2628
2629==> virtual:
2630 driver = redirect
2631 data = ${lookup{$domain}lsearch{/etc/virtual}}
2632
2633 The \(/etc/virtual)\ file contains a list of domains and the addresses to
2634 which their mail should be sent. For example:
2635
2636==> domain1: postmaster@some.where.else
2637 domain2: joe@xyz.plc
2638
2639 If the number of domains is large, using a DBM or cdb file would be more
2640 efficient. If the lookup fails to find the domain in the file, the value
2641 of the \data\ option is empty, causing the router to decline.
2642
2643
2644Q0410: How can I make Exim look in the alias NIS map instead of \(/etc/aliases)\?
2645
2646A0410: The default configuration does not use NIS (many hosts don't run it).
2647 You need to change this line in the \%system_aliases%\ router:
2648
2649==> data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
2650
2651 Change it to
2652
2653==> data = ${lookup{$local_part}nis{mail.aliases}}
2654
2655 If you want to use \(/etc/aliases)\ as well as NIS, put this router (with
2656 a different name) before or after the default one, depending on which
2657 data source you want to take precedence.
2658
2659
2660Q0411: Why will Exim deliver a message locally to any username that is longer
2661 than 8 characters as long as the first 8 characters match one of the
2662 local usernames?
2663
2664A0411: The problem is in your operating system. Exim just calls the \^^getpwnam()^^\
2665 function to test a local part for being a local login name. It does not
2666 presume to guess the maximum length of user name for the underlying
2667 operating system. Many operating systems correctly reject names that are
2668 longer than the maximum length; yours is apparently deficient in this
2669 regard. To cope with such systems, Exim has an option called
2670 \max_user_name_length\ which you can set to the maximum allowed length.
2671
2672
2673Q0412: Why am I seeing the error \*bad mode (100664) for /home/test/.forward*\?
2674 I've looked through the documentation but can't see anything to suggest
2675 that Exim has to do anything other than read the \(.forward)\ file.
2676
2677A0412: For security, Exim checks for mode bits that shouldn't be set, by
2678 default 022. You can change this by setting the \modemask\ option of the
2679 \%redirect%\ router that is handling \(.forward)\ files.
2680
2681
2682Q0413: When a user's \(.forward)\ file is syntactially invalid, Exim defers
2683 delivery of all messages to that user, which sometimes include the
2684 user's own test messages. Can it be told to ignore the \(.forward)\ file
2685 and/or inform the user of the error?
2686
2687A0413: Setting \skip_syntax_errors\ on the redirect router causes syntax
2688 errors to be skipped. When dealing with users' \(.forward)\ files it is best
2689 to combine this with a setting of \syntax_errors_to\ in order to send
2690 a message about the error to the user. However, to avoid an infinite
2691 cascade of messages, you have to be able to send to an address that
2692 bypasses \(.forward)\ file processing. This can be done by including a
2693 router like this one
2694
2695==> real_localuser:
2696 driver = accept
2697 check_local_user
2698 transport = local_delivery
2699 prefix = real-
2700
2701 before the \%redirect%\ router that handles \(.forward)\ files. This will
2702 do an ordinary local delivery without \(.forward)\ processing, if the
2703 local part is prefixed by \"real-"\. You can then set something like
2704 the following options on the \%redirect%\ router:
2705
2706==> skip_syntax_errors
2707 syntax_errors_to = real-$local_part@$domain
2708 syntax_errors_text = "\
2709 This is an automatically generated message. An error has been \
2710 found\nin your .forward file. Details of the error are reported \
2711 below. While\nthis error persists, messages addressed to you will \
2712 get delivered into\nyour normal mailbox and you will receive a \
2713 copy of this message for\neach one."
2714
2715 A final tidying setting to go with this is a rewriting rule that changes
2716 \"real-username"\ into just \"username"\ in the headers of the message:
2717
2718==> \N^real-([^@]+)@your\.dom\.ain$\N $1@your.dom.ain h
2719
2720 This means that users won't ever see the \"real-"\ prefix, unless they
2721 look at the ::Envelope-To:: header.
2722
2723
2724Q0414: I have set \caseful_local_part\ on the routers that handle my local
2725 domain because my users have upper case letters in their login names,
2726 but incoming mail now has to use the correct case. Can I relax this
2727 somehow?
2728
2729A0414: If you really have to live with caseful user names but want incoming
2730 local parts to be caseless, then you have to maintain a file, indexed by
2731 the lower case forms, that gives the correct case for each login, like
2732 this:
2733
2734==> admin: Admin
2735 steven: Steven
2736 mcdonald: McDonald
2737 lamanch: LaManche
2738 ...
2739
2740 and at the start of the routers that handle your local domain, put one
2741 like this:
2742
2743==> set_case_router:
2744 driver = redirect
2745 data = ${lookup{${lc:$local_part}}lsearch{/the/file}}
2746 qualify_preserve_domain
2747
2748 For efficiency, you should also set the \redirect_router\ option to cause
2749 processing of the changed address to begin at the next router. If you
2750 are otherwise using the default configuration, the setting would be
2751
2752==> redirect_router = system_aliases
2753
2754 If there are lots of users, then a DBM or cdb file would be more
2755 efficient than a linear search. If you are handling several domains,
2756 you will have to extend this configuration to cope appropriately.
2757
2758
2759Q0415: Can I use my existing alias files and forward files as well as procmail
2760 and effectively drop in Exim in place of Sendmail ?
2761
2762A0415: Yes, as long as your alias and forward files don't assume that pipes are
2763 going to run under a shell. If they do, you either have to change them,
2764 or configure Exim to use a shell (which it doesn't by default).
2765
2766
2767Q0416: What is quickest way to set up Exim so any message sent to a
2768 non-existing user would bounce back with a different message, based
2769 on the name of non-existing user?
2770
2771A0416: Place this router last, so that it catches any local addresses that
2772 are not otherwise handled:
2773
2774==> non_exist:
2775 driver = accept
2776 transport = non_exist_reply
2777 no_verify
2778
2779 Then add the following transport to the transports section:
2780
2781==> non_exist_reply:
2782 driver = autoreply
2783 user = exim
2784 to = $sender_address
2785 subject = User does not exist
2786 text = You sent mail to $local_part. That's not a valid user here. \
2787 The subject was: $subject.
2788
2789 If you want to pick up a message from a file, you can use the \file\
2790 option (use \file_expand\ if you want its contents expanded).
2791
2792
2793Q0417: What do I need to do to make Exim handle \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ processing
2794 automatically, so that people could just create a \(.vacation.msg)\ file in
2795 their home directory and not have to edit their \(.forward)\ file?
2796
2797A0417: Add a new router like this, immediately before the normal \%localuser%\
2798 router:
2799
2800==> vacation:
2801 driver = accept
2802 check_local_user
2803 require_files = $home/.vacation.msg
2804 transport = vacation_transport
2805 unseen
2806
2807 and a matching new transport like this:
2808
2809==> vacation_transport:
2810 driver = pipe
2811 command = /usr/ucb/vacation $local_part
2812
2813 However, some versions of \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ do not work properly unless
2814 the DBM file(s) it uses are created in advance - it won't create them
2815 itself. You also need a way of removing them when the vacation is over.
2816
2817 Another possibility is to use a fixed filter file which is run whenever
2818 \(.vacation.msg)\ exists, for example:
2819
2820==> vacation:
2821 driver = redirect
2822 check_local_user
2823 require_files = $home/.vacation.msg
2824 file = /some/central/filter
2825 allow_filter
2826
2827 The filter file should use the \"if personal"\ check before sending mail,
2828 to avoid generating automatic responses to mailing lists. If sending a
2829 message is all that it does, this doesn't count as a ``significant''
2830 delivery, so the original message goes on to be delivered as normal.
2831
2832 Yet another possibility is to make use of Exim's \%autoreply%\ transport,
2833 and not use \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ at all.
2834
2835
2836Q0418: I want to use a default entry in my alias file to handle unknown local
2837 parts, but it picks up the local parts that the aliases generate. For
2838 example, if the alias file is
2839
2840==> luke.skywalker: luke
2841 ls: luke
2842 *: postmaster
2843
2844 then messages addressed to \/luke.skywalker/\ end up at \/postmaster/\.
2845
2846A0418: The default mechanism works best with virtual domains, where the
2847 generated address is not in the same domain. If you just want to pick up
2848 all unknown local parts and send them to postmaster, an easier way to do
2849 it is to put this as your last router:
2850
2851==> unknown:
2852 driver = redirect
2853 data = postmaster
2854 no_verify
2855
2856 Another possibility is to put the redirect router for these aliases
2857 after all the other routers, so that local parts which are user names
2858 get picked off first. You will need to have two aliasing routers if
2859 there are some local parts (e.g. \/root/\) which are login names, but which
2860 you want to handle as aliases.
2861
2862
2863Q0419: I have some obsolete domains which people have been warned not to use
2864 any more. How can I arrange to delete any mail that is sent to them?
2865
2866A0419: To reject them at SMTP time, with a customized error message, place
2867 statments like this in the ACL:
2868
2869==> deny message = The domain $domain is obsolete
2870 domains = lsearch;/etc/exim/obsolete.domains
2871
2872 For messages that don't arrive over SMTP, you can use a router like
2873 this to bounce them:
2874
2875==> obsolete:
2876 driver = redirect
2877 domains = lsearch;/etc/exim/obsolete.domains
2878 allow_fail
2879 data = :fail: the domain $domain is obsolete
2880
2881 If you just want to throw away mail to those domains, accept them at
2882 SMTP time, and use a router like this:
2883
2884==> obsolete:
2885 domains = lsearch;/etc/exim/obsolete.domains
2886 data = :blackhole:
2887
2888
2889Q0420: How can I arrange that mail addressed to \(anything@something.mydomain.com)\
2890 gets delivered to \(something@mydomain.com)\?
2891
2892A0420: Set up a router like this:
2893
2894==> user_from_domain:
2895 driver = redirect
2896 data = ${if match{$domain}{\N^(.+)\.mydomain\.com$\N}\
2897 {$1@mydomain.com}}
2898
2899
2900Q0421: I can't get a regular expression to work in a \local_parts\ option on
2901 one of my routers.
2902
2903A0421: Have you remembered to protect any backslash and dollar characters in
2904 your regex from unwanted expansion? The easiest way is to use the
2905 \"@\N"\ facility, like this:
2906
2907==> local_parts = \N^0740\d{6}\N
2908
2909
2910Q0422: How can I arrange for all addresses in a group of domains \(*.example.com)\
2911 to share the same alias file? I have a number of such groups.
2912
2913A0422: For a single group you could just hard wire the file name into a router
2914 that had
2915
2916==> domains = *.example.com
2917
2918 set, to restrict it to the relevant domains. For a number of such groups
2919 you can create a file containing the domains, like this:
2920
2921==> *.example1.com example1.com
2922 *.example2.com example2.com
2923 ...
2924
2925 Then create a router like this
2926
2927==> domain_aliases:
2928 driver = redirect
2929 domains = partial-lsearch;/that/file
2930 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch*{/etc/aliases.d/$domain_data}}
2931
2932 The variable \$domain_data$\ contains the data that was looked up when the
2933 \domains\ option was matched, i.e. \"example1.com"\, \"example2.com"\, etc.
2934 in this case.
2935
2936
2937Q0423: Some of our users have no home directories; the field in the password
2938 file contains \(/no/home/dir)\. This causes the error \*failed to stat
2939 /no/home/dir (No such file or directory)*\ when Exim tries to look for a
2940 \(.forward file)\, and the delivery is deferred.
2941
2942A0423: There are two issues involved here:
2943
2944 (1) With the default configuration, you are asking Exim to check for a
2945 \(.forward)\ file in the user's home directory. If no file is found,
2946 Exim tries to \^^stat()^^\ the home directory. This is so that it will
2947 notice a missing NFS home directory, and not treat it as if the
2948 \(.forward)\ file did not exist. This \^^stat()^^\ is failing when the
2949 home directory really doesn't exist. You should arrange for the
2950 \%userforward%\ router not to run for these special users, by adding
2951 this line:
2952
2953==> condition = ${if eq {$home}{/no/home/dir}{no}{yes}}
2954
2955 (2) If you use \check_local_user\ on another router to route to a local
2956 transport (again, this is what is in the default configuration), you
2957 will also have to specify a current directory for the transport, because
2958 by default it makes the home directory current. This is easily done by
2959 adding
2960
2961==> current_directory = /
2962
2963 to the transport or
2964
2965==> transport_current_directory = /
2966
2967 to the router. Or you can add \home_directory\ to the transport, because
2968 the current directory defaults to the home directory.
2969
2970
2971Q0424: How can I disable Exim's de-duplication features? I want it to do two
2972 deliveries if two different aliases expand to the same address.
2973
2974A0424: This is not possible. Duplication has other ramifications other than
2975 just (in)convenience. Consider:
2976
2977 . Message is addressed to A and to B.
2978
2979 . Both A and B are aliased to C.
2980
2981 . Without de-duplication, two deliveries to C are scheduled.
2982
2983 . One delivery happens, Exim records that it has delivered the message
2984 to C.
2985
2986 . The next delivery fails (C's mailbox is over quota, say).
2987
2988 Next time round, Exim wants to know if it has already delivered to C or
2989 not, before scheduling a new delivery. Has it? Obviously, if duplicate
2990 deliveries are supported, it has to remember not only that it has
2991 delivered to C but also the ``history'' of how that delivery happened - in
2992 effect an ancestry list back to the original envelope address. This it
2993 does not do, and changing it to work in that way would be a lot of work
2994 and a big upheaval.
2995
2996 The best way to get duplicate deliveries if you want them is not to use
2997 aliases, but to route the addresses directly to a transport, e.g.
2998
2999==> duplicates:
3000 driver = accept
3001 local_parts = lsearch;/etc/list/of/special/local/parts
3002 transport = local_delivery
3003 user = exim
3004
3005
3006Q0425: My users' mailboxes are distributed between several servers according to
3007 the first letter of the user name. All the servers receive incoming mail
3008 at random. I would like to have the same configuration file for all the
3009 servers, which does local delivery for the mailboxes it holds, and sends
3010 other addresses to the correct other server. Is this possible?
3011
3012A0425: It is easiest if you arrange for all the users to have password entries
3013 on all the servers. This means that non-existent users can be detected
3014 at the first server they reach. Set up a file containing a mapping from
3015 the first letter of the user names to the servers where their mailboxes
3016 are held. For example:
3017
3018==> a: server1
3019 b: server1
3020 c: server2
3021 ...
3022
3023 Before the normal \%localuser%\ router, place the following router:
3024
3025==> mailbox_host:
3026 driver = manualroute
3027 check_local_user
3028 transport = remote_smtp
3029 route_list = * ${lookup{${substr_0_1:$local_part}}lsearch{/etc/mapfile}}
3030 self = pass
3031
3032 This router checks for a local account, then looks up the host from the
3033 first character of the local part. If the host is not the local host,
3034 the address is routed to the \%remote_smtp%\ transport, and sent to the
3035 correct host. If the host is the local host, the \self\ option causes
3036 the router to pass the address to the next router, which does a local
3037 delivery.
3038
3039 The router is skipped for local parts that are not the names of local
3040 users, and so these addresses fail.
3041
3042
3043Q0426: One of the things I want to set up is for \(anything@onedomain)\ to forward
3044 to \(anything@anotherdomain)\. I tried adding \($local_part@anotherdomain)\ to
3045 my aliases but it did not expand - it sent it to that literal address.
3046
3047A0426: If you want to do it that way, you can use the \"expand"\ operator on
3048 the lookup used in the data option of the redirect router. For example:
3049
3050==> data = ${expand:${lookup{$local_part}lsearch*{/etc/aliases}}}
3051
3052 Another approach is to use a router like this:
3053
3054==> forwarddomain:
3055 driver = redirect
3056 domains = onedomain
3057 data = $local_part@anotherdomain
3058
3059 The value of \data\ can, of course, be more complicated, involving
3060 lookups etc. if you have lots of different cases.
3061
3062
3063Q0427: How can I have an address looked up in two different alias files, and
3064 delivered to all the addresses that are found?
3065
3066A0427: Use a router like this:
3067
3068==> multi_aliases:
3069 driver = redirect
3070 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases1}\
3071 {$value${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases2}{,$value}}}\
3072 {${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases2}{$value}fail}}}\
3073
3074 If the first lookup succeeds, the result is its data, followed by the
3075 data from the second lookup, if any, separated by a comma. If the first
3076 lookup fails, the result is the data from the third lookup (which also
3077 looks in the second file), but if this also fails, the entire expansion
3078 is forced to fail, thereby causing the router to decline.
3079
3080 Another approach is to use two routers, with the first re-generating the
3081 original local part when it succeeds. This won't get processed by the
3082 same router again. For example:
3083
3084==> multi_aliases1:
3085 driver = redirect
3086 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases1}{$value,$local_part}}
3087
3088==> multi_aliases2:
3089 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases2}}
3090
3091 This scales more easily to three or more alias files.
3092
3093
3094Q0428: I've converted from Sendmail, and I notice that Exim doesn't make use
3095 of the \"owner-"\ entries in my alias file to change the sender address in
3096 outgoing messages to a mailing list.
3097
3098A0428: If you have an alias file with entries like this:
3099
3100==> somelist: a@b, c@d, ...
3101 owner-somelist: postmaster
3102
3103 Sendmail assumes that the second entry specifies a new sender address
3104 for the first. Exim does not make this assumption. However, you can make
3105 it take the same action, by adding
3106
3107==> errors_to = owner-$local_part@whatever.domain
3108
3109 to the configuration for your aliasing router. This is fail-safe,
3110 because Exim verifies a new sender address before using it. Thus, the
3111 change of sender address occurs only when the owner entry exists.
3112
3113
3114Q0429: I would like to deliver mail addressed to a given domain to local
3115 mailboxes, but also to generate messages to the envelope senders.
3116
3117A0429: You can do this with an ``unseen'' router and an \%autoreply%\ transport,
3118 along the following lines:
3119
3120==> # Router
3121 auto_warning_r:
3122 driver = accept
3123 check_local_user
3124 domains = <domains you want to do this for>
3125 condition = ${if eq{$sender_address}{}{no}{yes}}
3126 transport = warning_t
3127 no_verify
3128 unseen
3129
3130 Place this router immediately before the normal \%localuser%\ router. The
3131 \unseen\ option means that the address is still passed on to the next
3132 router. The transport is configured like this:
3133
3134==> # Transport
3135 warning_t:
3136 driver = autoreply
3137 file = /usr/local/mail/warning.txt
3138 file_expand
3139 from = postmaster@your.domain
3140 to = $sender_address
3141 user = exim
3142 subject = Re: Your mail to $local_part@$domain
3143
3144 Note the use of the \condition\ option to avoid attempting to send a
3145 message when there is no sender (that is, when the incoming message is a
3146 bounce message). You can of course extend this to include other
3147 conditions. If you want to log the sending of messages, you can add
3148
3149==> log = /some/file
3150
3151 to the transport and also make use of the \once\ option if you want to
3152 send only one message to each sender.
3153
3154
3155Q0430: Whenever Exim tries to route a local address, it gives a permission
3156 denied error for the \(.forward)\ file, like this:
3157
3158==> 1998-08-10 16:55:32 0z5y2W-0000B8-00 == xxxx@yyy.zzz <xxxx@yyy.zz>
3159 D=userforward defer (-1): failed to open /home/xxxx/.forward
3160 (userforward router): Permission denied (euid=1234 egid=101)
3161
3162A0430: Have you remembered to make Exim setuid \/root/\?
3163
3164
3165Q0431: How do I configure Exim to allow arbitrary extensions in local parts, of
3166 the form \/+extension/\?
3167
3168A0431: Add this pre-condition to the relevant router:
3169
3170==> local_part_suffix = +*
3171
3172 If you want the extensions to be optional, also add the option
3173
3174==> local_part_suffix_optional
3175
3176 When the router runs, \$local_part$\ contains the local part with the
3177 extension removed, and the extension (if any) is in \$local_part_suffix$\.
3178 If you have set \check_local_user\, the test is carried out after the
3179 extension is removed.
3180
3181
3182Q0432: I use NIS for my user data. How can I stop Exim rejecting mail when my
3183 NIS servers are being restarted?
3184
3185A0432: Exim doesn't know that you are using NIS; it just calls the \^^getpwnam()^^\
3186 function, which is routed by nsswitch. Unfortunately, \^^getpwnam()^^\
3187 was never designed to be routed through NIS, and it returns NULL if the
3188 entry is not found or if the connection to the NIS server fails. This
3189 means that Exim cannot tell the difference between ``no such user'' and
3190 ``NIS is down''.
3191
3192 Crutches to help with this problem are \finduser_retries\ in Exim, and
3193 \^nscd^\ on the Unix side, but they are not perfect, and mail can still
3194 be lost. However, Nico Erfurth pointed out that you can create a router
3195 for Exim that tests for the availability of NIS, and force a defer if
3196 NIS is not running:
3197
3198==> check_nis:
3199 driver = redirect
3200 data = ${lookup {$local_part} nis {passwd}{}}
3201
3202 This should be placed before any router that makes any use of NIS,
3203 typically at the start of your local routers. How does it work? If
3204 your NIS server is reachable, the lookup will take place, and whether it
3205 succeeds or fails, the result is an empty strting. This causes the
3206 router to decline, and the address is passed to the following routers.
3207 If your NIS server is down, the lookup defers, and this causes the
3208 router to defer. A verification of an incoming address gets a temporary
3209 rejection, and a delivery is deferred till later.
3210
3211
3212Q0433: How can I arrange for a single address to be processed by \*both*\
3213 \%redirect%\ \*and*\ \%accept%\?
3214
3215A0433: Check out the \unseen\ option.
3216
3217
3218Q0434: How can I redirect all local parts that are not in my system aliases to
3219 a single address? I tried using an asterisk in the system alias file
3220 with an \"lsearch*"\ lookup, but that send \*all*\ messages to the
3221 default address.
3222
3223A0434: If your alias file generates addresses in the local domain, they are
3224 also processed as a potential aliases. For example, suppose this is your
3225 alias file:
3226
3227==> caesar: jc
3228 anthony: ma
3229 *: brutus
3230
3231 The local part \/caesar/\ is aliased to \/jc/\, but that address is then
3232 reprocessed by the routers. As the address is in the local domain, the
3233 alias file is again consulted, and this time the default matches. In
3234 fact after the second aliasing, \/brutus/\ is also processed again from
3235 the start, and is aliased to itself. However, this happens only once,
3236 because the next time, Exim notices that the aliasing router has already
3237 processed \/brutus/\, so the router is skipped in order to avoid
3238 looping.
