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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: 12-October-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
1553Q0092: Exim crashes when I try to start the daemon, but works fine otherwise.
1554
1555A0092: There was a known problem (a db incompatibility) that made the function
1556 \^^getservbyname()^^\ crash in some operating systems. See, for
1557 instance:
1558
1559 \?http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=129025?\
1560
1561 The workaround in Exim is to set
1562
1563==> daemon_smtp_port = 25
1564
1565 in the configuration, to stop Exim calling the failing function.
1566
1567
1568Q0093: The error message \*Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.*\ occurs
1569 when I try to use Exim with PostgreSQL.
1570
1571A0093: Check that you have not set
1572
1573==> log_statement=true
1574
1575 in the PostgreSQL configuration file. It seems that this causes
1576 PostgreSQL to return logging information as the first row in a query
1577 result, which totally confuses Exim.
1578
1579
1580
15811. BUILDING AND INSTALLING
1582
1583Q0101: I'm having a problem with an Exim RPM.
1584
1585A0101: Normally the thing to do if you have a problem with an RPM package is
1586 to contact the person who built the package first, not the person who
1587 made the software that's in the package. You can usually find out who
1588 made a package using the following command:
1589
1590==> rpm --query --package --queryformat '%{PACKAGER}\n' <rpm-package-file>
1591
1592 where \[rpm-package-file]\ is the actual file, e.g. \(exim-3.03-2.i386.rpm)\.
1593 Or, if the package is installed on your system:
1594
1595==> rpm --query --queryformat '%{PACKAGER}\n' <package-name>
1596
1597 where \[package-name]\ is the name component of the package, e.g. \"exim"\.
1598 If the packager is unable or unwilling to help, only then should you
1599 contact the actual author or associated mailing list of the software.
1600
1601 If you discover through the querying process that you can't tell who
1602 the person (or company or group) is who built the package, or that they
1603 no longer exist at the given address, then you should reconsider
1604 whether you want a package from an unknown source on your system.
1605
1606 If you discover through the querying process that you yourself are the
1607 person who built the package, then you should either (a) contact the
1608 author or associated mailing list, or (b) reconsider whether you ought
1609 to be building and distributing RPM packages of software you don't
1610 understand.
1611
1612 Similar rules of thumb govern other binary package formats, including
1613 debs, tarballs, and POSIX packages.
1614
1615
1616Q0102: I can't get Exim to compile with Berkeley DB version 2.x or 3.x.
1617
1618A0102: Have you set \"USE_DB=yes\" in \(Local/Makefile)\? This causes Exim to use the
1619 native interface to the DBM library instead of the compatibility
1620 interface, which needs a header called \(ndbm.h)\ that may not exist on your
1621 system.
1622
1623
1624Q0103: I'm getting an \*undefined symbol*\ error for \"hosts_ctl"\ when I try to
1625 build Exim. (On some systems this error is \*undefined reference to
1626 'hosts_ctl'*\.)
1627
1628A0103: You should either remove the definition of \\USE_TCP_WRAPPERS\\ or add
1629 \"-lwrap"\ to your \\EXTRALIBS\\ setting in Local/Makefile.
1630
1631
1632Q0104: I'm about to upgrade to a new Exim release. Do I need to ensure the
1633 spool is empty, or take any other special action?
1634
1635A0104: It depends on where you are coming from.
1636
1637 (1) If you are changing to release 4.00 or later from a release prior to
1638 4.00, you will need to make changes to the run time configuration file.
1639 See the file \(doc/Exim4.upgrade)\ for details. If you are coming from
1640 before release 3.00, you should also see \(doc/Exim3.upgrade)\.
1641
1642 (2) If you are upgrading from an Exim 4 release to a later release, you
1643 do not need to take special action. New releases are made backwards
1644 compatible with old spool files and hints databases, so that upgrading
1645 can be done on a running system. All that should be necessary is to
1646 install a new binary and then HUP the daemon.
1647
1648
1649Q0105: What does the error \*install-info: command not found*\ mean?
1650
1651A0105: You have set \\INFO_DIRECTORY\\ in your \(Local/Makefile)\, and Exim is trying
1652 to install the Texinfo documentation, but cannot find the command called
1653 \(install-info)\. If you have a version of Texinfo prior to 3.9, you
1654 should upgrade. Otherwise, check your installation of Texinfo to see why
1655 the \(install-info)\ command is not available.
1656
1657
1658Q0106: Exim doesn't seem to be recognizing my operating system type correctly,
1659 and so is failing to build.
1660
1661A0106: Run the command \"scripts/os-type -generic"\. The output should be one of
1662 the known OS types, and should correspond to your operating system. You
1663 can see which OS are supported by obeying \"ls OS/Makefile-*"\ and looking
1664 at the file name suffixes.