3239
3240 There are several ways of solving this problem; which one you use
3241 depends on your aliasing data.
3242
3243 (1) If the result of aliasing is always a local user name, that is,
3244 aliasing never generates another alias, you can use the
3245 \redirect_router\ option on the router to specify that processing
3246 the generated addresses must start at the next router. For example:
3247
3248==> redirect_router = userforward
3249
3250 assuming that the next router is called \%userforward%\. This
3251 ensures that there is at most one pass through the aliasing router.
3252
3253 (2) If you cannot rely on aliases generating non-aliases, it is often
3254 easier not to use a default alias, but instead to place a router
3255 such as the one below after all the other local routers (for the
3256 relevant domains):
3257
3258==> catch_unknown:
3259 driver = redirect
3260 domains = ...
3261 data = brutus@$domain
3262
3263 Note that the default aliasing technique works more successfully for
3264 virtual domains (see Q0401) because the generated address for the
3265 default is not usually in the same virtual domain as the incoming
3266 address.
3267
3268
3269Q0435: My alias file contains fully qualified addresses as keys, and some
3270 wildcard domains in the form @foo.bar. Can Exim handle these?
3271
3272A0435: You can handle fully qualified addresses with this router:
3273
3274==> qualified_aliases:
3275 driver = redirect
3276 data = ${lookup{$local_part@$domain}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
3277
3278 (Add any other options you need for the \%redirect%\ router.) Place this
3279 router either before or after the default aliases router that looks up
3280 the local part only. (Or, if you have no unqualified aliases, replace
3281 the default router.)
3282
3283 To handle wildcards in the form @foo.bar you will need yet another
3284 router. (Wildcards of the form *@foo.bar can be handled by an lsearch*@
3285 lookup.) Something like this:
3286
3287==> wildcard_aliases:
3288 driver = redirect
3289 data = ${lookup{@$domain}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
3290
3291 Place this after the routers that handle the more specific aliases.
3292
3293
3294
32955. FILTERING
3296
3297Q0501: My filter isn't working. How can I test it?
3298
3299A0501: Use the \-bf-\ option (\-bF-\ for a system filter) to test the basic operation
3300 of your filter. You can request debugging information for filtering only
3301 by adding \"-d-all+filter"\ to the command.
3302
3303
3304Q0502: What I really need is the ability to obtain the result of a pipe
3305 command so that I can filter externally and redirect internally. Is
3306 this possible?
3307
3308A0502: The result of a pipe command is not available to a filter, because Exim
3309 does not run any actual deliveries while filtering. It just sets up
3310 deliveries at this time. They all actually happen later. If you want to
3311 run pipes and examine their results, you need to set up a single
3312 delivery to a delivery agent such as \^procmail^\ which provides this kind
3313 of facility.
3314
3315 An possible alternative is to use the \"${run"\ expansion item to run an
3316 external command while filtering. In this case, you can make use of some
3317 of the results of the command.
3318
3319
3320Q0503: I received a message with a ::Subject:: line that contained a non-printing
3321 character (a carriage return). This messed up my filter file. Is there a
3322 way to get round it?
3323
3324A0503: Instead of \"$h_subject:"\ use \"${escape:$h_subject:}"\
3325
3326
3327Q0504: I want to search for \"$"\ in the subject line, but I can't seem to get
3328 the syntax.
3329
3330A0504: Try one of these:
3331
3332==> if $h_subject: contains \$ then ...
3333 if $h_subject: contains "\\$" then ...
3334
3335
3336Q0505: My problem is that Exim replaces \$local_part$\ with an empty string in the
3337 system filtering. What's wrong or what did I miss?
3338
3339A0505: A message may have many recipients. The system filter is run just once
3340 at the start of a delivery attempt. Consequently, it does not make sense
3341 to set \$local_part$\. Which recipient should it be set to? However, you
3342 can access all the recipients from a system filter via the variable
3343 called \$recipients$\.
3344
3345
3346Q0506: Using \$recipients$\ in a system filter gives me another problem: how can
3347 I do a string lookup if \$recipients$\ is a list of addresses?
3348
3349A0506: Check out the section of the filter specification called \*Testing a list of
3350 addresses*\. If that doesn't help, you may have to resort to calling an
3351 embedded Perl interpreter - but that is expensive.
3352
3353
3354Q0507: What are the main differences between using an Exim filter and using
3355 \^procmail^\?
3356
3357A0507: Exim filters and \^procmail^\ provide different facilities. Exim filters run
3358 at routing time, before any deliveries are done. A filter is like a
3359 ``\(.forward)\ file with conditions''. One of the benefits is de-duplication.
3360 Another is that if you forward, you are forwarding the original message.
3361
3362 However, this does mean that pipes etc. are not run at filtering time,
3363 nor can you change the headers, because the message may have other
3364 recipients and Exim keeps only a single set of headers.
3365
3366 \^procmail^\ runs at delivery time. This is for one recipient only, and so
3367 it can change headers, run pipes and check the results, etc. However, if
3368 it wants to forward, it has to create a new message containing a copy
3369 of the original message.
3370
3371 It's your choice as to which of these you use. You can of course use
3372 both.
3373
3374
3375Q0508: How can I allow the use of relative paths in users' filter files when
3376 the directories concerned are not available from the password data?
3377
3378A0508: You need to be running Exim 4.11 or later. You can then specify a value
3379 for \$home$\ by setting the router_home_directory option on the
3380 \%redirect%\ router.
3381
3382 For earlier releases, there is no way to specify the value of \$home$\
3383 for a \%redirect%\ router; it either comes from the password data as a
3384 result of \check_local_user\, or is unset.
3385
3386
3387Q0509: How can I set up a filter file to detect and block virus attachments?
3388
3389A0509: Exim's filter facilities aren't powerful enough to do much more than
3390 very crude testing. Most people that want virus checking are nowadays
3391 using one of the separate scanning programs such as \^exiscan^\ (see
3392 \?http://duncanthrax.net/exiscan/?\). There is some further information
3393 about scanning with Exim via \?http://www.timj.co.uk/linux/exim.php?\.
3394
3395
3396Q0510: Is it possible to write code for scanning messages in Python?
3397
3398A0510: \^elspy^\ is a layer of glue code that enables you to write Python code
3399 to scan email messages at SMTP time. \^elspy^\ also includes a small
3400 Python library with common mail-scanning tools, including an interface
3401 to SpamAssassin and a simple but effective virus detector. You can
3402 optain \^elspy^\ from \?http://elspy.sourceforge.net/?\.
3403
3404
3405Q0511: Whenever my system filter uses a \mail\ command to send a message, I get
3406 the error \*User 0 set for address_reply transport is on the never_users
3407 list*\. What does this mean?
3408
3409A0511: The system filter runs as \/root/\ in Exim 4, unless you set
3410 \system_filter_user\ to specify otherwise. When you set up a delivery
3411 direct from a system filter (an autoreply is a special kind of
3412 ``delivery'') the transport runs as the same user, unless it has a
3413 \user\ setting of its own. Normally, deliveries are not allowed to run
3414 as \/root/\ as a security precaution; this is implemented by the
3415 \never_users\ option.
3416
3417 The easiest solution is to add this to your configuration:
3418
3419==> system_filter_user = exim
3420
3421 The system filter then runs as \/exim/\ instead of \/root/\.
3422 Alternatively, you can arrange for autoreplies from the system filter to
3423 use a special transport of their own, and set the \user\ option on that
3424 transport.
3425
3426
3427Q0512: I'm trying to reference the ::Envelope-To:: header in my filter, but
3428 \$h_envelope-to:$\ is always empty.
3429
3430A0512: ::Envelope-To:: is added at delivery time, by the transport. Therefore,
3431 the header doesn't exist at filter time. In a user filter, the values
3432 you probably want are in \$original_local_part$\ and
3433 \$original_domain$\. In a system filter, the complete list of all
3434 envelope recipients is in \$recipients$\.
3435
3436
3437Q0513: I want my system filter to freeze all mails greater than 500K in size,
3438 but to exclude those to a specific domain. However, I don't seem to be
3439 able to use \$domain$\ in a system filter.
3440
3441A0513: You cannot do this in a system filter, because a single message may have
3442 multiple recipients, some in the special domain, and some not. That is
3443 also the reason why \$domain$\ is not set in a system filter.
3444
3445 If you want to take actions on a per-recipient basis, you have to do it
3446 in a router. However, freezing is not appropriate, because freezing
3447 stops all deliveries. You could, however, delay delivery to all but the
3448 special domains by using something like this:
3449
3450==> delay_if_too_big:
3451 driver = redirect
3452 domains = !the.special.domain
3453 condition = ${if >{$message_size}{500K}{yes}{no}}
3454 allow_defer
3455 data = :defer: message too big.
3456
3457 However, there isn't an easy way of ``releasing'' such messages at
3458 present.
3459
3460
3461Q0514: When I try to send to two addresses I get an error in the filter
3462 file \*malformed address: , e@fgh.com may not follow a@bcd.com*\. What
3463 is going on?
3464
3465A0514: Have you got
3466
3467==> deliver "a@bcd.com, e@fgh.com"
3468
3469 in your filter? If so, that is your problem. You should have
3470
3471==> deliver a@bcd.com
3472 deliver e@fgh.com
3473
3474 Each \deliver\ command expects just one address.
3475
3476
3477
34786. DELIVERY
3479
3480Q0601: What does the error \*Neither the xxx router nor the yyy transport set
3481 a uid for local delivery of...*\ mean?
3482
3483A0601: Whenever Exim does a local delivery, it runs a process under a specific
3484 user and group id (uid and gid). For deliveries into mailboxes, and to
3485 pipes and files set up by forwarding, it normally picks up the uid/gid
3486 of the receiving user. However, if an address is directed to a pipe or a
3487 file by some other means, such an entry in the system alias file of the
3488 form
3489
3490==> majordomo: |/local/mail/majordomo ...
3491
3492 then Exim has to be told what uid/gid to use for the delivery. This can
3493 be done either on the routerr that handles the address, or on the
3494 transport that actually does the delivery. If a pipe is going to run a
3495 setuid program, then it doesn't matter what uid Exim starts it out with,
3496 and so the most straightforward thing is to put
3497
3498==> user = exim
3499
3500 on either the router or the transport. A setting on the transport
3501 overrides a setting on the router, so if the same transport is being
3502 used with several routers, you should set the user on it only if you
3503 want the same uid to be used in all cases.
3504
3505 In the default configuration, the transports used for file and pipe
3506 deliveries are the ones called \address_file\ and \address_pipe\. You
3507 can specify different transports by setting, for example,
3508
3509==> pipe_transport = special_pipe_transport
3510
3511 on the \%system_aliases%\ router. Then you can set up \%special_pipe_transport%\
3512
3513==> special_pipe_transport:
3514 driver = pipe
3515 user = ????
3516
3517 which will be used only for pipe deliveries from that one router.
3518 What you put for the ???? is up to you, and depends on the particular
3519 circumstances.
3520
3521
3522Q0602: Exim keeps crashing with segmentation errors (signal 11 or 139) during
3523 delivery. This seems to happen when it is about to contact a remote
3524 host or when a delivery is deferred.
3525
3526A0602: This could be a problem with Exim's databases. Try running a delivery
3527 with debugging turned on. If the last line of the debug output is
3528 something like this:
3529
3530==> locked /var/spool/exim/db/retry.lockfile
3531
3532 the crash is happening inside the DBM library. Check that your DBM
3533 library is correctly installed. In particular, if you have installed a
3534 second DBM library onto a system that already had one, check that its
3535 version of \(ndbm.h)\ is being seen first. For example, if the new
3536 version is in \(/usr/local/include)\, check that there isn't another
3537 version in \(/usr/include)\. If you are using Berkeley db, you can set
3538
3539==> USE_DB=yes
3540
3541 in your \(Local/Makefile)\ to avoid using \(ndbm.h)\ altogether. This is
3542 particularly relevant for version 2 (or later) of Berkeley db, because
3543 no \(ndbm.h)\ file is distributed with it. Another thing you can try is
3544 to run
3545
3546==> exim_dumpdb /var/spool/exim retry
3547
3548 to see if it also crashes, or build the \^test_dbfn^\ tool and fiddle
3549 around with it. If both fail, it is most almost certainly a problem with
3550 your DBM library. You could try to update it, or force Exim to use
3551 another library. See the file \(doc/dbm.discuss.txt)\ for hints about
3552 this.
3553
3554
3555Q0603: How can mails that are being routed through routers that do not set
3556 \check_local_user\ be delivered under the uid of the recipient?
3557
3558A0603: Q0601 contains background information on this. If you are using, say, an
3559 alias file to direct messages to specific mailboxes, you can use
3560 the \user\ option on either the router or the transport to set the uid.
3561 What you put in the setting depends on how the required uid is to be
3562 found. It could be looked up in a file or computed somehow from the
3563 local part, for example.
3564
3565
3566Q0604: I want to use MMDF-style mailboxes. How can I get Exim to append the
3567 ctrl-A characters that separate indvidual emails?
3568
3569A0604: Set the \message_suffix\ option in the \%appendfile%\ transport. In fact,
3570 for MMDF mailboxes you need a prefix as well as a suffix to get it
3571 working right, so your transport should contain these settings:
3572
3573==> message_prefix = "\1\1\1\1\n"
3574 message_suffix = "\1\1\1\1\n"
3575
3576 Also, you need to change the \check_string\ and \escape_string\ settings so
3577 that the escaping happens for lines in the message that happen to begin
3578 with the MMDF prefix or suffix string, rather than ``From'' (the default):
3579
3580==> check_string = "\1\1\1\1\n"
3581 escape_string = "\1\1\1\1 \n"
3582
3583 Adding a space to the line is sufficient to prevent it being taken as a
3584 separator.
3585
3586
3587Q0605: If a user's mailbox is over quota, is there a way for me to set it up so
3588 that the mail bounces to the sender and is not stored in the mail queue?
3589
3590A0605: In the retry section of the configuration, put
3591
3592==> *@your.dom.ain quota
3593
3594 That is, provide no retry timings for over quota errors. They will then
3595 bounce immediately. Alternatively, you can set up retries for a short
3596 time only, or use something like this:
3597
3598==> *@your.dom.ain quota_7d
3599 *@your.dom.ain quota F,2h,15m; F,3d,1h
3600
3601 which bounces immediately if the user's mailbox hasn't been read for 7
3602 days, but otherwise tries for up to 3 days after the first quota
3603 failure.
3604
3605
3606Q0606: I'm using tmail to do local deliveries, but when I turned on the
3607 \use_crlf\ option on the \%pipe%\ transport (tmail prefers \"@\r@\n"\
3608 terminations) message bodies started to vanish.
3609
3610A0606: You need to unset the \mesage_prefix\ option, or change it so that its
3611 default \"@\n"\ terminator becomes \"@\r@\n"\. For example, the
3612 transport could be:
3613
3614==> local_delivery_mbx:
3615 driver = pipe
3616 command = /usr/local/bin/tmail $local_part
3617 user = exim
3618 current_directory = /
3619 use_crlf
3620 message_prefix =
3621
3622 The reason for this is as follows: tmail uses the line terminator on
3623 the first line it sees to determine whether lines are terminated by
3624 \"@\r@\n"\ or \"@\n"\. If the latter, it moans to stderr and changes subsequent
3625 \"@\n"\ terminators to \"@\r@\n"\. The default setting of the \message_prefix\
3626 option is \"From ...@\n"\, and this is unaffected by the \use_crlf\ option.
3627 If you don't change this, tmail sees the first line terminated by
3628 \"@\n"\ and prepends \"@\r"\ to the \"@\n"\ terminator on all subsequent
3629 lines. However, if \use_crlf\ is set, Exim makes all other lines
3630 \"@\r@\n"\ terminated, leading to doubled \"@\r@\r@\n"\ lines and
3631 corrupt mbx mailboxes.
3632
3633
3634Q0607: When I activate ``return receipt'' for example in Netscape Mailbox
3635 sending options, then I get an error message from Exim... something
3636 like \*not supported*\. Can I activate delivery confirmations?
3637
3638A0607: Exim does not support any kind of delivery notification.
3639
3640 (1) You can configure it to recognize headers such as
3641 \Return-receipt-to:\ if you wish.
3642
3643 (2) Some people want MSN (message status notification). Such services
3644 are implemented in MUAs, and don't impact on the MTA at all.
3645
3646 (3) I investigated the RFCs which describe the DSN (delivery status
3647 notification) system. However, I was unable to specify any sensible way
3648 of actually doing anything with the data. There were comments on the
3649 mailing list at the time; many people, including me, conclude that DSN
3650 is in practice unworkable. The killer problem is with forwarding and
3651 aliasing. Do you propagate the DSN data with the generated addresses?
3652 Do you send back a ``reached end of the DSN world'' or ``expanded'' message?
3653 Do you do this differently for different kinds of aliasing/forwarding?
3654 For a user who has a \(.forward)\ file with a single address in, this
3655 might seem easy - just propagate the data. But what if there are several
3656 forwardings? If you propagate the DSN data, the sender may get back
3657 several DSN messages - and should the sender really know about the
3658 detail of the receiver's forwarding arrangements? There isn't really
3659 any way to distinguish between a \(.forward)\ file that is forwarding
3660 and one that is a mini mailing list. And so on, and so on. There are so
3661 many questions that don't have obvious answers.
3662
3663
3664Q0608: What does the message \*retry time not reached [for any host]*\ on the log
3665 mean? Why won't Exim try to deliver the message?
3666
3667A0608: That is not an error. It means exactly what it says. A previous attempt
3668 to deliver to that address failed with a temporary error, and Exim
3669 computed the earliest time at which to try again. This can apply to
3670 local as well as to remote deliveries. For remote deliveries, each host
3671 (if there are several) has its own retry time.
3672
3673 If you are running on a dial-up host, the rest of this answer probably
3674 does not apply to you. Go and read Q1404 instead. If your host is
3675 permanently online, read on...
3676
3677 Some MTAs have a retrying schedule for each message. Exim does not work
3678 like this. Retry timing is normally host-based for remote deliveries and
3679 address-based for local deliveries. (There are some exceptions for certain
3680 kinds of remote failure - see \*Errors in outgoing SMTP*\ in the manual.)
3681
3682 If a new message arrives for a failing address and the retry time has
3683 not yet arrived, Exim will log \*retry time not reached*\ and leave the
3684 message on the queue, without attempting delivery. Similarly, if a queue
3685 runner notices the message before the time to retry has arrived, it
3686 writes the same log entry. When the retry time has past, Exim attempts
3687 delivery at the next queue run. If you want to know when that will be,
3688 run the exinext utility on the address, for example:
3689
3690==> exinext user@some.domain
3691
3692 You can suppress these messages on the log by including \"-retry_defer"\
3693 in the setting of \log_selector\. You can force a delivery attempt on a
3694 specific message (overriding the retry time) by means of the -M option:
3695
3696==> exim -M 10hCET-0000Bf-00
3697
3698 If you want to do this for the entire queue, use the \-qf-\ option.
3699
3700
3701Q0609: Exim seems to be sending the same message twice, according to the log,
3702 although there is a difference in capitalization of the local part of
3703 the address.
3704
3705A0609: That is correct. The RFCs are explicit in stating that capitalization
3706 matters for local parts. For remote domains, Exim is not entitled to
3707 assume case independence of local parts. I know, it is utterly silly,
3708 and it causes a lot of grief, but that's what the rules say. Here is a
3709 quote from RFC 2821:
3710
3711 ... a command verb, an argument value other than a mailbox local-part,
3712 and free form text MAY be encoded in upper case, lower case, or any
3713 mixture of upper and lower case with no impact on its meaning. This
3714 is NOT true of a mailbox local-part. The local-part of a mailbox
3715 MUST BE treated as case sensitive. Therefore, SMTP implementations
3716 MUST take care to preserve the case of mailbox local-parts. Mailbox
3717 domains are not case sensitive. In particular, for some hosts the
3718 user "smith" is different from the user "Smith". However, exploiting
3719 the case sensitivity of mailbox local-parts impedes interoperability
3720 and is discouraged.
3721
3722
3723Q0610: How can I force the next retry time for a host to be now?
3724
3725A0610: You can change the retry time with the \^exim_fixdb^\ utility, but its
3726 interface is very clumsy. If you have a message for the host on the
3727 queue, the simplest thing to do is to force a delivery with the \-M-\
3728 command line option. If delivery succeeds, the retry data will get
3729 cleared. If the host is past the cutoff time, so that messages are
3730 bouncing immediately without trying a delivery, you can use \-odq-\ to
3731 put a message on the queue without a delivery attempt, and then use
3732 \-M-\ on it.
3733
3734
3735Q0611: I set up \"|/bin/grep Subject|/usr/bin/smbclient -M <netbiosname>"\ as an
3736 alias but it doesn't work.
3737
3738A0611: That is a shell command line. Exim does not run pipe commands under a
3739 shell by default (for added security - and it saves a process). You
3740 need something like
3741
3742==> "|/bin/sh -c '/bin/grep Subject|/usr/bin/smbclient -M <netbiosname>'"
3743
3744
3745Q0612: Why does the \%pipe%\ transport add a line starting with \">From"\ to
3746 messages?
3747
3748A0612: Actually, it adds a line starting with \"From"\ followed by a space.
3749 This is commonly referred to as the \"From_"\ line, to emphasize the
3750 fact that \"From"\ is followed by a space and not a colon. This is a
3751 pseudo-header line that contains the envelope sender address and the
3752 time of delivery. It originated as a separator line in Berkeley format
3753 mailboxes, but is also used in other contexts. (And yes, it is often
3754 confused with the ::From:: header line, and this causes a lot of grief.
3755 The use of \"From_"\ was one of the really bad email design decisions.)
3756
3757 Exim's \%pipe%\ transport adds this pseudo-header line by default
3758 because \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ needs it, and that is one of the the most
3759 common uses of piping. The \^procmail^\ local delivery agent also makes
3760 use of the \"From_"\ line. If you do not want it, change the setting of
3761 \message_prefix\ on the \%pipe%\ transport. For example, to remove the
3762 line altogether, use
3763
3764==> message_prefix =
3765
3766 If you are not piping to \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ or \^procmail^\, it is
3767 likely that you do not need a \"From_"\ line, and indeed it may cause
3768 problems if it is present.
3769
3770 One user reported that this line gave trouble when a pipe was used to
3771 send messages to Courier's \^deliverquota^\ program. The line was
3772 retained with the message, and caused problems for MS Exchange 2000 when
3773 retrieving messages with its built-in POP collector. Specifically, it
3774 caused Exchange to not be able to recognise message attachments.
3775
3776
3777Q0613: I have set \fallback_hosts\ on my \%smtp%\ transport, but after the error
3778 \*sem@chat.ru cannot be resolved at this time*\ Exim isn't using them.
3779
3780A0613: \fallback_hosts\ works only if an attempt at delivery to the original
3781 host(s) fails. In this case, Exim couldn't even resolve the domain
3782 \(chat.ru)\ to discover what the original hosts were, so it never got as far
3783 as the transport. However, see Q0315 for a possible solution.
3784
3785
3786Q0614: After the holidays my ISP has always hundreds of e-mails waiting for me.
3787 These are forced down Exim's throat in one go. Exim spawns a lot of
3788 kids, but is there some limit to the number of processes it creates?
3789
3790A0614: Unless you have changed \smtp_accept_queue_per_connection\ it should
3791 spawn only that many processes per connection (default 10). Your ISP
3792 may be making many connections, of course. That is limited by
3793 \smtp_accept_max\.
3794
3795
3796Q0615: When a message in the queue got to 12h old, Exim wrote \*retry timeout
3797 exceeded*\ and removed all messages in the queue to this host - even
3798 recent messages. How I can avoid this behaviour? I only want to remove
3799 messages that have exceeded the maximum retry time.
3800
3801A0615: Exim's retrying is host-based rather than message-based. The philosophy
3802 is that if a host has been down for a very long time, there is no point
3803 in keeping messages hanging around. However, you might like to check
3804 out \delay_after_cutoff\ in the \%smtp%\ transport. It doesn't do what you
3805 want, but it might help.
3806
3807
3808Q0616: Can Exim add a ::Content-Length:: header to messages it delivers?
3809
3810A0616: You could include something like
3811
3812==> headers_remove = "content-length"
3813 headers_add = "Content-Length: $message_body_size"
3814
3815 to the \%appendfile%\ transport. However, the use of ::Content-Length:: can
3816 cause several problems, and is not recommended unless you really know
3817 what you are doing. There is a discussion of the problems in
3818 \?http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/content-length.html?\.
3819
3820
3821Q0617: Exim seems to be trying to deliver a message every 10 minutes, though
3822 the retry rules specify longer times after a while, because it is
3823 writing a log entry every time, like this:
3824
3825==> 1999-08-26 14:51:19 11IVsE-000MuP-00 == example@example.com T=smtp defer
3826 (-34): some host address lookups failed and retry time not reached for
3827 other hosts or connection limit reached
3828
3829A0617: It is looking at the message every 10 minutes, but it isn't actually
3830 trying to deliver. It's looking up \(example.com)\ in the DNS and finding
3831 this information:
3832
3833==> example.com. MX 10 example-com.isp.example.com.
3834 example.com. MX 0 mail.example.com.
3835 mail.example.com. A 202.77.183.45
3836 A lookup for example-com.isp.example.com. yielded NXDOMAIN
3837
3838 The last line means that there is no address (A) record in the DNS for
3839 \(example-com.isp.example.com)\. That accounts for \*some host address
3840 lookups failed*\, but the retry time for \(mail.example.com)\ hasn't been
3841 reached, which accounts for \*retry time not reached for other hosts*\.
3842
3843
3844Q0618: I am trying to set exim up to have a automatic failover if it sees that
3845 the system that it is sending all mail to is down.
3846
3847A0618: Add to the \%remote_smtp%\ transport the following:
3848
3849==> fallback_hosts = failover.server.name(s)
3850
3851 If there are several names, they must be separated by colons.
3852
3853
3854Q0619: I can't get Exim to deliver over NFS. I get the error \*fcntl() failed:
3855 No locks available*\, though the lock daemon is running on the NFS server
3856 and other hosts are able to access it.
3857
3858A0619: Check that you have \(lockd)\ running on the NFS client. This is not
3859 always running by default on some systems (Red Hat is believed to be one
3860 such system).
3861
3862
3863Q0620: Why does Exim bounce messages without even attempting delivery, giving
3864 the error \*retry time not reached for any host after a long failure
3865 period*\?
3866
3867A0620: This message means that all hosts to which the message could be sent
3868 have been failing for so long that the end of the retry period
3869 (typically 4 or 5 days) has been reached. In this situation, Exim still
3870 computes a next time to retry, but any messages that arrive in the
3871 meantime are bounced straight away. You can alter this behaviour by
3872 unsetting the \delay_after_cutoff\ option on the smtp transport. Then Exim
3873 will try most messages for those hosts once before giving up.
3874
3875
3876Q0621: My \(.forward)\ file is \"|/usr/bin/procmail -f-"\ and mail gets delivered,
3877 but there was a bounce to the sender, sending him the output of procmail.
3878 How can I prevent this?
3879
3880A0621: Exim's default configuration is set up like this:
3881
3882==> address_pipe:
3883 driver = pipe
3884 return_output
3885
3886 The \return_output\ option requests that any output that the pipe
3887 produces be returned to the sender. That is the safest default. If you
3888 don't want this, you can either remove the option altogether, or change
3889 it to \return_fail_output\, to return output only if the command fails.
3890 Note that this will affect all pipes that users run, not just your
3891 procmail one. It might be better to arrange for procmail not to produce
3892 any output when it succeeds.
3893
3894
3895Q0622: Can I write an ordinary file when I run a perl script as a transport
3896 filter for the \%remote_smtp%\ and \%address_pipe%\ transports?
3897
3898A0622: Yes, provided the file is writeable by the uid under which the transport
3899 runs (the Exim user in the case of the remote transport). However, if two
3900 messages are being delivered at once, their data will get mixed up in
3901 the file unless you implement your own locking scheme. If all you want
3902 to do is to take a copy of the message, another approach that avoids
3903 the locking problem is to use a system filter to set up an ``unseen''
3904 delivery to a file. If you only want the message's headers, you can
3905 set \message_filter_file_transport\ to point to a special \%appendfile%\
3906 transport that has \headers_only\ set.
3907
3908
3909Q0623: My \(/var/spool/mail)\ has grown drastically. Is there any possibility of
3910 using two directories?
3911
3912A0623: You can use an expansion string to split mailboxes between two
3913 directories. For example,
3914
3915==> file = /var/spool/mail${nhash_2:$local_part}/$local_part
3916
3917 which does a hash on the local part, producing either 0 or 1, thereby
3918 using \(mail0) or \(mail1)\. But remember, the MUAs that read these mailboxes
3919 also have to know where they are.
3920
3921
3922Q0624: Sendmail has a program called \^smrsh^\ that restricts what binaries
3923 can be run from sendmail aliases. Is there something like this in Exim ?
3924
3925A0624: Check out the \allow_commands\ option in the \%pipe%\ transport.
3926
3927
3928Q0625: I wish to have large emails go out one at a time.
3929
3930A0625: One possibility is to set up a router that defers all large messages,
3931 except in queue runs. Since queue runners deliver just one
3932 message at a time, if you limited the number of simultaneous queue
3933 runners to 1, you would get the effect you wanted. A suitable router
3934 might be
3935
3936==> defer_if_large_unless_queue_run:
3937 driver = redirect
3938 condition = ${if or{{queue_running}{<{$message_size}{200K}}}{no}{yes}}
3939 allow_defer
3940 data = :defer: too large for immediate delivery
3941 no_verify
3942
3943 Of course, this would always delay any large message until the next
3944 queue runner, but if you run them fairly regularly, this shouldn't be a
3945 huge problem, and may even be desirable. Note the use of \no_verify\ to
3946 ensure that this router is not used when Exim is verifying addresses.
3947
3948
3949Q0626: Exim can route local parts independent of their case, but the Cyrus LMTP
3950 daemon requires the correct case. How can I fix this?
3951
3952A0626: You need to rewrite the local part to the correct case before running
3953 the router that routes to Cyrus. For example, if you require all lower
3954 case, and your router is called \local_user\, put this router in front
3955 of it:
3956
3957==> lowercase_local:
3958 driver = redirect
3959 redirect_router = local_user
3960 domains = +local_domains
3961 data = ${lc:$local_part}@$domain
3962
3963 The setting of \redirect_router\ causes processing of the rewritten
3964 address to start at the next router, instead of the first router. See
3965 also Q0630, and C045 for a more complete Cyrus configuration.
3966
3967
3968Q0627: Is there a command I can send to Exim to retry all queued messages
3969 regardless of their retry schedule?
3970
3971A0627: The \-qff-\ option starts a queue runner that forces a delivery attempt
3972 for all messages, including frozen ones. If you use \-qf-\, frozen
3973 messages are skipped.
3974
3975
3976Q0628: I have the default retry rule, which I thought meant that Exim should
3977 keep trying for four days, but it seems to be bouncing some messages
3978 immediately.
3979
3980A0628: See Q0615 and Q0620.
3981
3982
3983Q0629: I'm having trouble with quotas and Courier, because Exim is not handling
3984 maildirsize files.
3985
3986A0629: You will do better to move the quota handling to Courier. Use \^maildrop^\
3987 as your MDA rather than direct Exim delivery. This also has the
3988 advantage that if you give web access to the mail spool (over \^sqwebmail^\)
3989 you can then use the web front end to edit \^maildrop^\ filter files.
3990
3991
3992Q0630: How can I configure Exim to deliver to a Cyrus message store?
3993
3994A0630: (1) The reference manual contains an example that uses pipe delivery.
3995
3996 (2) Here is a transport that uses LMTP delivery, assuming that
3997 \$local_part$\ contains the username:
3998
3999==> cyrus_inbox:
4000 driver =lmtp
4001 user = cyrus
4002 socket = /var/cyrus/socket/lmtp
4003
4004 (3) This is a transport that delivers direct to a non-inbox mailbox:
4005
4006==> cyrus_mailbox:
4007 driver = pipe
4008 user = $local_part
4009 message_prefix =
4010 message_suffix =
4011 log_fail_output
4012 return_output
4013 command = "/usr/cyrus/bin/deliver -a $local_part \
4014 -m <mailbox-name> $local_part"
4015
4016 This delivers to the Cyrus mailbox \"user.$local_part.<mailbox-name>"\.
4017 Using \"user = $local_part"\ and \"-a $local_part"\ makes it work
4018 without needing an explicit `p' ACL set for `anyone' on the mailbox.
4019
4020
4021Q0631: I would like to choose a retry rule based on on the sender rather than
4022 the recipient address. Is this possible?
4023
4024A0631: Yes. The address part of a retry rule is matched as a single-item
4025 address list. Such lists are always expanded, so you can use something
4026 like this:
4027
4028==> "${if eq{$sender_address}{xxx}{*@*}{no@no}}" quota F,1h,10m; ...
4029
4030 If the sender address is ``xxx'', the pattern expands to ``*@*'', which
4031 matches all recipient addresses; if you want to, you can make this a
4032 more restrictive pattern. If the sender address is not ``xxx'', the
4033 pattern expands to ``no@no'', which is assumed to be a recipient address
4034 that can never match, so the retry rule is skipped.
4035
4036
4037Q0632: What does the error \*User 1 set for local_mbx_delivery transport is on
4038 the never_users list*\ mean?
4039
4040A0632: You have configured the \%local_mbx_delivery%\ to run as the user whose
4041 id (uid) is 1. However, this user is on the list defined by the
4042 \never_users\ runtime option, or the \\FIXED_NEVER_USERS\\ compile-time
4043 option. These are ``safety catch'' lists; Exim refuses to deliver to any
4044 user that is on them. The most common use of \never_users\ is to avoid
4045 doing any deliveries as \/root/\, but it can contain other uids.
4046
4047
4048Q0633: Why is \$domain$\ not set in the \%smtp%\ transport?
4049
4050A0633: The \%smtp%\ transport can handle several recipient addresses at once.
4051 This happens by default if the host lists for the addresses are
4052 identical. A single copy of the message is sent, using multiple \\RCPT\\
4053 commands to transmit multiple envelope recipients. The \$domain$\
4054 variable is set in the \%smtp%\ transport only if all the recipient
4055 addresses have the same domain. You must have a case where several
4056 addresses with different domains resolve to the same set of hosts.
4057
4058 If you want to restrict the transport so that it handles only a single
4059 domain at once (but still possibly with more than one recipient), set
4060
4061==> multi_domain = false
4062
4063 If you want to restrict the transport so that it handles only a single
4064 address at once, set
4065
4066==> max_rcpt = 1
4067
4068
4069Q0634: How can I stop a local transport from trying to access the user's home
4070 directory, even when the delivery is to a file that is elsewhere?
4071
4072A0634: See answer (2) for Q0423.
4073
4074
4075Q0635: The log message \*error ignored*\ appears after some delivery failures.
4076 What does it mean?
4077
4078A0635: This message is written when Exim fails to deliver a bounce message whose
4079 age is greater than \ignore_bounce_errors_after\. It indicates that the
4080 failing bounce message has been discarded.
4081
4082 The same message is written after failed deliveries when a filter file
4083 uses the \noerror\ feature when setting up a delivery, or if a router
4084 has the setting
4085
4086==> errors_to = <>
4087
4088 Both of these specify that delivery failures are to be discarded.
4089
4090
4091
40927. POLICY CONTROLS
4093
4094Q0701: How do I block unwanted messages from outside my host?
4095
4096A0701: Exim uses Access Control Lists (ACLs) for controlling incoming mail from
4097 other hosts. A whole chapter in the reference manual is devoted to
4098 describing how they work. A wide variety of conditions can be imposed on
4099 incoming messages.
4100
4101 The default Exim run time configuration contains an example of an ACL
4102 which blocks all relaying, and messages whose senders cannot be
4103 verified. This example is heavily commented and worth studying.
4104
4105
4106Q0702: I don't want to block spam entirely; how can I inspect each message
4107 before deciding whether or not to deliver it?
4108
4109A0702: Wherever possible, inspection and rejection is best done automatically
4110 in an ACL, that is, before the message is accepted. If you want to
4111 verify manually each message that is classified as spam by an automatic
4112 check, you can arrange for a system filter to freeze such messages after
4113 they have been accepted.
4114
4115 If, after inspection, you decide not to deliver the message, it is
4116 safest to discard it, using the \-Mrm-\ option. Use of the \-Mg-\ option
4117 to force a bounce carries the risk of ``collateral spam'' if the sender
4118 address is faked.
4119
4120
4121Q0703: How can I test that my spam blocks are working?
4122
4123A0703: The \-bh-\ option allows you to run a testing SMTP session as if from a
4124 given IP address. For example,
4125
4126==> exim -bh 192.168.178.39
4127
4128 In addition to the normal SMTP replies, it outputs commentary about
4129 which tests have succeeded or failed. If you are not interested in the
4130 details, but just want to know if a particular sender at a particular IP
4131 address is able to mail to a particular recipient, you can use the
4132 \exim_checkaccess\ utility, which provides a ``packaged'' version of
4133 \-bh-\. You call it like this:
4134
4135==> exim_checkaccess 192.168.53.23 recip@my.domain -f sender@some.domain
4136
4137 If you don't give a sender, \"<>"\ is used (that it, it acts like a
4138 bounce message).
4139
4140
4141Q0704: How can I test that Exim is correctly configured to use the Realtime
4142 Blackhole List (RBL)?
4143
4144A0704: The \-bh-\ option allows you to run a testing SMTP session as if from a
4145 given address. The \^exim_checkaccess^\ utility provides a more packaged
4146 version of this facility. You need to know a blocked IP address with
4147 which to test. Such a testing address is kindly provided by Russell
4148 Nelson:
4149
4150==> linux.crynwr.com [192.203.178.39]
4151
4152 You can also send mail to \(nelson@linux.crynwr.com)\ from the server
4153 whose RBL block you are testing. The robot that receives that email
4154 will attempt to send a piece of test email in reply. If your RBL block
4155 didn't work, you get a message to that effect. Regardless of whether the
4156 RBL block succeeds or not, it emails you the results of the SMTP
4157 conversation from a host that is not on the RBL, so you can see how your
4158 server looks from the view of someone on the RBL.
4159
4160
4161Q0705: How can I use tcpwrappers in conjunction with Exim?
4162
4163A0705: Exim's own control facilities can do all that tcpwrappers can do.
4164 However, if you are already using tcpwrappers for other things it might
4165 be convenient to include Exim controls in the same place.
4166
4167 First of all, ensure that Exim is built to call the tcpwrappers library,
4168 by including \\USE_TCPWRAPPERS=yes\\ in \(Local/Makefile)\. You also need to
4169 ensure that the header file \(tcpd.h)\ is available at compile time, and the
4170 \(libwrap.a)\ library is available at link time, typically by including it in
4171 \\EXTRALIBS\\. You may need to copy these two files from the tcpwrappers
4172 build directory to, for example, \(/usr/local/include)\ and \(/usr/local/lib)\,
4173 respectively. Then you could reference them by
4174
4175==> CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include
4176 EXTRALIBS=-L/usr/local/lib -lwrap
4177
4178 in \(Local/Makefile)\. There are two ways to make use of the functionality,
4179 depending on how you have tcpwrappers set up. If you have it set up to
4180 use only one file, you ought to have something like:
4181
4182==> /etc/hosts.allow:
4183
4184==> exim : <client_list> : <allow_or_deny>
4185
4186 For example:
4187
4188==> exim : LOCAL 192.168.0. .friendly.domain special.host : ALLOW
4189 exim : ALL : DENY
4190
4191 This allows connections from local hosts (chiefly //localhost//), from
4192 the subnet 192.168.0.0/24, from all hosts in \(*.friendly.domain)\, and
4193 from a specific host called \(special.host)\. All other connections are
4194 denied. If you have tcpwrappers set up to use two files, use the
4195 following:
4196
4197==> /etc/hosts.allow:
4198
4199==> exim : <client_list>
4200
4201==> /etc/hosts.deny:
4202
4203==> exim : <client_list>
4204
4205 Read the \^hosts_access^\ man page for more ways of specifying clients,
4206 including ports, etc., and on logging connections.
4207
4208
4209Q0706: How can I get POP-auth-before-relay (aka POP-before-SMTP) support in
4210 Exim?
4211
4212A0706: Exim 4 supports the ``whoson'' (\?http://whoson.sourceforge.net?\)
4213 facility for doing this. If you set this up, you can do the check in an
4214 Exim ACL by a statement like this:
4215
4216==> require condition = \
4217 ${lookup whoson {$sender_host_address}{yes}{no}}
4218
4219 Otherwise you need to arrange for a list of permitted IP addresses to be
4220 maintained in a file or database, and use this in a \hosts\ condition in
4221 an ACL statement. An Exim user has published this recipe:
4222
4223 \#\#\#\#\?http://www.zeiss.cx/memo/computer/linux/email/exim-s-a-p.html?\
4224
4225 Another Exim user submitted the following idea:
4226
4227 Use a script to grab authenticated IP addresses from the log files of
4228 the POP3 and IMAP4 daemons. These are used to create files in the
4229 directory tree \(/var/db/popb4smtp)\. The existence of a file represents a
4230 valid ``popped recently token'' for the IP address used as the filename.
4231
4232 Another script periodically removes stale files from the tree (after two
4233 hours). There's a small race condition here; it's possible for a file
4234 to be deleted just after it has been updated by the script that watches
4235 the logs. For low-volume servers, the odds of hitting this window are
4236 low.
4237
4238 A POPB4SMTP_CLIENT macro in the Exim configure file provides a reusable
4239 ``has this sender popped recently?'' query:
4240
4241==> POPB4SMTP_SUBDIR = /var/db/popb4smtp/${substr_-1_1:$sender_host_address}
4242 POPB4SMTP_CLIENT = ${if exists {POPB4SMTP_SUBDIR/$sender_host_address} \
4243 {$sender_host_address} {0} }
4244
4245 Now you can use it just about anywhere, including in your ACLs. Simple
4246 examples include:
4247
4248==> hostlist relay_hosts = 127.0.0.1/32 : ... : POPB4SMTP_CLIENT
4249 host_lookup = !127.0.0.1/32 : ... : !POPB4SMTP_CLIENT
4250 rfc1413_hosts = !127.0.0.1/32 : ... : !POPB4SMTP_CLIENT
4251
4252 The two scripts (and a FreeBSD startup script for them) are available
4253 for download at:
4254
4255 \#\#\#\#\?http://people.FreeBSD.org/~sheldonh/popb4smtp-nodb.tar.gz?\
4256
4257
4258Q0707: I have one or two cases where my host correctly rejects messages, but
4259 the remote host is quite persistent, and keeps trying over and over.
4260
4261A0707: It is an unfortunate fact that a number of SMTP clients, in violation of
4262 the SMTP RFC, do not treat a permanent error code that is given after
4263 the DATA portion of the transaction as a permanent error. Consequently
4264 they keep resending the message, and the worst offenders do so at very
4265 short intervals.
4266
4267 The only way to stop such behaviour is to blacklist the IP address, or
4268 the envelope sender, or both, in such a way that future messages get
4269 rejected at RCPT time instead of at DATA time. You could also complain
4270 to the remote host's administrators.
4271
4272
4273Q0708: How can I run customized verification checks on incoming addresses?
4274
4275A0708: There are a number of possibilities:
4276
4277 (1) If you can implement your checks in Perl, you can use Exim's
4278 facility for running an embedded Perl interpreter. For example, if you
4279 want to run special checks on local addresses, you could use ACL
4280 an statement like this:
4281
4282==> require domains = my.local.domain
4283 condition = ${perl{verify}{$local_part}}
4284
4285 The result of the Perl function should be ``yes'' or ``no''.
4286
4287 (2) You could also run an external program in a similar way, by a
4288 statement such as:
4289
4290==> require domains = my.local.domain
4291 condition = ${run{/my/verifier $local_part}}
4292
4293 This requires the use of another process, so could prove more expensive
4294 than Perl.
4295
4296 (3) If you are prepared to write C code, read the chapter in the manual
4297 entitled \*Adding a local scan function to Exim*\.
4298
4299
4300Q0709: Does Exim apply RBL checks to error messages, those with an envelope
4301 sender of \"<>"\ ?
4302
4303A0709: This depends on the ACL configuration. You can test for bounce messages
4304 (by looking for an empty sender address) and thereby exclude them from
4305 RBL checking if you want. This ACL statement does that:
4306
4307==> deny senders = ! :
4308 dnslist = blackholes.mail-abuse.org
4309
4310 However, some spam does come with an empty sender address, so this may
4311 not be a good idea.
4312
4313
4314Q0710: I want to reject certain sender-recipient combinations, with a specific
4315 message for each such combination.
4316
4317A0710: Set up a file (or database) containing the messages, keyed by the
4318 combination, for example:
4319
4320==> sender1@sdomain1=>recipient1@rdomain1: blocked because...
4321 sender2@sdomain2=>recipient2@rdomain2: blocked because...
4322
4323 If you have lots of recipients for the same sender, it might be easier
4324 to generate this file from more convenient data. In your ACL that is run
4325 for each RCPT command, you can then put:
4326
4327==> deny message = ${lookup{$sender_address=>$local_part@$domain}\
4328 lsearch{/that/file}}
4329 condition = ${lookup{$sender_address=>$local_part@$domain}\
4330 lsearch{/that/file}}{yes}{no}}
4331
4332 The condition is tested first. If the lookup succeeds, the condition
4333 succeeds so access is denied. The message is then expanded, but the
4334 lookup won't be repeated, because Exim will have cached the previous
4335 result.
4336
4337 This approach blocks only incoming SMTP messages. If you need to do
4338 similar blocks for messages that do not arrive over SMTP, you have to
4339 set up a suitable \%redirect%\ router with a \:fail:\ setting.
4340
4341
4342Q0711: Will Exim allow me to create a file of regexs and match incoming
4343 external email to the list - and if a match is found file the offending
4344 message into a special location? Also is it possible to make Exim only
4345 filter parts of an incoming email - e.g. ignore large MIME attachments
4346 for example and only process text/plain?
4347
4348A0711: You can do some of this in a system filter. For example:
4349
4350==> if $message_body matches <...some complicated regex...> or
4351 $message_body matches <...some other regex...> or
4352 $header_from: matches <...regex...> or
4353 etc.
4354 then
4355 save /some/special/file
4356 endif
4357
4358 or instead of \"save"\ you could have \"deliver"\ (to some address) or
4359 \"pipe"\ (to some script).
4360
4361 There isn't any mechanism for ignoring attachments, but \$message_body$\
4362 only looks at the first n bytes of the body, where n defaults to 500 but
4363 can be changed.
4364
4365 A more expensive alternative would be to run a Perl subroutine using the
4366 embedded Perl mechanism. If you passed over the message id, the Perl
4367 code could read the message files on the spool and implement any
4368 algorithm it liked for deciding what should be done.
4369
4370
4371Q0712: I've hacked sendmail to make an ioctl call at the time of the SMTP RCPT
4372 command, to check if a user has exceeded their email quota. If they have
4373 I issue a temporary failure and a message - can I do this with Exim?
4374
4375A0712: If you can make this happen in Perl you can use the embedded Perl
4376 facility, and use it from a \condition\ condition in an ACL statement.
4377 You can also use the expansion facility to run an external program, but
4378 this uses more resources because it uses another process.
4379
4380
4381Q0713: I'd like to pass all messages through a virus-scanning system before
4382 delivery. Can Exim do this?
4383
4384A0713: One way of achieving this is to deliver all messages via a pipe to a
4385 checking program that resubmits them for delivery in some private way
4386 that can be checked (e.g. on a specific SMTP port, or IP address). One
4387 possibility is to use the `received protocol` field that can be set
4388 for locally submitted mail via the \-oMr-\ command line option. This
4389 router sends all messages that are not from the local host and whose
4390 received protocol is not \"scanned-ok"\ to the \%virus_scan%\ transport:
4391
4392==> vircheck:
4393 driver = accept
4394 transport = virus_scan
4395 condition = ${if or {{eq {$received_protocol}{scanned-ok}} \
4396 {eq {$sender_host_address}{127.0.0.1}}}\
4397 {0}{1}}
4398
4399 One problem is that this approach scans the message for each recipient,
4400 not just once per message.
4401
4402 The virus_scan transport should be set up to pipe the message to a
4403 suitable checking program or script which runs as a trusted user. This
4404 can then re-submit the message to Exim, using \-oMr-\ to set the received
4405 protocol to \"scanned-ok"\, and the \-f-\ option to set the correct envelope
4406 sender address. \**Warning:**\ If you forget to make the resubmitting process
4407 run as a trusted user, the received protocol does not get set, and you
4408 are likely to generate a loop.
4409
4410
4411Q0714: Is there a way to configure Exim to reject mail to a certain local host?
4412
4413A0714: No, only to certain domains. To reject at SMTP time, you can put a line
4414 like this in your ACL:
4415
4416==> deny message = this domain is deliberately rejected
4417 domains = a.certain.domain
4418
4419 To fail addresses in messages that do not arrive over SMTP, you can set
4420 up a router like this:
4421
4422==> reject_a_certain_domain:
4423 driver = redirect
4424 domains = a.certain.domain
4425 allow_fail
4426 data = :fail: this domain is deliberately rejected
4427
4428
4429Q0715: How can I get Exim to remove attachments from messages?
4430
4431A0715: Exim does not contain facilities for modifying messages. You must use
4432 an external program if you want to do this. You can route messages that
4433 have a ::Content-type:: header line via a pipe to a command that does
4434 the job and then re-submits the message to Exim. Alternatively, you
4435 could use a transport filter to do this job.
4436
4437
4438Q0716: How can I arrange for each user to have a file listing the only sender
4439 addresses from which she will accept mail? I want to do this so my
4440 family members don't get any spam (or other inappropriate mail).
4441
4442A0716: Let's assume each user has a file called \(.acceptlist)\ in the home
4443 directory. You can put in your ACL a line like this:
4444
4445==> require senders = /home/$local_part/.acceptlist
4446
4447 This will reject RCPT commands when the sender is not in the accept
4448 list for the recipient. (Replace \(/home/$local_part)\ with whatever
4449 the correct path to your user's home directories is.)
4450
4451 One problem with this is that it will block bounce messages, which have
4452 empty senders. You can get round this, by changing the line to this:
4453
4454==> require senders = : /home/$local_part/.acceptlist
4455
4456 However, this will, of course, let in spam that has a null sender.
4457
4458
4459Q0717: When using Nessus on a system that runs Exim, a number of security
4460 issues are raised. Nessus complains that Exim answers to EXPN and/or
4461 VRFY; sometimes it even complains that Exim allows relaying.
4462
4463A0717: Exim supports EXPN and VRFY only if you permit it to do so in the ACLs
4464 defined by \acl_smtp_expn\ and \acl_smtp_vrfy\, respectively. Otherwise,
4465 its responses are
4466
4467==> 550 Administrative prohibition
4468 252 Administrative prohibition
4469
4470 Maybe the use of 252 is the ``problem''. It is recommended that this be
4471 done (by those that discuss these things) because there are stupid
4472 clients that attempt VRFY before sending a message.
4473
4474
4475Q0718: Could anyone points me to right rules to prevent sending/receiving
4476 messages to/for domains which have one MX to localhost or only have
4477 address 127.0.0.1 ?
4478
4479A0718: See Q0319.
4480
4481
4482Q0719: I would like to have a per-user limit for the maximum size of messages
4483 that can be sent.
4484
4485A0719: The simplest way to do this is to put something in a system filter along
4486 these lines:
4487
4488==> if $message_size is above
4489 "${lookup{$sender_address}lsearch{/some/file}{$value}{10M}}"
4490 then
4491 fail "Message is larger than $sender_address is allowed to send"
4492 endif
4493
4494 In practice, an additional check that the message has arrived from your
4495 local host or local network is probably wise because sender addresses
4496 are easily forged.
4497
4498
4499Q0720: I set \"accept hosts=192.168.122.96/32"\ in order to accept mail for
4500 relaying from my local LAN, but it doesn't work. What's wrong?
4501
4502A0720: 192.168.122.96/32 is not a network, it is a single host. Exim uses CIDR
4503 notation for specifying networks, where the number after the slash is
4504 the number of bits in the IP address that must match. Your setting says
4505 ``32 bits must match''. If you really mean to specify ``the next 32
4506 IP addresses'', you need 192.168.122.96/27.
4507
4508
4509Q0721: I have POP-before-SMTP set up on my Exim server, but some clients use
4510 Outlook Express, which sends queued messages before checking the
4511 mailbox, so it doesn't work.
4512
4513A0721: Implement SMTP authentication.
4514
4515
4516Q0722: I installed Amavis and it is working, but bounces are simply vanishing.
4517
4518A0722: Check that you haven't inadvertently set up the transport like this:
4519
4520==> amavis:
4521 driver = pipe
4522 command = "/usr/sbin/amavis -f ${sender_address} -d ${pipe_addresses}"
4523
4524 The last line should be:
4525
4526==> command = /usr/sbin/amavis -f <$sender_address> -d $pipe_addresses
4527
4528 The important thing is the <> around the sender address; removal of
4529 the unnecessary "" and {} is just tidying. See the amavis FAQ at
4530 \?http://www.amavis.org/amavis-faq.php3?\.
4531
4532
4533Q0723: I can't get Pine to work with PLAIN authentication; Exim keeps
4534 responding "535 Incorrect authentication data".
4535
4536A0723: You need to have this setting in your PLAIN authenticator:
4537
4538==> server_prompts = :
4539
4540 This is missing in the examples in all but the most recent Exim
4541 documentation, because it was not realized that PLAIN authentication
4542 could be requested by a client without sending the data with the
4543 request. If the data is not sent, an empty prompt is expected.
4544
4545
4546Q0724: I have used \":fail:"\ in some aliases; when one of these addresses is
4547 refused, I see the message on the log, but the response to the remote
4548 user is ``unknown user'' instead of the message from the alias file.
4549 How can I change this?
4550
4551A0724: Have you got a \message\ qualifier in the relevant ACL? Exim uses the
4552 message line in the ACL in preference to the message returned by the
4553 router. This is so you can restrict the amount of information that
4554 ``escapes'' from your site via SMTP if you want to. Remove the \message\
4555 line in the ACL entry that has \"verify = recipient"\ and your message
4556 will get through.
4557
4558 Alternatively, if you are running Exim 4.10 or later, you can use the
4559 \$acl_verify_message$\ variable in your message to include the message
4560 from the router. See also Q0725.
4561
4562
4563Q0725: I've set up some specific rejection messages for certain recipients, but
4564 when I test them, the SMTP message is always \*550 5.1.1
4565 <user@mydomain.com>... User unknown*\.
4566
4567A0725: That is not an Exim message (the ``5.1.1'' is a clue; Exim doesn't use
4568 those extended codes). You are probably being defeated by software that
4569 sees the 550 error code, and insists on putting in its own text. There
4570 is stupid software that does this. You can test Exim by using \-bh-\ or
4571 making a telnet call to the SMTP port. That way, there's no other
4572 software intervening.
4573
4574
4575Q0726: My SMTP authentication can be bypassed by sending an unknown user name
4576 and an empty password. What is wrong with this condition in a PLAIN
4577 authenticator?
4578
4579==> server_condition = ${if eq{$2} {${lookup mysql{SELECT password FROM \
4580 accounts WHERE username='${local_part:$1}'}}}{1}{0}}
4581
4582A0726: Your lookup item returns an empty string when the user does not exist.
4583 You should instead arrange for the lookup to fail:
4584
4585==> server_condition = ${if eq{$2} {${lookup mysql{SELECT password FROM \
4586 accounts WHERE username='${local_part:$1}'}{$value}fail}}{1}{0}}
4587
4588
4589Q0727: When a message has many recipients, how can I stop SpamAssassin from
4590 being called for each of them? I'm running it from a pipe transport.
4591
4592A0727: In the transport configuration, set \batch_max\ to a value greater than
4593 one.
4594
4595
4596Q0728: How do I use Exiscan, SA-Exim, SpamAssassin, Clam Antivirus, Sophos
4597 SAVI, or sophie with Exim?
4598
4599A0728: There's a mini-HOWTO about these available via
4600 \?http://www.timj.co.uk/linux/exim.php?\.
4601 See also sample configuration C047.
4602
4603
4604Q0729: How can I screen out addresses that are neither valid usernames or
4605 distribution lists on mail being forwarded to an internal Win2K server?
4606
4607A0729: A user suggested using a router like this to do the recipient
4608 verification:
4609
4610==> verify_user_router:
4611 driver = accept
4612 domains = win2kdomain.com
4613 local_parts=\
4614 ldap;user="cn=ldap-guest,cn=Users,dc=win2kdomain,dc=com"\
4615 pass=guest \
4616 ldap:://win2kpdc/dc=win2kdomain,dc=com?mailNickname?\
4617 sub?(&(mailNickname=$local_part)\
4618 (showInAddressBook=*)(sAMAccountName=*))
4619 verify_only
4620
4621 Set up ldap-guest as a normal domain user on the Win2K PDC.
4622
4623 Also, you need to set \no_verify\ on all the other routers that handle
4624 that domain.
4625
4626
4627Q0730: How can I use the same passwords for SMTP authentication as I use for
4628 Courier IMAP access to my server?
4629
4630A0730: You can access the Courier authdaemon from an Exim authenticator. You
4631 must arrange for the Exim user (often \/exim/\ but sometimes \/mail/\)
4632 to be able to access \(/var/run/courier/authdaemon/socket)\. The
4633 configuration is something of a hack, but it is reported to work. Here
4634 is a LOGIN authenticator:
4635
4636==> login:
4637 driver = plaintext
4638 public_name = LOGIN
4639 server_prompts = Username:: : Password::
4640 server_condition = \
4641 ${if eq {${readsocket{/var/run/courier/authdaemon/socket}\
4642 {AUTH 76\n${length_76:exim\nlogin\n$1\n$2\
4643 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\
4644 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\
4645 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n}}}}{FAIL\n} {no}{yes}}
4646 server_set_id = $1
4647
4648 Here is a PLAIN authenticator:
4649
4650==> plain:
4651 driver = plaintext
4652 public_name = PLAIN
4653 server_prompts = :
4654 server_condition = \
4655 ${if eq {${readsocket{/var/run/courier/authdaemon/socket}\
4656 {AUTH 76\n${length_76:exim\nlogin\n$2\n$3\
4657 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\
4658 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\
4659 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n}}}}{FAIL\n} {no}{yes}}
4660 server_set_id = $2
4661
4662
4663Q0731: Is there any defence I can use against spam sent through an open proxy?
4664
4665A0731: The \*ident*\ feature can be used in some cases. See the discussion in
4666 Q5023.
4667
4668
4669Q0732: I would like to either warn or deny when a host uses an underscore in
4670 the EHLO command.
4671
4672A0732: First, set
4673
4674==> helo_allow_chars = _
4675
4676 This tells Exim not to reject the EHLO or HELO command immediately. Once
4677 you have done that, you can test for the underscore in an ACL. For
4678 example, to log a warning for hosts in your LAN, and reject for other
4679 hosts, you could do something like this:
4680
4681==> deny message = Underscores are not valid in host names
4682 hosts = ! +lan_hosts
4683 condition = ${if match{$sender_helo_name}{_}{yes}{no}}
4684
4685==> warn log_message = Accepted underscore from [$sender_host_address]
4686 condition = ${if match{$sender_helo_name}{_}{yes}{no}}
4687
4688
4689Q0733: Is there any way to tell Exim not to lookup the IP address against any
4690 DNS black list if the connection is over IPv6?
4691
4692A0733: Use this condition in your ACL:
4693
4694==> condition = ${if match{${mask:$sender_host_address/0}}\
4695 {${mask:::0/0}}{no}{yes}}
4696
4697 From Exim 4.23 onwards, this can be simplified to
4698
4699==> condition = ${if isip6{$sender_host_address}{no}{yes}}
4700
4701
4702Q0734: How do MailScanner and Exiscan compare? What are the pros and cons?
4703
4704A0734: The big advantage of Exiscan is that it can reject messages at SMTP time
4705 before you have accepted responsibility for them, which means you don't
4706 have to deal with bouncing messages and thereby becoming a collateral
4707 spammer.
4708
4709 The big advantage of MailScanner is that it gives you much greater
4710 control over the load on your machines. You configure it according to
4711 the maximum processing capacity of your computer and it will not exceed
4712 that; in fact because it deals with messages in batches the cost of
4713 processing a message actually goes down slightly as the load increases,
4714 because the per-batch costs are shared by more messages.
4715
4716 With Exiscan, you have to rely on Exim's load protection mechanisms,
4717 which basically means that you have to stop accepting messages when your
4718 machine gets too loaded. This is bad if the machine happens to be an
4719 SMTP smarthost. You therefore need more overcapacity with Exiscan than
4720 with MailScanner.
4721
4722
4723Q0735: How can I block non-FQDNs in HELO/EHLOs?
4724
4725A0735: Many workstation clients send single-component names; take care that you
4726 do not block legitimate mail. With that proviso, you can do it using
4727 something like this in an ACL:
4728
4729==> drop message = HELO doesn't look like a hostname
4730 log_message = Not a hostname
4731 condition = ${if match{$sender_helo_name} \
4732 {\N^[^.].*\.[^.]+$\N}{no}{yes}}
4733
4734 This means: Drop the HELO unless it contains a dot somewhere in the HELO
4735 string, but the string may not begin or end with a dot. Thus, the
4736 imposed minimum length is 3 characters.
4737
4738 The data for HELO/EHLO doesn't have to be a host name; it may
4739 legitimately be an IP address literal instead. The above test succeeds
4740 with an IPv4 address literal, but if you want also to accept IPv6
4741 address literals, you will have to modify the regular expression.
4742
4743
4744Q0736: Is it possible to tell exim to drop the connection after a server
4745 attempts to send a message to a number of unknown users?
4746
4747A0736: Yes. Use \$rcpt_fail_count$\ and the \^drop^\ ACL command, as in this
4748 example:
4749
4750==> drop message = Too many unknown users
4751 condition = ${if >{$rcpt_fail_count}{15}{yes}{no}}
4752
4753
4754Q0737: Is there some way to tell Exim not to consider 127.0.0.1 as a valid MX?
4755
4756A0737: See Q0319.
4757
4758
4759Q0738: How can I configure Exim to delay the SMTP connection if more than 10
4760 invalid recipients are received in one message?
4761
4762A0738: Put something like this in your RCPT ACL:
4763
4764==> deny message = Max $rcpt_fail_count failed recipients allowed
4765 condition = ${if >{$rcpt_fail_count}{10} {1}}
4766 ! verify = recipient
4767 delay = ${eval: $rcpt_fail_count * 10}s
4768 log_message = $rcpt_fail_count failed recipient attempts
4769
4770 This example increases the delay for each failed recipient.
4771
4772
4773Q0739: Does Exim support SPF?
4774
4775A0739: An Exim ACL can be used. See \?http://spf.pobox.com/downloads.html?\.
4776
4777
4778
47798. REWRITING ADDRESSES
4780
4781Q0801: How can I get Exim to strip the hostname from the sender's address?
4782
4783A0801: If you set up a rewriting rule in the following form:
4784
4785==> *@*.your.domain $1@your.domain
4786
4787 then Exim will rewrite all addresses in the envelope and the headers,
4788 removing anything between \"@"\ and \"your.domain"\. This applies to all
4789 messages that Exim processes. If you want to rewrite sender addresses
4790 only, the the rule should be
4791
4792==> *@*.your.domain $1@your.domain Ffrs
4793
4794 This applies the rule only to the envelope sender address and to the
4795 ::From::, ::Reply-to::, and ::Sender:: headers.
4796
4797
4798Q0802: I have Exim configured to remove the hostname portion of the domain on
4799 outgoing mail, and yet the hostname is present when the mail gets
4800 delivered.
4801
4802A0802: Check the DNS record for your domain. If the MX record points to a CNAME
4803 record instead of to an A record, some MTAs (not Exim) are liable to
4804 rewrite addresses, changing your domain name to its ``canonical'' form,
4805 as obtained from the CNAME record.
4806
4807
4808Q0803: I want to rewrite local addresses in mail that goes to the outside
4809 world, but not for messages that remain within the local intranet.
4810
4811A0803: You can use the \headers_rewrite\ option on a transport to do this.
4812 The rewriting will then apply to just those copies of a message that
4813 pass through the transport. The \return_path\ option can similarly be
4814 used to rewrite the sender address. There is no way of rewriting
4815 recipient addresses at transport time. However, as these are by
4816 definition remote addresses, you probably don't want to rewrite them.
4817
4818 You have to set up the configuration so that it uses different SMTP
4819 transports for internal and external mail. If you are using a single
4820 router in both cases, you could configure it like this:
4821
4822==> dnslookup:
4823 driver = dnslookup
4824 transport = ${if match{$domain}{\N\.my\.domain$\N}{int_smtp}{ext_smtp}}
4825
4826 This example uses the \%int_smtp%\ transport for domains ending in
4827 \(.my.domain)\, and \%ext_smtp%\ for everything else. The \%ext_smtp%\ transport
4828 could be something like this:
4829
4830==> ext_smtp:
4831 driver = smtp
4832 headers_rewrite = *@*.my.domain \
4833 ${lookup{$1}cdb{/etc/$2/mail.handles.cdb}{$value}fail}
4834 return_path = \
4835 ${if match{$return_path}{\N^([^@]+)@(.*)\.my\.domain$\N}\
4836 {\
4837 ${lookup{$1}cdb{/etc/$2/mail.handles.cdb}{$value}fail}\
4838 }\
4839 fail}
4840
4841 This example uses a separate file of local-to-external address
4842 translations for each domain. This is not the only possibility, of
4843 course. The \headers_rewrite\ and \return_path\ options apply the same
4844 rewriting to the header lines and the envelope sender address,
4845 respectively.
4846
4847
4848Q0804: I'm using this rewriting rule to change login names into ``friendly''
4849 names, but if mail comes in for an upper case login name, it doesn't
4850 get rewritten.
4851
4852==> *@my.domain ${lookup{$1}dbm{/usr/lib/exim/longforms}\
4853 {$value}fail}@my.domain bcfrtFT
4854
4855 The longforms database has entries of the form:
4856
4857==> ano23: A.N.Other
4858
4859A0804: Replace \"$1"\ in your rule by \"${lc:$1}"\ to force the local part to lower
4860 case before it is used as a lookup key.
4861
4862
4863Q0805: Is it possible to completely fail a message if the rewrite rules fail?
4864
4865A0805: It depends on what you mean by ``fail a message'' and what addresses you
4866 are rewriting. If you are rewriting recipient addresses for your local
4867 domain, you can do:
4868
4869==> *@dom.ain ${lookup{$1}dbm{/wher/ever}{$value}{failaddr}} Ehq
4870
4871 and in your alias file put something like
4872
4873==> failaddr: :fail: Rewriting failed
4874
4875 This fails a single recipient - others are processed independently.
4876
4877
4878Q0806: I'm using \$domain$\ as the key for a lookup in a rewriting rule, but its
4879 contents are not being lowercased. Aren't domains supposed to be handled
4880 caselessly?
4881
4882A0806: The value of \$domain$\ is the actual domain that appears in the address.
4883 It could of course be lower cased, but I know that would cause some
4884 unhappiness, because some people have mixed-case domain names which look
4885 silly if the case is changed. Thus, one wants to preserve the case in
4886 rewrites such as
4887
4888==> *@*.TheRap.com something@$domain
4889
4890 because ``therap'' doesn't look like two words. I know it seems trivial,
4891 but it is important to some people - especially if by some unfortunate
4892 accident the lowercased word is something indecent.
4893
4894 You can trivally force lower casing by means of the \"${lc:"\ operator.
4895 Instead of \"$domain"\ write \"${lc:$domain}"\.
4896
4897
4898Q0807: I want to rewrite local sender addresses depending on the domain of the
4899 recipient.
4900
4901A0807: In general, this is not possible, because a message may have more than
4902 one recipient and Exim keeps just a single copy of each message. It may
4903 also deliver one copy of a message with several recipient addresses.
4904 You can do an incomplete job by using a regular expression match in a
4905 rewrite rule to test, for example, the contents of the ::To:: header. This
4906 would work except in cases of multiple recipients.
4907
4908
4909
49109. HEADERS
4911
4912Q0901: I would like add some custom headers to selected outgoing mail based on
4913 a specific domain and the subject line.
4914
4915A0901: To the remote_smtp transport, add something like
4916
4917==> headers_add = ${if and{\
4918 {eq{$domain}{spec.dom}}\
4919 {matches{$h_subject:}{whatever}}}\
4920 {Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"} fail }
4921
4922 This example shows a ::Content-Type:: header, but you can have anything you
4923 like, and multiple headers can be inserted by using \"@\n"\ to separate them.
4924
4925
4926Q0902: Is it possible to have Exim add a header to only certain local parts of
4927 outgoing mail?
4928
4929A0902: Only if you arrange for each such local part to receive its own private
4930 copy of the mail. See \max_rcpt\ in the SMTP transport. If you set this
4931 to 1, you could use conditions in an expansion string to add or not add
4932 a header.
4933
4934
4935Q0903: How can I remove some part of the ::Received:: header?
4936
4937A0903: Set \received_header_text\.
4938
4939
4940Q0904: How I can insert the PGP header line using Exim filters?
4941
4942A0904: You can't insert headers in a user filter. A system filter can do so,
4943 but the inserted lines then are included for all recipients.
4944
4945
4946Q0905: I know I can use a system filter to replace certain headers in messages,
4947 but how can I add text to existing headers? I want to add [SPAM] to
4948 the subject line of messages that appear to be spam.
4949
4950A0905: You can only do this in a round about way, using filter commands like
4951 this:
4952
4953==> headers add "New-Subject: SPAM: $h_subject:"
4954 headers remove subject
4955 neaders add "Subject: $h_new-subject:"
4956 headers remove new-subject
4957
4958 This trick works only in system filters, where the commands are obeyed
4959 in order, and affect the master list of headers that apply to the whole
4960 message. You cannot do this with the \headers_add\ and \headers_remove\
4961 options on drivers.
4962
4963
4964
496510. PERFORMANCE
4966
4967Q1001: I'm running a large mail server. Should I set \split_spool_directory\ to
4968 improve performance?
4969
4970A1001: Splitting the spool directory has most benefit if there are times when
4971 there are a large number of messages on the queue. If all mail is
4972 delivered very quickly, and the queue is always less than, say, a few
4973 hundred messages, there isn't any need to do this. With larger queues,
4974 there is a definite performance benefit to splitting the spool. It shows
4975 up earlier on some types of filing system, compared with others.
4976
4977 Exim was not designed for handling large queues. If you are in an
4978 enviroment where lots of messages remain on the queue for long periods
4979 of time, consider implementing a back up host to which you pass these
4980 messages, so that the main host's queue remains short. You can use
4981 \fallback_hosts\ to do this, or a router that is conditional on
4982 \$message_age$\.
4983
4984
4985Q1002: How well does Exim scale?
4986
4987A1002: Although the author did not specifically set out to write a high-
4988 performance MTA, Exim does seem to be fairly efficient. The biggest
4989 server at the University of Cambridge (a large Sun box) goes over
4990 100,000 deliveries per day on busy days (it has over 20,000 users).
4991 There was a report of a mailing list exploder that sometimes handles
4992 over 100,000 deliveries a day on a big Linux box, the record being
4993 177,000 deliveries (791MB in total). Up to 13,000 deliveries an hour
4994 have been reported.
4995
4996 These are quotes from some Exim users:
4997
4998 "... Canada's largest internet provider, uses Exim on all of our mail
4999 machines, and we're absolutely delighted with it. It brought life back
5000 into one of our machines plagued with backlogs and high load averages.
5001 Here's just an example of how much email our largest mail server
5002 (quad SS1000) is seeing ... " [230,911 deliveries in a day: 4,475MB]
5003
5004 "... Exim has to ... do gethostbyname()s and RBL lookups on all of the
5005 incoming mail servers, and he runs from inetd (TCP Wrappers connected).
5006 All the same, it seems to me that he runs as fast as lightning on our
5007 SCO 5.0.4 box (1 Pentium 166) - far faster than MMDF which I (and many
5008 customers) had before."
5009
5010 "On a PII 400 with 128M of RAM running Linux 2.2.5, I have achieved
5011 36656 messages per hour (outgoing unique messages and recipients). For
5012 about a 5 minute period, I was able to achieve an average of 30 messages
5013 per second (that would be 108000 m/hour)! We are using: (options that
5014 make a difference):
5015
5016==> queue_only
5017 split_spool_directory
5018 queue_run_max = 1
5019 remote_max_parallel = 1
5020
5021 We have a cron job hat runs every five minutes that spawns 5 \"exim -q"\ if
5022 there are less that 120 exim processes currently running. We found
5023 that by manually controlling the concurrency of \"exim -q"\ processes
5024 contending for the spool for \%remote_smtp%\ delivery that we gained
5025 considerable performance - 10000 m/hour."
5026
5027
5028Q1003: We have a large password file. Can Exim use alternative lookups during
5029 delivery to speed things up?
5030
5031A1003: If you are using FreeBSD, this problem should not arise, because it
5032 automatically uses an indexed password file. In some other operating
5033 systems you can arrange for this to happen too. On Linux, for example,
5034 all you need to do is
5035
5036==> # cd /var/db
5037 # make
5038
5039 and put \"db"\ before \"files"\ in any \(/etc/nsswitch.conf)\ lines you want to
5040 use db for.
5041
5042 On systems that do not include support for indexed password files, you
5043 can build one yourself, and reference it from the Exim configuration.
5044 For example, for routing to local mailboxes you could use this:
5045
5046==> localuser:
5047 driver = accept
5048 condition = ${lookup{$local_part}cdb{/etc/passwd.cdb}{yes}{no}}
5049 transport = local_delivery
5050 user = ${extract{1}{:}{${lookup{$local_part}cdb{/etc/passwd.cdb}}}
5051
5052 This assumes a cdb version of the password file.
5053
5054
5055Q1004: I just wondered if it might be helpful to put the hints database on a
5056 RAM disk during regular operation. Did anybody try that yet?
5057
5058A1004: A user reported thus: ``I have found that this works great under Solaris.
5059 Make a RAM disk partition and keep everything in the \(db)\ directory on
5060 it. However, when I try the same thing on Linux, I don't see the same
5061 boost. I think that Linux's file buffer cache works about the same.
5062 Plus, this leave more room for processes to run.''
5063
5064 There have been other reports that Linux's delayed buffer write provides
5065 better overall performance in general.
5066
5067 Apparently there is support in the Solaris kernel for a delayed writing,
5068 as in Linux, but Sun's server policy is to have it disabled so that you
5069 don't lose so much if the server crashes. There is a program called
5070 \^fastfs^\ to enable and disable this support. You have to download and
5071 compile it yourself; find it by looking for \"fastfs.c"\ in a search
5072 engine. Solaris performance is reported to be much improved, but you
5073 should take care to understand the potential hazards. In particular,
5074 \^fsck^\ may be unable to ``fix'' disks automatically after a crash.
5075
5076
5077Q1005: A lot of incoming mail is pushing up my system load too much, and there
5078 are many Exim processes. How can I control this?
5079
5080A1005: Have you set any of the Exim configuration options that limit what it
5081 does under high load? For example, queue_only_load, deliver_queue_load_max?
5082 See the list in the section entitled \*Resource control*\ in the manual.
5083
5084 It sounds like a lot of simultaneous incoming mail pushes your system
5085 into uncontrolled overload. The multiple Exim processes are probably
5086 just multiple incoming messages. You can use the \^exiwhat^\ utility to
5087 confirm this.
5088
5089
5090
509111. MAJORDOMO
5092
5093Q1101: How do I set up Majordomo to work with Exim?
5094
5095A1101: Users have found several ways of setting up Exim for use with Majordomo.
5096 One way has been documented at
5097 \?http://www.averillpark.net/exim/majordomo.html?\.
5098
5099 Somewhere in the Majordomo docs or FAQ it mentions using batchmail or
5100 other additional programs to improve the performance of large lists.
5101 They are not needed with Exim, and their use can actually make things
5102 worse. However, it's a good idea to set \remote_max_parallel\ to a value
5103 greater than 1 in the Exim configuration.
5104
5105
5106Q1102: I have set \$mailer$\ in \(majordomo.cf)\, but it still isn't setting the
5107 sender correctly in the messages it sends.
5108
5109A1102: Make sure you have got the quoting correct in the \$mailer$\ setting. For
5110 example,
5111
5112==> $mailer = "$sendmail_command -oi -oee -f$sender\@lists.mydomain.de";
5113
5114 is not correct. It needs three backslashes, not one, and the $ at the
5115 start of \$sender$\ has to be escaped with a backslash.
5116
5117
5118Q1103: I'm trying to set up majordomo, but I'm getting a wrong mode error
5119 when I try to send it mail.
5120
5121A1103: Check the mode of \(/var/lib/majordomo/lists/lists.aliases)\ and compare it
5122 with the setting of the \modemask\ option in the Majordomo aliases
5123 router. This option specifies bits which must not be set for the alias
5124 file, and it defaults to 022.
5125
5126
5127Q1104: I'm getting return code 9 from \(/home/majordomo/majordomo-1.94.4/wrapper)\
5128 when it is passed a message from Exim.
5129
5130A1104: A problem like this turned out to be the Perl version that came with
5131 RedHat 5.2. Rebuilding Perl 5.005x solved it.
5132
5133
5134Q1105: Exim is complaining about an invalid command line when Majordomo tries
5135 to send it a message for delivery.
5136
5137A1105: Take a look at your \(majordomo.cf)\ file, It should have something that
5138 looks like
5139
5140==> $sendmail_command = "/usr/lib/sendmail";
5141
5142 and another line like
5143
5144==> $mailer = "$sendmail_command -oi -oee -f\$sender";
5145
5146 If you have modified \^resend^\ (one of the majordomo programs) to use
5147 \$sendmail_command$\ instead of \$mailer$\ you will be calling Exim with no
5148 command line arguments.
5149
5150
5151
515212. FETCHMAIL
5153
5154Q1201: When I run fetchmail, I get the error \*SMTP listener doesn't like
5155 recipient address xxx@localhost*\.
5156
5157A1201: Make sure that //localhost// is recognized as a domain that is to be
5158 delivered locally. If you are using the default Exim run time
5159 configuration, you'll see a line near the top like this:
5160
5161==> domainlist local_domains = @
5162
5163 Change it to
5164
5165==> domainlist local_domains = @ : localhost
5166
5167
5168Q1202: I'm currently using Exim with fetchmail and I'd like to use the RBL on
5169 Exim, but will it work? Do I need to configure fetchmail any particular
5170 way? As far as Exim knows, all mail is coming from 127.0.0.1. Will it
5171 check the source address against RBL? Or will it check the ::From:: header?
5172
5173A1202: It will check 127.0.0.1 (not very useful). The point of the RBL is to
5174 keep messages from black-listed hosts out of your machine. If you are
5175 using fetchmail, you have got the messages into your machine before you
5176 approach Exim. That kind of defeats the purpose of the RBL. The right
5177 way to do this would be for the host from which you fetch your mail to
5178 do the RBL checking and insert some kind of warning header for you to
5179 test, as Exim does if you run RBL checks in warning mode.
5180
5181
5182
518313. PERL
5184
5185Q1301: Exim built with Perl support exits with the error message \*./exim: can't
5186 load library 'libperl.so'*\.
5187
5188A1301: If you are using BSDI, see Q9401.
5189
5190
5191Q1302: Exim built with Perl support exits with several error messages of the
5192 form \*undefined reference to `PL_stack_sp'*\.
5193
5194A1302: This has been seen on FreeBSD systems that had two different versions of
5195 Perl installed, the older with an \^a.out^\ library and the newer with an
5196 ELF library. Ensure that the older package is removed.
5197
5198
5199
520014. DIAL-UP AND ISDN
5201
5202Q1401: When I'm not connected to the Internet, how can I arrange for mail to
5203 other hosts on my local network to be delivered, while at the
5204 same time mail to Internet hosts is queued without any delivery
5205 attempts?
5206
5207A1401: Use the \queue_domains\ option to control which domains are held
5208 on the queue for later delivery. For example,
5209
5210==> queue_domains = ! *.localnet
5211
5212 allows delivery to domains ending in \(.localnet)\, while queueing all the
5213 others.
5214
5215
5216Q1402: I have a dial-up machine, and I use the \queue_smtp_domains\ option so
5217 that remote mail only goes out when I do a queue run. However, any email
5218 I send with an address \(anything@aol.com)\ is returned within about 15
5219 minutes saying \*retry time exceeded*\, and all addresses are affected.
5220
5221A1402: You should be using \queue_domains\ rather than \queue_smtp_domains\.
5222 With the latter, Exim is trying to route the addresses, which involves a
5223 DNS lookup. This is presumably timing out, causing a retry time to be
5224 set for the domain, and somehow a valid lookup never happened before the
5225 maximum retry time (default of 4 days) passed. Hence the bounce. The
5226 fact that it is \(aol.com)\ is probably not relevant. You should probably
5227 also be using \-qq-\ to do your queue run rather than \-q-\.
5228
5229
5230Q1403: How should Exim be configured when it is acting as a temporary storage
5231 system for a domain on a dial-up host?
5232
5233A1403: Exim isn't really designed for this, but... The lowest-numbered MX
5234 record for the domain should be pointing to the dial-up host. A higher
5235 numbered MX record (lower priority) should point to the Exim server that
5236 is acting as a temporary storage system.
5237
5238 You should set a large retry time for the domain, so that Exim doesn't
5239 keep trying to deliver when the host is offline. When the host comes
5240 online, the waiting messages have to be kicked somehow. This can be done
5241 by calling Exim with the \-R-\ option, or via the SMTP ETRN command.
5242
5243 This works provided the number of messages is low. If you are handling
5244 lots of mail, keeping messages waiting for their host to connect and
5245 those that are having delivery problems to remote hosts all in the same
5246 queue doesn't work so well. It is better in this case to get Exim to
5247 deliver the mail for the dial-in hosts into some local files which then
5248 get transmitted by other software when the host connects. One tool for
5249 doing this can be found at \?http://cr.yp.to/serialmail.html?\.
5250
5251 For further discussion, see section entitled \*Intermittently connected
5252 hosts*\ in the manual, and also the section in the Exim book with the
5253 same name.
5254
5255
5256Q1404: I have \queue_domains\ or \queue_smtp_domains\ set, and use \-qf-\ to
5257 force delivery of waiting mail when I dial in. How can I arrange for any
5258 new messages that arrive while I'm connected to be delivered immediately?
5259
5260A1404: Instead of \queue_domains\ or \queue_smtp_domains\, use the \queue_only_file\
5261 option. This causes messages to be queued if a particular file exists.
5262 If you put the word ``smtp'' before the file name, the queueing applies
5263 only to domains that are delivered by SMTP, thus not affecting local
5264 deliveries:
5265
5266==> queue_only_file = smtp/etc/present/when/not/connected
5267
5268 Then, in the scripts which are run when you connect and disconnect,
5269 arrange to remove the file after connection, and create it just before
5270 disconnection.
5271
5272
5273Q1405: I have an ISDN connection and would like a way of running the queue
5274 automatically when it is up.
5275
5276A1405: The following shell commands test for the interface being up and then
5277 run the queue:
5278
5279==> ifconfig ppp0 | fgrep UP >/dev/null
5280 if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then exim -q ; fi
5281
5282 You could put these commands into a script which runs them at regular
5283 intervals. You might want to use \-qq-\ instead of \-q-\.
5284
5285 With Linux, the script \(/etc/ppp/ip-up)\ is run after a ISDN connection
5286 or a more general PPP connection has been established. If you are using
5287 Linux, you could put the call to Exim in that script.
5288
5289
5290Q1406: When I dial up to collect mail from my ISP, only the first 10 messages
5291 get delivered immediately; the remainder just sit on the queue until a
5292 queue runner process finds them.
5293
5294A1406: See Q0049.
5295
5296
5297Q1407: RFC 1985 specifies that the SMTP command \"ETRN host.domain"\ causes all
5298 mail queued for that host, no matter what domain it's for, to be
5299 delivered. Why doesn't Exim support this?
5300
5301A1407: Exim does not keep queues of mail for specific destinations. It just
5302 keeps one pool of undelivered messages. What is more, once you start a
5303 delivery of a message, it tries to deliver to all the addresses in the
5304 message, not just the one you may be interested in. (Of course, this
5305 doesn't usually do any harm.)
5306
5307 The only way it could be done within Exim would be, for every message
5308 on the queue, to go through the motions of routing each undelivered
5309 address and see if that resulted in a delivery to the host of interest.
5310 This could be extremely expensive (e.g. 1,000 messages on the queue,
5311 only 1 for the given host).
5312
5313 The bottom line is that Exim just wasn't designed for this kind of
5314 operation, that is, holding messages for intermittently connected hosts.
5315 The queueing arrangements are designed for handling delivery problems
5316 that are not expected to be common.
5317
5318 A better way to do this is to implement the required queues separately.
5319 After all, keeping such mail on an active queue (where Exim will keep
5320 trying to deliver) is silly. If there is a lot of mail for these hosts,
5321 it also masks genuine delivery problems when you inspect the queue.
5322
5323 Large ISPs who provide this kind of functionality do not usually leave
5324 waiting mail on the MTA's queue. Instead, they get it delivered into
5325 per-host directories, one message per file, in one of the special
5326 formats (BSMTP, maildir, or mailstore) and when an ETRN arrives, it
5327 kicks off some completely different program that establishes an SMTP
5328 connection to the host and shovels the waiting mail down it. That seems
5329 to me to be a much neater way of doing this. It means you can easily add
5330 additional functionality such as archiving or throwing away uncollected
5331 mail.
5332
5333 One program that has this functionality is \^ssmtp^\, which can be
5334 found in \?ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/mta/?\.
5335 Alternatively, sample configuration C037 demonstrates an elegant way of
5336 using Exim itself to deliver the saved messages when the client issues
5337 an ETRN.
5338
5339
5340Q1408: If email has been deferred to a member on a local mailing list
5341 (implemented through forward files), and one of our ETRN clients is on
5342 this mailing list, the \-R-\ won't flush the mailing list message for
5343 that client.
5344
5345A1408: That is because \-R-\ matches only original recipient addresses, not those
5346 produced as a result of expansion, because these are not (by default)
5347 preserved from delivery to delivery. You can get round this by setting
5348 \one_time\ on the forwarding router, but you are not allowed to have
5349 expansions to pipes or files on routers that have \one_time\ set.
5350 Therefore, you will have to have a separate router for mailing lists
5351 (with \one_time\ set) to the one used for normal forward files that might
5352 specify pipe or file deliveries. However, the problem will still be
5353 present for any user who sets up a \(.forward)\ file to redirect to any of
5354 the ETRN domains. See the last 3 paragraphs of Q1407 for a discussion of
5355 an alternative approach.
5356
5357
5358Q1409: I would like to have a separate queue per domain for hosts which dial
5359 in to collect their mail.
5360
5361A1409: Exim isn't really designed for this kind of operation. The only way to
5362 do this would be to cause it to send those messages to a differently
5363 configured version of Exim with its own spool area. This could be done
5364 via a pipe or SMTP to a private port. The main Exim, listening on port
5365 25, would then be configured to run an appropriate command to prod one
5366 of the others when it received ETRN, by means of the \smtp_etrn_command\
5367 option.
5368
5369 You could probably manage this with a single Exim binary and a number of
5370 different configuration files, passed to the special versions using the
5371 \-C-\ option. For this application they could all run as \^exim^\, since no
5372 root privilege would be needed.
5373
5374 An alternative approach id to get Exim to deliver mail for such hosts
5375 in batch SMTP format into some directory, and have the ETRN run
5376 something to pass such messages to the dialled-in host. See also Q1403.
5377
5378
5379
538015. UUCP
5381
5382Q1501: The MX records for some UUCP domains point to my local host. How do I
5383 get it to pass the messages on to UUCP?
5384
5385A1501: The simplest way is to create a file containing a list of domains, and
5386 the hosts to which their messages should be sent, like this:
5387
5388==> uucp1.domain.example: uucp1.host.example
5389 uucp2.domain.example: uucp2.host.example
5390 ....
5391
5392 Then you can use a router like this:
5393
5394==> uucp_router:
5395 driver = accept
5396 domains = lsearch;/etc/uucp/domains
5397 transport = uucp_transport
5398
5399 and a transport like this:
5400
5401==> uucp_transport:
5402 driver = pipe
5403 user = nobody
5404 command = /usr/local/bin/uux - -r $domain_data!rmail $local_part
5405 return_fail_output
5406
5407 The \$domain_data$\ variable retains the value that is looked up when
5408 the \domains\ option in the router is matched.
5409
5410
5411Q1502: How can I get Exim to handle ``bang path'' addresses?
5412
5413A1502: In general, you can't (Exim is an Internet mailer and recognizes only
5414 RFC 2822 domain-style addresses) but some restricted kinds of bang path
5415 can be dealt with by appropriate rewriting - but please note the warning
5416 below.
5417
5418 Exim treats a bang path address as an unqualified local part, and so
5419 will qualify it with your domain. A rule such as
5420
5421==> \N^([^!]+)!(.+)@your\.domain$\N $2@$1
5422
5423 turns \(a!b@your.domain)\ into \(b@a)\. You can also use a repeating rule to
5424 turn multi-component paths into the ``percent hack'' notation with a rule
5425 such as
5426
5427==> \N^([^!]+)!([^@%]+)(.+)$\N $2%$1$3 R
5428
5429 which turns \(a!b@c)\ into \(b%a@c)\ and \(a!b!c@d)\ first into \(b!c%a@d)\ and then,
5430 because of the R flag, into \(c%b%a@d)\. The R flag causes repetition up to
5431 10 times.
5432
5433 \**Warning:**\ If you install a general rewriting rule like the above, you are
5434 opening yourself up to the possibility of unwanted relaying. A host that
5435 is not permitted to relay through your system could send a message with
5436 an SMTP command line such as
5437
5438==> RCPT TO:<victim-host!victim-user@your.domain>
5439
5440 and this would be accepted because it is addressed to your domain.
5441 However, the rewriting then converts the address, and the message does
5442 in fact get relayed. One way round this, if all your bang path messages
5443 are passed to Exim via SMTP, is to use the \"S"\ rewriting flag. This
5444 applies a rewriting rule to incoming SMTP addresses as soon as they are
5445 received, before checking for qualification, relaying, etc. So a rule
5446 such as
5447
5448==> \N^([^!]+)!(.+)$\N $2@$1 S
5449
5450 rewrites simple two-component bang paths before the result is checked
5451 for relaying. However, this does not rewrite addresses in the headers of
5452 the message.
5453
5454
5455Q1503: We see something strange on our system in regards to mail coming in via
5456 rmail from a UUCP link. The sender is being set to mailmaster instead of
5457 the real sender, and a ::Sender:: header is being added to the message.
5458
5459A1503: If \(mailmaster)\ is the user that is running rmail, you need to include
5460 that user in the \trusted_users\ configuration option. Only trusted users
5461 are permitted to specify senders when mail is passed to Exim via the
5462 command line.
5463
5464
5465
546616. MODIFYING MESSAGE BODIES
5467
5468Q1601: How can I add a disclaimer or an advertisement to a message?
5469
5470A1601: There are a number of technical and potential legal problems that arise
5471 in connection with message modification. Some of them are listed below.
5472 Some comment on the legal position of email disclaimers in English law
5473 can be found at \?http://www.weblaw.co.uk/artemail.htm?\.
5474
5475 See also \?http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/?\. There is
5476 some discussion about the problems of actually adding disclaimers in
5477 \?http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/apply.html?\.
5478
5479 In many cases, email disclaimers will make your company look ridiculous,
5480 at the very least. At worst, they may interfere with the normal
5481 processing of mail.
5482
5483 If, despite these considerations, you still want to modify messages, you
5484 can do so using Exim, but not directly in Exim itself. It is not the job
5485 of an MTA to modify messages, something that requires understanding of
5486 their content and format.
5487
5488 Exim provides a hook called a ``transport filter'' that lets you pass
5489 any outgoing message through a program or script of your choice. It
5490 is the job of this script to make any changes to the message that you
5491 require. By this means, you have full control over what changes are
5492 made, and Exim does not need to know anything about message bodies.
5493 However, using a transport filter requires additional resources, and may
5494 slow down mail delivery.
5495
5496 You can use Exim's routers to arrange for those messages that you want
5497 to modify to be delivered via a transport filter. For example, suppose
5498 you want to do this for messages from addresses in your domain that are
5499 being delivered to a remote host. First you need to set up a special
5500 \%smtp%\ transport that uses a filter, like this:
5501
5502==> remote_smtp_filter:
5503 driver = smtp
5504 transport_filter = /your/filter/command
5505
5506 Then you need to modify the \%dnslookup%\ router to use this transport
5507 when the conditions are right:
5508
5509==> dnslookup:
5510 driver = dnslookup
5511 domains = ! +local_domains
5512 transport = ${if eq {$sender_address_domain}{your.domain}\
5513 {remote_smtp_filter}{remote_smtp}}
5514 ignore_target_hosts = 127.0.0.0/8
5515 no_more
5516
5517 This is the standard \%dnslookup%\ router, but with a modified setting of
5518 the \transport\ option. When the sender address is in your domain, it
5519 routes to the special transport instead of the standard one.
5520
5521 The entire message is passed to your filter command on its standard
5522 input. It must write the modified version to the standard output, taking
5523 care not to break the RFC 2822 syntax. The command is run as the Exim
5524 user.
5525
5526 There are a number of potential problems in doing this kind of
5527 modification in an MTA. Many people believe that to attempt is it wrong,
5528 because:
5529
5530 1. It breaks digital signatures, which are becoming legally binding
5531 in some countries. It may well also break encryption.
5532
5533 2. It is likely to break MIME encoding, that is, it is likely to wreck
5534 attachments, unless great care is taken. And what about the case of a
5535 message containing only binary MIME parts?
5536
5537 3. It is illegal under German and Dutch law to change the body of
5538 a mail message in transit. It might potentially be illegal in
5539 the UK under European law. This consideration applies to ISPs and
5540 other ``common carriers''. It would presumably not apply in a corporate
5541 environment where modification was done only to messages originating
5542 from the employees, before they left the company's network. It might
5543 also not apply if the senders have explicitly given their consent
5544 (e.g. agreed to have advertisements added to their incoming mail).
5545
5546 4. Since the delivered message body was produced by the MTA (not the
5547 originator, because it was modified), the MTA operator could
5548 potentially be sued for any content. This again applies to `common
5549 carrier' MTAs. It's interesting that adding a disclaimer of liability
5550 could be making you liable for the message, but this case seems
5551 more likely to involve adding advertisements than disclaimers. After
5552 all, no postal service in the world opens all the mail it carries to
5553 add disclaimers.
5554
5555 5. Some mail clients (old versions of MS outlook) crash if the message
5556 body of an incoming MIME message has been tampered with.
5557
5558 There are also potential problems that could arise if a scheme to add
5559 disclaimers goes wrong for some messages:
5560
5561 1. False negatives: `Ah, this guy usually says he does not represent
5562 their views, but in this message he doesn't have the disclaimer'.
5563
5564 2. False positives: `This official announcement does not represent our
5565 views, oh no'.
5566
5567 An alternative approach to the disclaimer problem would be to insist
5568 that all relevant messages have the disclaimer appended by the MUA. The
5569 MTA should refuse to accept any that do not. Again, however, the MTA
5570 must understand the format of messages in order to do this. Simply
5571 checking for appropriate wording at the end of the body is not good
5572 enough. It would probably be necessary to run a Perl script from within
5573 an Exim system filter, or write a \^^local_scan()^^\ function in order
5574 to adopt this approach.
5575
5576 Finally, it's a trivial matter to add customized headers of the sort:
5577
5578==> X-Disclaimer: This is a standard disclaimer that says that the views
5579 X-Disclaimer: contained within this message are somebody else's.
5580
5581 which is a much easier alternative to modifying message bodies.
5582
5583
5584Q1602: How can I remove attachments from messages?
5585
5586A1602: The answer to this is essentially the same as for Q1601.
5587
5588
5589
559017. ENCRYPTION (TLS/SSL)
5591
5592Q1701: I am trying to set up an Exim server that uses a self-signed certificate
5593 to enable my clients to use TLS. However, clients other than Exim
5594 refuse to accept this certificate. What's wrong?
5595
5596A1701: It seems that some clients require that the certificate presented by
5597 the server be a user (also called ``leaf'' or ``site'') certificate, and not
5598 a self-signed certificate. In this situation, the self-signed
5599 certificate must be installed on the client as a trusted root
5600 \*certification authority*\ (CA), and the certificate used by the server
5601 must be a user certificate signed with that self-signed certificate.
5602
5603 For information on creating self-signed CA certificates and using them
5604 to sign user certificates, see the \*General implementation overview*\
5605 chapter of the Open-source PKI book, available online at
5606 \?http://ospkibook.sourceforge.net/?\. Here is a quick overview. First,
5607 read this message:
5608
5609 \?http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?id=3C3F3A93.C1ECF9B0%40mindspring.com?\
5610
5611 Then, follow the instructions found on these two (consecutive) pages:
5612
5613 \?http://ospkibook.sourceforge.net/docs/OSPKI-2.4.6/OSPKI/initialisation.htm?\
5614 \?http://ospkibook.sourceforge.net/docs/OSPKI-2.4.6/OSPKI/keygensign.htm?\
5615
5616 Two points on the PKI Book literature:
5617
5618 (1) It's assumed that it's okay to use a passphrase-protected key to
5619 encrypt the user/site/leaf certificate. If this isn't acceptable,
5620 you seem to be able to strip out the passphrase as follows:
5621
5622==> openssl rsa -in user.key -our user.key.new
5623 mv user.key.new
5624
5625 This should be done immediately after \(user.key)\ is created.
5626
5627 (2) The \*sign.sh*\ script is available in the \*mod_ssl*\ distribution,
5628 available at \?http://www.modssl.org/source/?\.
5629
5630 Having followed the instructions, you end up with the following files:
5631
5632 (a) \(ca.crt)\
5633
5634 This file should be installed into the client software as a trusted
5635 root certification authority. In Windows XP, this can be done as follows:
5636
5637 \#\#Call the file \(ca_cert.cer)\
5638 [[br]]
5639 \#\#Double-click on the file
5640 [[br]]
5641 \#\#"Install Certificate";
5642 [[br]]
5643 \#\#"Next"
5644 [[br]]
5645 \#\#"Place all certificates in the following store"
5646 [[br]]
5647 \#\#"Browse..."
5648 [[br]]
5649 \#\#"Trusted Root Certification Authorities"
5650 [[br]]
5651 \#\#"OK"
5652 [[br]]
5653 \#\#"Next"
5654 [[br]]
5655 \#\#"Finish"
5656 [[br]]
5657 \#\#"Yes"
5658 [[br]]
5659 \#\#"OK"
5660
5661 (b) \(user.crt)\ and \(user.key)\
5662
5663 These files should be installed into the server software. In Exim, this
5664 can be done by adding these lines to the configuration file:
5665
5666==> tls_certificate = /usr/local/etc/exim/tls_cert
5667 tls_privatekey = /usr/local/etc/exim/tls_key
5668
5669 Then install \(user.crt)\ and \(user.key)\ under the names \(tls_cert)\
5670 and \(tls_key)\ in the appropriate directory.
5671
5672
5673Q1702: How can I arrange for Exim to advertise support for SMTP authentication
5674 only when the session is encrypted?
5675
5676A1702: Use this setting:
5677
5678==> auth_advertise_hosts = ${if eq{$tls_cipher}{}{}{*}}
5679
5680
5681Q1703: I have some legacy clients that don't use STARTTLS, but which expect to
5682 negotiate a TLS session automatically on connection to the ssmtp port
5683 (465). Can Exim handle this?
5684
5685A1703: The \-tls-on-connect-\ option is available to handle this. You need to
5686 run two instances of an Exim listener, listening on different ports, one
5687 of which is started with \-tls-on-connect-\. You can either use two
5688 daemons, or a single daemon, with the other listenever using \^inetd^\.
5689 For example, here are commands to start two daemons:
5690
5691==> exim -bd -q15m
5692 exim -bd -oX '[0.0.0.0]::465' -tls-on-connect
5693
5694 The first is a ``normal'' daemon; the second listens on port 465 and
5695 expects to negotiate a TLS session at the start of each connection.
5696
5697
5698Q1704: When my Outlook Express 6.0 client sends a STARTTLS command to begin a
5699 TLS session, Exim doesn't seem to receive it.
5700
5701A1704: See Q0059.
5702
5703
5704Q1705: I have listed some hosts in \tls_try_verify_hosts\, but when they
5705 connect, no data appears in \$tls_peerdn$\.
5706
5707A1705: This means that the clients have not sent certificates when asked by
5708 the server to do so. If the clients are running Exim, check that
5709 \tls_certificate\ is correctly set in their \%smtp%\ transports. Note
5710 that this value is not automatically inherited from the global
5711 \tls_certificate\ option.
5712
5713
5714Q1706: I have listed some hosts in \tls_verify_hosts\ and provided them with
5715 certificates, but their connections are always rejected.
5716
5717A1706: Make sure that the server file containing the expected certificates
5718 (defined by \tls_verify_certificates\) is readable by the Exim user.
5719 See also the answer to Q1705.
5720
5721
5722Q1707: I am trying to use TLS with Evolution as a client, and keep seeing this
5723 error: \*SMTP protocol violation: synchronization error (next input
5724 sent too soon): rejected "\200F^A^C".*\ What does it mean?
5725
5726A1707: See Q0086 for a general explanation of the error. In this case, it
5727 probably means that Evolution is trying to negotiate a TLS session
5728 immediately it connects, without first using the STARTTLS command. This
5729 was an older way of starting up TLS, before STARTTLS was defined. You
5730 will have to run a separate instance of Exim using the
5731 \-tls-on-connect-\ command line option to cater for this usage, and
5732 listening on a different port. For example:
5733
5734==> exim -bd -oX 465 -tls-on-connect
5735
5736 465 is the ``smtps'' port which is an unofficial standard for this kind
5737 of SMTP server.
5738
5739
5740Q1708: I trying to use TLS with Outlook as a client on a box that is running
5741 Norton Antivirus, but all my email is being rejected with \*Unsupported
5742 command*\ errors. Why?
5743
5744A1708: Norton Antivirus does not support TLS or AUTH. It puts a broken SMTP
5745 proxy between you and the Exim server. You need to turn off outbound
5746 scanning of email.
5747
5748
5749
575020. MILLENNIUM
5751
5752Q2000: Are there any Y2K issues with Exim?
5753
5754A2000: The author of Exim believes that it is Y2K-compliant, as long as the
5755 underlying operating system and C library are. Exim does not parse dates
5756 or times at all. Internally, it makes some use of binary timestamps in
5757 Unix format (number of seconds since 1-Jan-1970) and uses C library
5758 services to convert these to printing forms (e.g. for logging). The
5759 printing forms all use 4-digit years. Some people have tried various
5760 tests. No problems have been reported, but details of what tests have
5761 been done are not available.
5762
5763 Well, it's now November 2001, and no Y2K problems have been reported, so
5764 it looks like I was right. This entry is retained as historical
5765 nostalgia.
5766
5767
5768
576950. MISCELLANEOUS
5770
5771Q5001: How can I arrange to allow a limited set of users to perform a limited
5772 set of Exim administration functions? I don't want to put them all in
5773 the //exim// group.
5774
5775A5001: See \?http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ian/userv/?\. Using \^userv^\ you can
5776 arrange (for example) for certain users to be able to invoke \^mailq^\ or
5777 \^runq^\ or other preset commands as \^exim^\ (or any other user, as configured)
5778 with only \^userv^\ configuration. If you want to check the particular Exim
5779 options available you can easily do it with shell or Perl scripts and
5780 \^userv^\ configuration, and provided you know how to do argument
5781 ``unparsing'' properly in shell or Perl it will be secure.
5782
5783
5784Q5002: I want to ``tail'' the Exim log, but I have a number of other logs I also
5785 want to ``tail'', and the number of tailing windows is getting to be a
5786 nuisance.
5787
5788A5002: Look for a program called \^xtail^\ (despite its name, it's not an
5789 X-windows application). It allows you to do multiple tails, even of
5790 entire directories.
5791
5792 Alternately, get the GNU version of \^tail^\, from the GNU textutils
5793 package (\?ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/textutils/?\). GNU tail lets you run
5794 \"tail -f\" on multiple files at the same time, although it doesn't work
5795 on entire directories like \^xtail^\ can. If you are running Linux, you
5796 probably already have a version of GNU \^tail^\ that can follow multiple
5797 files.
5798
5799
5800Q5003: How can I persuade Exim to accept ETRN commands without the leading
5801 # character?
5802
5803A5003: Set the option
5804
5805==> smtp_etrn_command = /usr/lib/sendmail -R $domain
5806
5807 This causes Exim to run that command, with \$domain$\ replaced by the
5808 argument of ETRN. The default action of Exim is to require the # sign
5809 in order to be RFC-compliant, and to run the equivalent of
5810
5811==> smtp_etrn_command = /usr/lib/sendmail -R ${substr_1:$domain}
5812
5813 which uses the argument without the leading # as the value for the \-R-\
5814 option. You aren't restricted to running Exim with the \-R-\ option, of
5815 course. You can specify any command you like, with any number of
5816 arguments. In particular, you can pass over the IP address of the caller
5817 via \$sender_host_address$\. However, if you make use of expansion strings
5818 in the arguments, each one must be entirely contained in a single
5819 argument. For example, if you want to remove the first character of the
5820 ETRN argument when it is @ or #, you could use
5821
5822==> smtp_etrn_command = "/usr/lib/sendmail -R \
5823 \"${if match {$domain}{^[@#]}{${substr_1:$domain}}{$domain}}\""
5824
5825 The internal quotes are necessary because of the white space inside the
5826 expansion string.
5827
5828
5829Q5004: I've recently noticed that emails I send with a ::Bcc:: line are being
5830 delivered to their final destination with the ::Bcc:: line still present.
5831
5832A5004: Exim removes ::Bcc:: lines only if you call it with the \-t-\ option (i.e.
5833 when it is acting partly as an MUA). It does not remove ::Bcc:: lines that
5834 are present in incoming SMTP mail or command-line mail that does not
5835 use \-t-\. Indeed, it should not remove them, because only the
5836 initiating software (i.e. the MUA) can tell what to do with ::Bcc::
5837 lines; any MTA software has to leave them alone. This is what RFC 2822
5838 has to say about ::Bcc::
5839
5840 \*The ::Bcc:: field (where the ``Bcc'' means ``Blind Carbon Copy'') contains
5841 addresses of recipients of the message whose addresses are not to be
5842 revealed to other recipients of the message. There are three ways in
5843 which the ::Bcc:: field is used. In the first case, when a message
5844 containing a ::Bcc:: field is prepared to be sent, the ::Bcc:: line is
5845 removed even though all of the recipients (including those specified
5846 in the ::Bcc:: field) are sent a copy of the message. In the second
5847 case, recipients specified in the ::To:: and ::Cc:: lines each are sent
5848 a copy of the message with the ::Bcc:: line removed as above, but the
5849 recipients on the ::Bcc:: line get a separate copy of the message
5850 containing a ::Bcc:: line. (When there are multiple recipient
5851 addresses in the ::Bcc:: field, some implementations actually send a
5852 separate copy of the message to each recipient with a ::Bcc::
5853 containing only the address of that particular recipient.) Finally,
5854 since a ::Bcc:: field may contain no addresses, a ::Bcc:: field can be
5855 sent without any addresses indicating to the recipients that blind
5856 copies were sent to someone. Which method to use with ::Bcc:: fields
5857 is implementation dependent, but refer to the ``Security
5858 Considerations'' section of this document for a discussion of each.*\
5859
5860
5861Q5005: I used \^gv^\ 3.5.8 (\^ghostview^\) to try printing \(spec.ps)\. After every
5862 printed page, the printer ejects a blank sheet. Is this something to do
5863 with using ``letter'' rather than A4 paper?
5864
5865A5005: This seems to be an effect of using \^ghostview^\. Although the PostScript
5866 is generated for A4 pages, the size of the page images is such that they
5867 should fit on a letter page (they are shorter than would normally be
5868 used on A4 paper). If the PostScript file is sent directly to a
5869 PostScript printer, there is no problem. An alternative is to get hold
5870 of the \^psutils^\ toolset, which is available from
5871 \?ftp://ftp.dcs.ed.ac.uk/pub/psutils/psutils.tar.gz?\.
5872 It contains utilities for extracting pages (which can be useful for
5873 double-sided printing) and for resizing pages. If you resize from A4 to
5874 letter the text shrinks a bit, but should then be printable via
5875 \^ghostview^\.
5876
5877
5878Q5006: Why aren't there any man pages for Exim? I don't always carry my printed
5879 documentation.
5880
5881A5006: A single man page which lists the command line options is provided in
5882 file \(doc/exim.8)\ in the Exim distribution. Several other forms of
5883 online documentation are available. As well as plain ASCII text, the
5884 there are two forms - Texinfo and HTML - which have a certain amount of
5885 built-in indexing for ease of finding your way around. There are no man
5886 pages apart from the command line one because the author of Exim hasn't
5887 the time (or desire :-) to maintain yet another documentation format.
5888 Besides, it is hard to know how to split the Exim manual up.
5889
5890
5891Q5007: When I send a message using the \-t-\ command line option, Exim sends only
5892 to the addresses within the message, not to those on the command line.
5893
5894A5007: There seems to be some confusion in the Sendmail community about the
5895 interpretation of recipient addresses on the command line if the \-t-\
5896 option is used. Some versions do one thing, and some another. Here is an
5897 except from one version of the Sendmail documentation for \-t-\:
5898
5899 \*Read message for recipients. ::To::, ::Cc::, and ::Bcc:: lines will
5900 be scanned for recipient addresses. The ::Bcc:: line will be
5901 deleted before transmission. Any addresses in the argument
5902 list will be suppressed, that is, they will not receive
5903 copies even if listed in the message header.*\
5904
5905 By default Exim follows this specification, and interprets addresses on
5906 the command line as addresses not to send to. You can set
5907
5908==> extract_addresses_remove_arguments = false
5909
5910 to change this behaviour so that command line addresses are added to the
5911 addresses that are taken from the header lines.
5912
5913
5914Q5008: If I set up a domain list to contain //*customer.com//, it matches
5915 //customer.com// and //abc.customer.com// as required, but it also matches
5916 //noncustomer.com//, which is wrong. How can I get round this?
5917
5918A5008: You have to specify two entries in the list:
5919
5920==> customer.com : *.customer.com
5921
5922 because * in a domain list matches any characters, including \"."\ and
5923 including a null sequence.
5924
5925
5926Q5009: I want to match all domains of the form //*.oyoy.org// but want a few
5927 exceptions. For instance I don't want //foo.oyoy.org// or //bar.oyoy.org// to be
5928 included. What is the best way to do this?
5929
5930A5009: Use negative items in the domain list, like this:
5931
5932==> domainlist local_domains = !foo.oyoy.org : !bar.oyoy.org : *.oyoy.org
5933
5934 If there are many exceptions, you can use a lookup instead of listing
5935 them all inline. If there are a number of exceptions that match a
5936 particular pattern, you could use a regular expression.
5937
5938
5939Q5010: I can't seem to find a pre-built version of Exim anywhere. The machine
5940 is a Sparc 5 running Solaris 2.6.
5941
5942A5010: The primary distribution is source-only. However, some people have built
5943 and distributed RPMs and debs for Linux systems, and ports for FreeBSD.
5944 I haven't heard of anyone doing this for Solaris. The main problem with
5945 binary distributions is that there are a number of build-time options,
5946 requiring the answers to questions like:
5947
5948 . Which DBM library do you have? (On Solaris probably ndbm, but no easy
5949 default on some other systems.)
5950
5951 . Which uid/gid do you want to use for Exim?
5952
5953 . Where do you want the configuration file to be? (Many different
5954 answers, even on the same OS, depending on local policy.)
5955
5956 . Ditto for the binaries.
5957
5958 . Which optional bits of Exim do you want to include?
5959
5960
5961Q5011: Is there a version of Exim available that runs under Windows?
5962
5963A5011: A long time ago somebody took a copy of the Exim source with the aim of
5964 trying to port it to Windows NT. However, I never heard anything more.
5965 However, current versions of Exim can be made to run under Cygwin.
5966
5967
5968Q5012: Does Exim support Delivery Status Notification (DSN), Message Status
5969 Notification (MSN), or any other form of delivery acknowledgement?
5970
5971A5012: See Q0607.
5972
5973
5974Q5013: What does ``Exim'' stand for?
5975
5976A5013: Originally, it was ``EXperimental Internet Mailer'', which was the best I
5977 could come up with when I was starting out. At that point it was
5978 experimental - I wanted to see if the ideas I had for extending Smail's
5979 approach actually worked. Then somebody discovered about it and wanted
5980 to start using it, and told other people about it...
5981
5982
5983Q5014: Although I haven't set \check_spool_space\, Exim is still checking the
5984 amount of space on the spool for incoming SMTP messages that use the
5985 SIZE option. Can I suppress this?
5986
5987A5014: The RFC for the SIZE option says:
5988
5989 \*If the server currently lacks sufficient resources to accept a
5990 message of the indicated size, but may be able to accept the
5991 message at a later time, it responds with code ``452
5992 insufficient system storage''.*\
5993
5994 and that is what Exim is trying to implement. This is entirely
5995 independent from \check_spool_space\, which says \*don't accept any mail
5996 if there is less than so much space in the spool partition*\, though the
5997 code is optimised to do both checks at the same time if required.
5998 However, you can suppress the SIZE check if you want to, by unsetting
5999 \smtp_check_spool_space\.
6000
6001
6002Q5015: I just noticed log entries that start off \"<= <>"\. Am I correct in
6003 assuming that the \"<>"\ indicates that the envelope did not contain any
6004 ``From'' data?
6005
6006A5015: Yes. This indicates a delivery failure report (aka a ``bounce message''),
6007 as specified in RFC 2821. The reason for using empty sender addresses is
6008 to identify bounce messages so that they themselves do not cause further
6009 bounces. Empty senders are also used for other kinds of report which
6010 should not themselves cause the generation of bounce messages. For
6011 example, Exim uses them when sending out warnings about delivery delays.
6012
6013
6014Q5016: I've received a message which does not have my address in the ::To::
6015 line. It is a spam message with the same address in both the ::From:: and
6016 the ::To:: headers. How can this happen, and why doesn't Exim reject it?
6017
6018A5016: There is an important distinction between the ``envelope'' from and to and
6019 the ``header'' from and to. The former are sometimes called the ``sender''
6020 and ``recipient''. An email message needs an ``envelope'' for the same
6021 reason that paper mail does - the envelope tells the delivery mechanism
6022 what to do with this copy of the message, whereas the ::To:: header lists
6023 all the recipients, including those who have been sent different copies
6024 of the message because their mailbox is on some other host.
6025
6026 An MTA such as Exim works entirely with the ``envelope'' addresses, not
6027 with those in the header lines. Don't try to block mail where envelope
6028 from and the header from differ. There are common legitimate cases where
6029 this happens, for example, messages forwarded from mailing lists and
6030 delivery failure reports.
6031
6032
6033Q5017: Can (or will) Exim ever handle a message delivery purely in memory,
6034 that is, it is handled without it ever hitting the disk?
6035
6036A5017: It doesn't, and never will. Accepting and delivering a message are two
6037 entirely separate, independent processes, which communicate only by
6038 writing/reading the message on the disk.
6039
6040
6041Q5018: If I am using dbm files for data that Exim reads, can I rebuild them
6042 on the fly, or do I need to restart Exim every time I make a change?
6043
6044A5018: Exim re-reads the file every time it consults it, so if you are using a
6045 cdb or a DBM library that uses just a single file (i.e. not ndbm),
6046 you can just build the new file with a temporary file name, and use
6047 \^mv^\ to rename it into the correct place on the fly. If there are two
6048 files to rename, there is a window of time during which the DBM database
6049 is inconsistent. On lightly loaded systems this may not matter.
6050
6051
6052Q5019: I need an option that is the opposite of \-bpa-\, that is, a listing of
6053 those addresses generated from a top-level address that have not yet
6054 been delivered.
6055
6056A5019: Exim does not keep this information. It saves only the top-level
6057 addresses and the list of addresses that are finished with. At each
6058 delivery attempt, generated addresses are recomputed from scratch. This
6059 makes it possible to correct errors in redirection data that is
6060 causing delivery delays. However, there is an option you can set on a
6061 \redirect\ router that changes things. It is called \one_time\, and if
6062 it is set, the list of generated addresses gets added to the top-level
6063 list at the first delivery attempt, and is never regenerated. Because
6064 top-level address lists must be real email addresses, this option cannot
6065 be used if any of the generated addresses are pipes, files, or
6066 autoreplies.
6067
6068
6069Q5020: How can I make Exim receive incoming mail, queue it, but not attempt to
6070 deliver it? I want to be in this state while moving some mailboxes.
6071
6072A5020: Set \queue_only\ in the Exim configuration. Then kill your daemon,
6073 and restart it without the \-q-\ option (i.e. with just the \-bd-\ option),
6074 so that it does not spawn any queue runners. This stops all deliveries,
6075 remote as well as local.
6076
6077
6078Q5021: What does Exim use for POP and IMAP as a default? Do I have to install
6079 anything else?
6080
6081A5021: Yes. Exim provides MTA functionality. That is, it delivers mail. POP and
6082 IMAP are two of several ways of reading previously-delivered mail. Exim
6083 does not provide that functionality. You need to install POP and/or IMAP
6084 daemons; there are several to choose from. There is a mailing list at
6085 //pop-imap@exim.org// for the discussion of POP/IMAP issues.
6086
6087
6088Q5022: Is there an easy way of removing all queued messages at once in a safe
6089 way?
6090
6091A5022: Try this command:
6092
6093==> exim -bp | awk '/^ *[0-9]+[mhd]/{print "exim -Mrm " $3}' | sh
6094
6095
6096Q5023: Why does Exim do \*ident*\ callbacks by default? Isn't this just a waste
6097 of resources? I've been told this is an ancient way of authentication.
6098 Is it obsolete?
6099
6100A5023: This is a common misunderstanding, at least partially resulting from the
6101 incorrect naming of the protocol when it was first published.
6102 The service on port 113 is an identification service, which allows a
6103 target host to record information identifying the user responsible for
6104 making a connection to it. The information may not be intelligible to
6105 the recording host - it could, for example, be encrypted so that only
6106 someone on the calling host can make sense of it. It is useful for
6107 providing additional information in an audit trail.
6108
6109 At least one site has found \^ident^\ effective against two rather
6110 prevalent kinds of open proxy (whether already blacklisted at the RBLs
6111 or not). An ACL statement is used to reject mail from servers that
6112 return \^ident^\ strings of \"squid"\ and \"CacheFlow Server"\.
6113 Snippets such as this in the RCPT ACL do the trick:
6114
6115==> deny condition = ${if eq{$sender_ident}{CacheFlow Server}{1}{0}}
6116 message = Rejected - appears to be an unsecured proxy: $sender_ident
6117
6118 The likelihood that a genuine mail process would return those specific
6119 ident strings is vanishingly small.
6120
6121 The \^ident^\ data should not be used for authentication in any form
6122 except on a closed secure network between cooperating hosts (probably
6123 not even then). The information from the source host is only as reliable
6124 as the host itself. If it's not under your control then you have to
6125 treat the information as opaque data that can be used only by the
6126 sysadmin of the source system to trace back connection data. Some
6127 \^ident^\ implementations send out opaque cookies or DES encrypted
6128 information. \^Ident^\ is hugely useful at times - especially for
6129 checking back on connections from multiuser machines (as opposed to
6130 one-person desktop boxes).
6131
6132 You can stop Exim making ident calls by adding
6133
6134==> rfc1413_query_timeout = 0s
6135
6136 to its configuration, but it is better to leave it active (reducing the
6137 timeout to 10s or less if it is causing problems) - it costs very
6138 little, and in cases of mail forgery from a multiuser system can track
6139 the sinner concerned very quickly.
6140
6141
6142Q5024: I often have the problem that a message gets stuck in the mail queue and
6143 I want it to be bounced to a certain address.
6144
6145A5024: You can do this using a combination of four command line options, like
6146 this:
6147
6148==> exim -Mf 14Fdlq-0003kM-00
6149 exim -Mmad 14Fdlq-0003kM-00
6150 exim -Mar 14Fdlq-0003kM-00 new@ddress
6151 exim -M 14Fdlq-0003kM-00
6152
6153 The first command freezes the message so that a queue runner won't start
6154 to deliver it while you are changing things. The second command marks
6155 all existing recipients as delivered. The third command adds a new
6156 recipient, and the fourth command forces a delivery of the message,
6157 which will cause it to be delivered to the new address, and then
6158 deleted.
6159
6160
6161Q5025: What precautions should I take when editing Exim's run time
6162 configuration file?
6163
6164A5025: Edit the file and save the result in a new file. Test the syntax of
6165 the new file by running a command like this:
6166
6167==> exim -bV -C exim.conf.new
6168
6169 That will check for syntax errors without disturbing your running
6170 configuration. If you are paranoid enough, run, as \/root/\,
6171
6172==> exim -C exim.conf.new <some address>
6173 <some message>
6174 .
6175
6176 and see if it delivers it. Carry on testing until happy. When happy,
6177
6178==> mv exim.conf.new exim.conf
6179 kill -HUP `cat /var/spool/exim/exim-daemon.pid`
6180
6181 Then check the Exim log to be sure the daemon restarted OK. Watch the
6182 log for a bit to see that mail is flowing.
6183
6184
6185Q5026: Is exim able to use RFC 2645, \*On-demand Mail Relay*\ (ODMR)?
6186
6187A5026: No.
6188
6189
6190Q5027: Is there any way I can send bounces to the postmaster, and nobody else?
6191 Basically, I want to receive them, and I don't want the reply/from
6192 person to get them. If I think they need it I will forward it myself.
6193
6194A5027: Put \"errors_to=postmaster"\ on every router.
6195
6196
6197Q5028: When I HUP the Exim daemon, the name shown in the process table changes
6198 from \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\ (which is a symlink) to the real binary name.
6199 Can I change this?
6200
6201A5028: Add this to your Exim configuration:
6202
6203==> exim_path = /usr/lib/sendmail
6204
6205
6206Q5029: A message with a recipient address that contains a non-printing character
6207 is stuck on my mail queue. How can I remove this address?
6208
6209A5029: You can use the \-Mmd-\ command line option to mark a recipient address
6210 ``delivered'', which effectively removes it. If you are using the Bash
6211 shell, you can enter non-printing characters using an escape sequence.
6212 For example:
6213
6214==> exim -Mmd 15HKvU-00013Q-00 $'\240'abc@x.y.z
6215
6216 In this example, the first character of the local part has a code value
6217 of 240. If you are using a shell that does not support this, create the
6218 command in a file and run it as a shell script.
6219
6220
6221Q5030: I am using exim in a two queues scenario, with two different
6222 configuration files. How can I run a second copy of \^eximon^\ to
6223 inspect and modify the alternate queue?
6224
6225A5030: Use these commands (or put them in a script):
6226
6227==> EXIMON_EXIM_CONFIG=/your/path/exim/configure.alternate
6228 export EXIMON_EXIM_CONFIG
6229 /your/path/exim/bin/eximon
6230
6231
6232Q5031: Why is there no sender address on bounce messages? It shows up as "<>".
6233
6234A5031: See the answer to Q0042.
6235
6236
6237Q5032: Are there any Exim web-based administration scripts?
6238
6239A5032: No (as far as is known). It seems likely that producing one that is
6240 generic enough would be a difficult task.
6241
6242
6243Q5033: How can I send a copy of all outgoing messages to another mailbox?
6244
6245A5033: The most straightforward way is to set up a system filter, and include
6246 a command such as:
6247
6248==> unseen deliver mailbox@whatever.domain
6249
6250 This sends a copy of every message to //mailbox@whatever.domain//
6251 (unless the message already has that recipient - Exim never does
6252 duplicate deliveries).
6253
6254 To save only ``outgoing'' messages, you need to come up with a
6255 definition of what ``outgoing'' means. Typically, this might be a check
6256 on the sender address and/or on the originating host. Here is an
6257 example:
6258
6259==> if $sender_address_domain is mydomain.com and
6260 ${mask:$sender_host_address/24} is 192.168.324.0/24
6261 then
6262 unseen deliver mailbox@whatever.domain
6263 endif
6264
6265
6266Q5034: Is there any way to make the \queue_only\ option conditional? I would
6267 like the ability to queue messages from external sources while deliver
6268 locally generated email as normal.
6269
6270A5034: There is no direct way of doing this. However, you can achieve the
6271 effect. In one of your ACLs that checks incoming mail from external
6272 sources, put
6273
6274==> warn control = queue_only
6275
6276 You can add other conditions as well, of course.
6277
6278
6279
628091. MAC OS X
6281
6282Q9101: How can I install Exim on Mac OS X?
6283
6284A9101: (1) There is useful advice on this web page:
6285 \?http://www.afp548.com/Articles/Jaguar/exim410.html?\.
6286
6287 (2) There is a package installer available at this URL:
6288 \?ftp://members.aol.com/AFP548dotcom/EximInstaller.sit?\.
6289
6290 (3) There is another package installer for the combination of MySQL,
6291 Exim, Exiscan, CourierIMAP, and SpamAssassin at this URL:
6292 \?http://maxo.captainnet.net/installs/mail-install.html?\.
6293
6294
6295
629692. FREEBSD
6297
6298Q9201: On FreeBSD, \(/usr/sbin/sendmail)\ is a symbolic link to
6299 \(/usr/sbin/mailwrapper)\; it doesn't contain the Sendmail binary. How
6300 should I replace Sendmail with Exim on FreeBSD?
6301
6302A9201: There is a file called \(/etc/mail/mailer.conf)\ which selects what to
6303 run for various MTA calls. Instead of changing \(/usr/sbin/sendmail)\,
6304 you should edit this file instead, to read something like this:
6305
6306==> sendmail /usr/exim/bin/exim
6307 send-mail /usr/exim/bin/exim
6308 mailq /usr/exim/bin/exim -bp
6309 newaliases /usr/bin/true
6310
6311 You probably also need to edit \(/etc/periodic.conf)\; see Q9202.
6312
6313
6314Q9202: A script that FreeBSD runs nightly uses \^mailq^\ with the \-Ac-\
6315 parameter. Why doesn't Exim recognize this?
6316
6317A9202: \-Ac-\ is a Sendmail option that requests that mailq ``Show the mail
6318 submission queue specified in \(/etc/mail/submit.cf)\ instead of the
6319 MTA queue specified in \(/etc/mail/sendmail.cf)\''. Exim doesn't have
6320 the concept of a ``submission queue''. You can disable this feature
6321 of the nightly script by adding the line
6322
6323==> daily_status_include_submit_mailq="NO" # No separate 'submit' queue
6324
6325 to the file \(/etc/periodic.conf)\.
6326
6327
6328Q9203: How can I use Exim for authenticated SMTP using Cyrus on FreeBSD?
6329
6330A9203: This web page may help: \?http://www.munk.nu/exim/exim-freebsd-asmtp.php?\.
6331
6332
6333
633493. HP-UX
6335
6336Q9301: I'm trying to compile on an HP machine and I don't have \^gcc^\ there. So I
6337 put \"CC=cc"\ in the \(Local/Makefile)\, but I got this error:
6338
6339==> (Bundled) cc: "buildconfig.c", line 54: error 1705: Function prototypes
6340 are an ANSI feature.
6341
6342A9301: The bundled compiler is not an ANSI C compiler. You either have to get a
6343 copy of \^gcc^\ from the HPUX Software Porting Archives or buy the ANSI cc
6344 from HP. The advice given by one user of HP systems on the Exim
6345 mailing list was as follows:
6346
6347 \*Personally, I wouldn't use anything but the ANSI C compiler. gcc
6348 works for compilation, but it doesn't know squat about PA-RISC chips
6349 past the 1.0 rev. Since then, HP has come out with PA-RISC 1.1, 2.0,
6350 and 2.1, each with better features. gcc will compile for them, but it
6351 doesn't produce anywhere near the optimization that HP's compiler
6352 does.*\
6353
6354 \*I took the gcc road when we moved from FreeBSD to HP-UX because I was
6355 familiar with it. After 6 months, I had to go and re-port everything
6356 over when we realized that gcc wasn't going to do it for us long-term.
6357 If I could give advice to any new HP-UX admin: don't use gcc if you
6358 can afford the ANSI C compiler. Based on the cost of even the lowest
6359 HP workstation, that usually isn't a problem.*\
6360
6361
6362
636394. BSDI
6364
6365Q9401: On BSDI 4.0, Exim built with Perl support exits with the error message
6366
6367==> ./exim: can't load library 'libperl.so'
6368
6369A9401: You probably compiled perl5 yourself, without looking into
6370
6371==> /usr/src/contrib/perl5/perl5.004_02/hints/bsdos.sh
6372
6373 first. The problem is that the command
6374
6375==> perl5 -MExtUtils::Embed -e ldopts
6376
6377 doesn't give you sufficient flags to link something with libperl.
6378 Since 5.004_02 the \(hints/bsdos.sh)\ file has changed to adapt to the
6379 changes between BSDI 3.1 and 4.0, but it is still not entirely right.
6380
6381 The solution is, when you compile perl, change the \ccdlflags\
6382 variable in config.sh to:
6383
6384==> -rdynamic -Wl,-rpath,/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00502/i386-bsdos/CORE
6385
6386 (or something similar). Alternatively, you can run \(./Configure)\ and
6387 answering the question \*Any special flags to pass to cc to use dynamic
6388 loading?*\ with the above line. It is not known what \-rdynamic-\ means
6389 (it's not apparently documented in any man page), but that's what BSDI
6390 guys did to compile perl5 which comes with BSDI 4.0 distribution.
6391
6392
6393
639495. IRIX
6395
6396Q9501: The IP addresses for incoming calls are all being given as
6397 255.255.255.255 or 0.0.0.0.
6398
6399A9501: This problem should no longer occur because a workaround has been
6400 installed in Exim.
6401
6402
6403
640496. LINUX
6405
6406Q9601: Exim is mysteriously crashing, usually when forking to send a delivery
6407 error message.
6408
6409A9601: This has been seen in cases where Exim has been incorrectly built with
6410 a muddled combination of an \(ndbm.h)\ include file and a non-matching
6411 DBM library.
6412
6413 Faults like this have also been seen on systems with faulty motherboards.
6414 You could try to compile the Linux kernel 10 times - if the compile
6415 process stops with signal 11, your hardware is to blame.
6416
6417
6418Q9602: I want to use \^logrotate^\ which is standard with RH5.2 Linux to rotate
6419 my mail logs. Anyone worked out the \^logrotate^\ config file that will
6420 do this?
6421
6422A9602: Here's one suggestion:
6423
6424==> /var/log/exim/main.log {
6425 create 644 exim exim
6426 rotate 4
6427 compress
6428 delaycompress
6429 }
6430
6431 The sleep is added to allow things to close the log file prior to
6432 compression. You also need similar entries for the panic log and the
6433 reject log, of course.
6434
6435
6436Q9603: I'm seeing the message \*inetd[334]: imap/tcp server failing (looping),
6437 service terminated*\ on a RedHat 5.2 system, causing \^imap^\ connections to
6438 be refused. The \^imapd^\ in use is Washington Univers 12.250. Could this
6439 be anything to do with Exim?
6440
6441A9603: No, it's nothing to do with Exim, but here's the answer anyway: there
6442 is a maximum connection rate for \^inetd^\. If connections come in faster
6443 than that, it thinks a caller is looping. The default setting on RedHat
6444 5.2 is 40 calls in any one minute before \^inetd^\ thinks there's a problem
6445 and suspends further calls for 10 mins. This default setting is very
6446 conservative. You should probably increase it by a factor of 10 or 20.
6447 For example:
6448
6449==> imap stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/etc/imapd
6450
6451 The rate setting is the number following ``nowait''. This syntax seems to
6452 be specific to the Linux version of \^inetd^\. Other operating systems
6453 provide similar functionality, but in different ways.
6454
6455
6456Q9604: I get the \*too many open files*\ error especially when a lot of messages
6457 land for Majordomo at the same time.
6458
6459A9604: The problem appears to be the number of open files the system can
6460 handle. This is changable by using the proc filesystem. To your
6461 \(/etc/rc.d/rc.local)\ file append something like the following:
6462
6463==> # Now System is up, Modify kernel parameters for max open etc.
6464
6465==> if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/file-max ]; then
6466 echo 16384 >> /proc/sys/kernel/file-max
6467 fi
6468 if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/inode-max ]; then
6469 echo 24576 >> /proc/sys/kernel/inode-max
6470 fi
6471 if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/file-nr ]; then
6472 echo 2160 >> /proc/sys/kernel/file-nr
6473 fi
6474
6475 By echoing the value you want for file-max to the file \(file-max)\ etc.,
6476 you actually change the kernel parameters.
6477
6478
6479Q9605: I installed debian 2.2 linux on a small 325mb 486 laptop. When I try
6480 to test the Mail program, I get the following error: \*Failed to open
6481 configuration file /etc/exim.conf*\.
6482
6483A9605: The Debian installation should have given you \(/usr/sbin/eximconfig)\,
6484 which asks you some questions and then sets up the configuration file
6485 in \(/etc/exim.conf)\. Try running that (you'll probably need \/root/\) and see
6486 how it goes. In any case you get a thoroughly commented conf file at
6487 the end, which will give you a sample from which to work if you need
6488 further modification.
6489
6490 The Exim docs in the Debian package are in \(/usr/doc/exim)\ where the full
6491 reference manual is \(spec.txt.gz)\.
6492
6493
6494Q9606: I'm having trouble configuring Exim 4 on a Debian system. How does
6495 \(/etc/exim4/conf.d)\ work?
6496
6497A9606: The Debian Exim 4 package uses a quite uncommon, but elegant,
6498 method of configuration where the ``real'' Exim configuration file is
6499 assembled from a tree of snippets by a script invoked just before the
6500 daemon is started (see Q9608).
6501
6502 This fits very well into the Debian system of configuration file
6503 management and is a great ease for the automatic configuration with
6504 Debconf. However, it is \*very*\ different from the normal way Exim 4 is
6505 configured. Non-Debian users on the Exim mailing list will probably have
6506 difficulty in trying to answer specific questions about it. You may have
6507 to find a Debian expert.
6508
6509
6510Q9607: I'm having difficulties trying to make Exim 4 with Redhat 9 and Berkeley
6511 DB 4.
6512
6513A9607: Have you remembered to install the db4-devel package?
6514
6515
6516Q9608: I'm running Exim 3 under Debian, and want to upgrade to Exim 4. How
6517 difficult is it?
6518
6519A9608: A user who did this, using the Debian Exim 4 package, reported as
6520 follows:
6521
6522 (1) The exim4 package installs easily, and the exim (3.38) package
6523 uninstalls at the same time.
6524
6525 (2) Exim runs from \^inetd^\. Exim4 runs from \^/etc/init.d^\. \*Much*\ nicer!
6526
6527 (3) The exim conffile lives in \(/etc/exim/exim.conf)\. The exim4 conffile
6528 lives in \(/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated)\. It is, as the name
6529 suggests, autogenerated.
6530
6531 (4) A new directory is created called \(/etc/exim4)\. This contains the
6532 conffiles to generate the above config. You make changes here.
6533
6534 (5) Once you have made changes to the files in \(/etc/exim4)\ you run the
6535 script \^update-exim4.conf^\ which generates a replacement
6536 \(config.autogenerated)\.
6537
6538 [Added comment by the Debian maintainer, slightly edited:
6539 You also need to tell the Exim daemon to reread the changed
6540 configuration. You can do this using SIGHUP by hand. Alternatively,
6541 instead of running \^update-exim4.conf^\ you can use
6542
6543==> invoke-rc.d exim4 reload
6544
6545 which does the rebuild and also tells Exim to reread the changed
6546 configuration.]
6547
6548 (6) In my experience, you need to \*carefully*\ check the generated
6549 configs. eg, it did not generate a system filter file reference in the
6550 \(config.autogenerated)\. I didn't bother too much, since this is a home
6551 setup.
6552
6553 (7) All of this may be in the docs. I've read some of them, obviously,
6554 but didn't come across an actual upgrade guide.
6555
6556 [The Debian maintainer says:
6557 \(/usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.gz)\ and \^update-exim4.conf(8)^\
6558 should answer most of the questions.]
6559
6560 (8) I've still got some minor things to tweak to get back to where I
6561 was before with Exim 3. But overall, it's no drama.
6562
6563
6564Q9609: Why do some servers refuse SMTP connections from my Linux box, but accept
6565 connections from hosts running other operating systems?
6566
6567A9609: If you are sure this isn't a policy issue (that is, your box isn't
6568 administratively blocked for some reason), this may be because your
6569 Linux box has ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) enabled in its
6570 TCP/IP stack. There are many broken firewalls that refuse connections
6571 from ECN-enabled hosts. You can check the state of your box by running
6572
6573==> cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
6574
6575 If the value is "1", you have ECN enabled. You can turn it off by
6576 running this command:
6577
6578==> echo "0" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
6579
6580
6581
658297. SUN SYSTEMS
6583
6584Q9701: Exim builds fine with \^gcc^\ on SunOS 4 but crashes inside \^^sscanf()^^\.
6585
6586A9701: Make sure you are liking with the GNU \^ld^\ linker and not the system
6587 version of \^ld^\.
6588
6589
6590Q9702: How can I get rid of spurious \"^M"\ characters in messages sent from
6591 CDE \^dtmail^\?
6592
6593A9702: CDE \^dtmail^\ passes messages to Exim via the command line interface with
6594 lines terminated by CRLF, instead of the Unix convention of just LF. As
6595 Exim is an 8-bit clean program it treats the CR as just another data
6596 character. Exim has a command line option called \-dropcr-\ which causes
6597 it to ignore all CR characters in an incoming non-SMTP message. You
6598 should configure \^dtmail^\ to add this option to the command it uses to
6599 call Exim (using the path \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\). However, it has been
6600 reported that it isn't possible to change this call from \^dtmail^\ by any
6601 official means. An alternative approach is to replace \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\
6602 by a filtering script which removes the spurious CRs from the input
6603 before passing it to Exim.
6604
6605
6606Q9703: On SunOS 4 Exim crashes when looking up domains in the DNS that have
6607 more than 10 A records.
6608
6609A9703: There are Sun library patches to fix this. It is not Exim's problem.
6610 For 4.13_U1 the patch is 101558-xx; for 4.1.3 the patch is 100891-xx.
6611 From the README: \*1054748 ftp, ping dump core when connecting to a host
6612 with multiple DNS A records.*\ An alternative is to build another
6613 resolver library - such as the ones that are part of the \^bind^\
6614 distribution - and explicitly link against those.
6615
6616
6617Q9704: I am experiencing mailbox locking problems with Sun's \^mailtool^\ used
6618 over a network.
6619
6620A9704: Under the \"Expert"\ settings of \^mailtool^\ is a option to turn on \*Use
6621 network aware mail file locking*\. By default \^dtmail^\ has this set, but
6622 \^mailtool^\ doesn't. You should set it. The help info on \^dtmail^\ has this
6623 to say about it:
6624
6625 \*Mailer tries to prevent two different instances of itself from opening
6626 the same mail file at the same time through a technique that detects
6627 this access when both instances of Mailer and the file are all on the
6628 same machine. A network-aware mail file locking protocol is available
6629 that uses ToolTalk to coordinate instances of Mailer running from more
6630 than one machine, or mail files accessed over the network. Mailer can
6631 only change this option when first opening a mail file.*\
6632
6633 If you are using the SunOS4 version of \^mailtool^\, this apparently
6634 doesn't work. The only thing which does seem to work it getting the user
6635 to hit the \"done"\ button to make it release the lock.
6636
6637
6638Q9705: Exim has been crashing on my Solaris x86 system, apparently while
6639 running DBM functions.
6640
6641A9705: The use of \^ndbm^\ with \^gcc^\ has caused problems on x86 Solaris systems.
6642 Try changing one or the other; using either DB with gcc, or Sun's
6643 WS compiler with \^ndbm^\, has fixed this in the past.
6644
6645
6646Q9706: The \^exiwhat^\ utility isn't working for me on a Solaris 2 system.
6647
6648A9706: Have you got \(/usr/ucb)\ on your path? If so, it is probably picking up the
6649 wrong version of the \^ps^\ command. The \^exiwhat^\ script is built on
6650 Solaris to expect the normal Solaris version of \^ps^\.
6651
6652
6653Q9707: How do I stop Sun's \^dtcm^\ from hanging?
6654
6655A9707: From qmail's FAQ: \*There is a novice programming error in dtcm, known as
6656 ``failure to close the output side of the pipe in the child.'' Sun has,
6657 at the time of this writing, not yet provided a patch.*\
6658
6659
6660Q9708: I want Exim to use only the resolver (i.e. ignore \(/etc/hosts)\), but don't
6661 want to alter the \(nsswitch.conf)\ file in Solaris 2.
6662
6663A9708: You need to rebuild Exim after fiddling with \(OS/os.h-SunOS5)\:
6664
6665==> #define gethostbyaddr res_gethostbyaddr
6666 #define gethostbyname res_gethostbyname
6667 #define endhostent res_endhostent
6668 #define endnetent res_endnetent
6669 #define gethostent res_gethostent
6670 #define getnetbyaddr res_getnetbyaddr
6671 #define getnetbyname res_getnetbyname
6672 #define getnetent res_getnetent
6673 #define sethostent res_sethostent
6674 #define setnetent res_setnetent
6675
6676 Note that \-lnsl-\ is still needed in the Makefile as it
6677 contains code used by the NIS lookup and also the \^^inet_addr()^^\ function
6678 that Exim uses.
6679
6680
6681Q9709: When I try to compile Exim 4.x on Solaris 2.5.1 I get an error along the
6682 lines of \*no such field in struct as 'value.ui32'*\.
6683
6684A9709: Look in the Exim file \(OS/os.h-SunOS5.h)\ for the line
6685
6686==> #define LOAD_AVG_FIELD value.ui32
6687
6688 and change \"ui32"\ to \"ul"\ (that's u followed by the letter ell, not
6689 the digit one). Solaris 2.5.1 is getting \*very*\ old now...
6690
6691
6692
669398. CONFIGURATION COOKBOOK
6694
6695Q9801: How do I configure Exim as part of TPC (\?http://www.tpc.int?\)?
6696
6697A9801: Suppose you want to accept faxes destined for 1(801)539-*. These are
6698 addressed to the domain //9.3.5.1.0.8.1.tpc.int//. Set up a transport to
6699 handle the delivery:
6700
6701==> tpc:
6702 driver = pipe
6703 command = /usr/local/tpc/tpcmailer.pl $local_part@$domain \
6704 $sender_address
6705 pipe_as_creator
6706
6707 \(/usr/local/tpc/tpcmailer.pl)\ is the mail processing script that can
6708 be obtained from the TPC distribution. Create a router to route mail
6709 for the TPC domain to that transport. This must be placed before your
6710 other routers:
6711
6712==> tpc_router:
6713 driver = accept
6714 transport = tpc
6715 domains = *.9.3.5.1.0.8.1.tpc.int
6716
6717 Of course, there are other things to do as well before your system is
6718 a functioning TPC server.
6719
6720
6721Q9802: How do I configure Exim so that it sends mail to the outside world only
6722 from a restricted list of our local users?
6723
6724A9802: You will need to have a convenient way of checking the list. If it is
6725 only a handful of users, you could just list them inline. Otherwise, you
6726 need to put them in a file or database. Let's suppose you've just got a
6727 list in a file. Put this as your first router:
6728
6729==> check_outgoing:
6730 driver = redirect
6731 domains = ! +local_domains
6732 senders = ! : ! lsearch;/etc/permitted/senders
6733 allow_fail
6734 data = :fail: you are not allowed to send outside
6735
6736 The senders should be listed as complete addresses, with both a local
6737 part and a domain. For a large list, use a DBM or cdb file instead, or
6738 a database. The first item in the \senders\ list is empty, to match the
6739 empty sender. This is necessary because bounce messages have null
6740 senders.
6741
6742
6743Q9803: A site for which I provide secondary MX is down for some time. Is there
6744 a way to run the queue for that destination separately from the main
6745 queue?
6746
6747A9803: No, because Exim does not have the concept of ``the queue for that
6748 destination''. It simply has a single pool of messages awaiting delivery
6749 (and some of them may have several destinations). The best approach to
6750 this is to arrange for all messages for the site to be saved somewhere
6751 other than the main spool, either on a separate dedicated MTA, or in
6752 BSMTP files.
6753
6754
6755Q9804: We want to be able to temporarily lock out a user by disabling the
6756 password and moving the home directory to another place. How can we
6757 arrange to reject mail for users in this state?
6758
6759A9804: Change the home directory pointer in the passwd file to something
6760 distinctive. For example, we use \(/home/CANCELLED)\ for cancelled users.
6761 Then you can pick up such users with this router, which is placed
6762 immediately after \%system_aliases%\:
6763
6764==> cancelled_users:
6765 driver = redirect
6766 check_local_user
6767 condition = ${if eq {$home}{/home/CANCELLED}{yes}{no}}
6768 allow_fail
6769 data = :fail: this account is cancelled
6770
6771
6772Q9805: How can I configure Exim so that all mails addressed to
6773 //something@username.domain.net// get delivered to
6774 \(/var/spool/mail/username)\?
6775
6776A9805: Assuming that you have set up //username// as a normal user, with
6777 conventional routing for //username@domain.net// to that mailbox, all
6778 you need to do is set up a redirection, using a router like this:
6779
6780==> user_in_domain:
6781 driver = redirect
6782 data = ${if match{$domain}{\N^(.*)\.domain\.net$\N}\
6783 {$1}fail}@domain.net
6784
6785 If you set \envelope_to\ in the \%appendfile%\ transport, the original
6786 envelope address is preserved in the message in an ::Envelope-to::
6787 header line.
6788
6789
6790Q9806: How do I get exim not to add a ::Sender:: header to locally originated
6791 mail?
6792
6793A9806: It adds it only if the ::From:: header doesn't correspond to the user
6794 sending the message. You can suppress this by setting
6795 \no_local_from_check\. If your real question is \*How do I submit mail
6796 from UUCP without it adding ::Sender::?*\, see Q1503.
6797
6798
6799Q9807: Is there any way to have messages sent to a specific local address
6800 delayed by - say - 24 hours?
6801
6802A9807: Set up a router like this:
6803
6804==> delay:
6805 driver = redirect
6806 domains = the.domain
6807 local_parts = thelocalpart
6808 condition = ${if < {$message_age}{86400}{yes}{no}}
6809 allow_defer
6810 data = :defer: message not old enough
6811 no_verify
6812
6813 Of course, this will also have the effect of setting a retry time for
6814 the address. You may want to set a special retry rule for it. Note the
6815 use of \no_verify\ to ensure that this router is not used when Exim is
6816 verifying addresses.
6817
6818
6819Q9808: I have a mailing list exploder on one host, and three other hosts where
6820 I want to do the actual deliveries from. How can I get Exim to split
6821 a message into groups of recipients between the three hosts?
6822
6823A9808: Set up a router that routes all remote addresses to a specific
6824 transport, with a list of your three hosts. For example:
6825
6826==> send_to_three:
6827 driver = manualroute
6828 transport = to_three_smtp
6829 route_list = !+local_domains hostA:hostB:hostC
6830
6831 The transport looks like this:
6832
6833==> to_three_smtp:
6834 driver = smtp
6835 hosts_randomize
6836
6837 By setting \hosts_randomize\, you request that the host list be sorted
6838 randomly each time the transport is called, in order to spread the load.
6839 The number of times the transport is called for each message depends on
6840 the setting of the global option \remote_max_parallel\. If it is set to
6841 1, the transport is called only once for each message, so only one host
6842 is used, but different messages use different hosts because of the
6843 randomizing.
6844
6845 The \max_rcpt\ option (default 100) controls the number of addresses
6846 sent in each copy of the message - several copies are sent over the
6847 same connection if necessary.
6848
6849 If you want individual messages to be split between the three hosts, you
6850 must set the global option \remote_max_parallel\ to 3. This allows Exim
6851 to run 3 separate instances of the transport at once. It will pass
6852 one-third of all the addresses to each instance. Because the host list
6853 is randomized, not round-robinned, there is no guarantee that a single
6854 message will use all three hosts, but on average it should.
6855
6856
6857Q9809: Can I configure Exim so that my gateway host sends a copy of each
6858 incoming message to each of two internal hosts?
6859
6860A9809: The easiest way to do this is to make use of the \unseen\ router option,
6861 and set up two separate routers. You need to be able to identify
6862 incoming messages somehow. Typically this can be done by testing the
6863 domain of the recipient address, in which case the configuration should
6864 contain something like this:
6865
6866==> r1:
6867 driver = manualroute
6868 domains = ! *.your.domain.example
6869 route_data = * host1.your.domain.example
6870 transport = remote_smtp
6871 unseen
6872
6873==> r2:
6874 driver = manualroute
6875 domains = ! *.your.domain.example
6876 route_data = * host2.your.domain.example
6877 transport = remote_smtp
6878
6879 The \unseen\ setting on \%r1%\ means that after it has accepted an
6880 address, the address is also passed on to \%r2%\, and so two deliveries
6881 occur.
6882
6883
6884Q9810: How can I implement ``SMTP-after-POP'' with Exim?
6885
6886A9810: See Q0706.
6887
6888
6889Q9811: I would like to ``tap off'' a proportion of real mail traffic from my
6890 live mail server to use in tests of a new server. I want to preserve the
6891 envelope contents, but to suppress any error notifications to the
6892 original sender.
6893
6894A9811: See C046.
6895
6896
6897Q9812: How can I lookup data from a single file using both single IP addresses
6898 and IP address blocks as keys? I want to set \smtp_accept_max_per_host\
6899 by this means, and also include a default.
6900
6901A9812: You cannot do this in a single lookup, because you need separate lookups
6902 for individual addresses and address blocks. However, these lookups can
6903 be nested in a single expansion string. For example, suppose you are
6904 using an lsearch file with entries like this:
6905
6906==> 192.168.34.35: 4
6907 192.168.34.0/24: 2
6908 *: 1
6909
6910 You can use this setting:
6911
6912==> smtp_accept_max_per_host = \
6913 ${lookup{$sender_host_address}lsearch{/path/to/file}\
6914 {$value}\
6915 {\
6916 ${lookup{${mask:$sender_host_address/24}}lsearch*{/path/to/file}}\
6917 }}
6918
6919 Note that the first lookup does \*not*\ have an asterisk on the search
6920 type. If you have blocks of different sizes (/24, /26, etc) you have to
6921 configure it to do a separate lookup for each size, with just the final
6922 one using a default.
6923
6924
6925
692699. LIST OF SAMPLE CONFIGURATIONS
6927
6928As well as being hyperlinked from the HTML version of this document, each
6929sample configuration is also available as a file in the \(config.samples)\
6930directory, which can be independently downloaded.
6931
6932Samples whose names are of the form Cnnn are Exim configurations; those with
6933names of the form Fnnn are filter file fragments; those with names of the form
6934Lnnn are sample \^^local_scan()^^\ functions, and those with names of thf form
6935Snnn are scripts of various kinds. There are other examples of
6936\^^local_scan()^^\ functions at a number of web sites (for example,
6937\?http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html?\).
6938
6939There are gaps in the C and F numbers because I have omitted the Exim 3 samples
6940that have not been converted for Exim 4.
6941
6942C002: ``Although exim not intended for use in UUCP environment (it doesn't
6943 know anything about bang!path addresses), I'm successfully using it for
6944 delivering mail to UUCP clients.''
6945
6946C006: ``This is how I have configured a PP-inspired vacationnote, there is
6947 (was?) such a feature in PP. The user makes a file \(tripnote)\ in his/her
6948 home directory, the message is passed to the sender once with a short
6949 leading text.''
6950
6951C022: ``This is the Exim configuration file of a machine which delivers mail to
6952 several local domains where the mail is delivered locally, several hairy
6953 domains, handled as described below, and a half-virtual domain, which is
6954 first processed by its special alias file, then processed as other local
6955 domains (including the processing by the global alias file).''
6956
6957C037: An elegant way of using ETRN, which does immediate delivery if the host
6958 is online, but saves mail in a BSMTP file after some time on the queue.
6959 ETRN then re-injects the mail.
6960
6961C042: ``Since the Exim 4 configuration needed to get Mailman to work differs a
6962 little bit from Exim 3 and since I still haven't seen a recipe for
6963 Mailman with Exim 4, I'm providing my configuration (based heavily on
6964 \?http://www.exim.org/howto/mailman.html?\).''
6965
6966C043: ``Attached is an Exim 4 config file which is designed for an Exim server
6967 that is put in front of an Exchange 5.5 system but which verifies the
6968 valid addresses that are stored in Exchange via LDAP lookups against the
6969 Exchange server.''
6970
6971C044: ``I thought I'd submit this as an example of an authenticated mail hub
6972 configuration. Several people have asked for it so I thought it
6973 might be of interest.''
6974
6975C045: ``Here it is, for Exim 4.10 and Cyrus IMAPD 2.1.5 using db3/db4-format
6976 mailbox database. This configuration delivers the messages to Cyrus
6977 IMAPD using LMTP over a TCP/IP socket.''
6978
6979C046: ``Deliver a duplicate of some proportion of all messages to a special
6980 machine specified in the file \(/MAIL_TAP_HOST)\, if it exists.''
6981
6982C047: A sample configuration for calling Spamassassin directly from Exim.
6983
6984C049: ``I've been seeing a whole bunch of IPs that send me spam or virus mail
6985 and HELOing as one of my own IPs, or as HELO one.of.my.own.domains (or
6986 maybe HELO \primary_hostname\).''
6987
6988C050: A configuration that uses the DNS to implement virtual domains.
6989
6990C051: ``I've been working quite hard to come up with a config that reasonably
6991 matches the qmail-ldap setup, without the warts.''
6992
6993F001: ``I thought that the rest of the list may be interested in reviewing our
6994 filter as a starting point for their own system message filter.''
6995
6996F002: ``... program which refused mail from unknown addresses until they mailed
6997 me promising not to spam me ... since I'd already thought through how
6998 to do it in Exim, and knew it'd be slightly easier than falling out of
6999 bed, I went ahead and did it.''
7000
7001F003: ``Here's four checks installed in our system wide filter that knock out
7002 a lot of otherwise hard to detect rubbish.''
7003
7004F004: ``This is an Exim filter snippet to change locally-generated ::Message-Id::
7005 and ::Resent-Message-Id:: headers to world-unique values.''
7006
7007L001: A \^^local_scan()^^\ function for Exim that calls \^uvscan^\.
7008
7009S001: A Perl script for patching the name of the configuration file in an
7010 Exim binary.
7011
7012S002: ``When I moved from smail to exim I built a program that took individual
7013 config pieces, stripped all the comments, and built a config file.''
7014
7015*** End of Exim FAQ ***