1665
1666 If there is a discrepancy, it means that the script is failing to
1667 interpret the output from the \"uname"\ command correctly, or that the
1668 output is wrong. Meanwhile, you can build Exim by obeying
1669
1670==> EXIM_OSTYPE=xxxx make
1671
1672 instead of just \"make"\, provided you are running a Bourne-compatible
1673 shell, or otherwise by setting \\EXIM_OSTYPE\\ correctly in your
1674 environment. It is probably best to start again from a clean
1675 distribution, to avoid any wreckage left over from the failed attempt.
1676
1677
1678Q0107: Exim fails to build, complaining about the absence of the \"killpg"\
1679 function.
1680
1681A0107: This function should be present in all modern flavours of Unix. If you
1682 are using an older version, you should be able to get round the problem
1683 by inserting
1684
1685==> #define killpg(pgid,sig) kill(-(pgid),sig)
1686
1687 into the file called \(OS/os.h-xxx)\, where xxx identifies your operating
1688 system, and is the output of the command \"scripts/os-type -generic"\.
1689
1690
1691Q0108: I'm getting an unresolved symbol \"ldap_is_ldap_url"\ when trying to build
1692 Exim.
1693
1694A0108: You must have specified \"LOOKUP_LDAP=yes"\ in the configuration. Have you
1695 remembered to set \"-lldap"\ somewhere (e.g. in \\LOOKUP_LIBS\\)? You need that
1696 in order to get the LDAP library scanned when linking.
1697
1698
1699Q0109: I'm getting an unresolved symbol \"mysql_close"\ when trying to build Exim.
1700
1701A0109: You must have specified \"LOOKUP_MYSQL=yes"\ in the configuration. Have you
1702 remembered to set \"-lmysqlclient"\ somewhere (e.g. in \\LOOKUP_LIBS\\)? You
1703 need that in order to get the MySQL library scanned when linking.
1704
1705
1706Q0110: I'm trying to build Exim with PAM support. I have included \"-lpam"\ in
1707 \\EXTRALIBS\\, but I'm still getting a linking error:
1708
1709==> /lib/libpam.so: undefined reference to `dlerror'
1710 /lib/libpam.so: undefined reference to `dlclose'
1711 /lib/libpam.so: undefined reference to `dlopen'
1712 /lib/libpam.so: undefined reference to `dlsym'
1713
1714A0110: Add \"-ldl"\ to \\EXTRALIBS\\. In some systems these dynamic loading functions
1715 are in their own library.
1716
1717
1718Q0111: I'm getting the error \*db.h: No such file or directory*\ when I try to
1719 build Exim.
1720
1721A0111: This problem has been seen with RedHat 7.0, but could also happen in
1722 other environments. If your system is using the DB library, you
1723 need to install the DB development package in order to build Exim.
1724 The package is called something like \"db3-devel-3.1.14-16.i386.rpm"\ for
1725 Linux systems, but you should check which version of DB you have
1726 installed (current releases are DB 4).
1727
1728
1729Q0112: I'm getting the error \*/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -ldb*\ when I try to
1730 build Exim.
1731
1732A0112: This is probably the same problem as Q0111.
1733
1734
1735Q0113: I've compiled Exim and I've managed to start it but there was one
1736 problem - it always complained that \(libmsqlclient.so.10)\ was not found,
1737 even though this file is in \(/usr/local/lib/mysql/)\.
1738
1739A0113: Solaris: ensure you have this in your \(Local/Makefile)\:
1740
1741==> LOOKUP_LIBS=-L/usr/local/lib/mysql -R/usr/local/lib/mysql
1742
1743 Net/Open/FreeBSD: Run this command (or ensure it gets run automatically
1744 at boot time):
1745
1746==> ldconfig -m /usr/local/lib/mysql
1747
1748 Linux: add \(/usr/local/lib/mysql)\ to \(/etc/ld.so.conf)\ and re-run \(ldconfig)\.
1749 Alternatively, add
1750
1751==> -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/usr/local/lib/mysql
1752
1753 to EXTRA_LIBS and then re-link (this is similar to the Solaris solution
1754 above). This will probably also work on other systems that use GNU
1755 Binutils.
1756
1757
1758Q0114: How can I remove Sendmail from my system? I've built Exim and run \"make
1759 install"\, but it still doesn't seem to be fully operational.
1760
1761A0114: If you are running FreeBSD, see Q9201. Otherwise, you need to arrange
1762 that whichever of the paths \(/usr/sbin/sendmail)\ or \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\
1763 exists on your system is changed to refer to Exim. For example, you
1764 could use these commands (as \/root/\):
1765
1766==> mv /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail.original
1767 chmod u-s /usr/sbin/sendmail.original
1768 ln -s /path/to/exim /usr/sbin/sendmail
1769
1770 The second command removes the setuid privilege from the old MTA, as a
1771 general safety precaution. In the third command, substitute the actual
1772 path to the Exim binary for \(/path/to/exim)\.
1773
1774
1775Q0115: What does \*Can't open \(../scripts/newer)\: No such file or directory*\
1776 mean? I got it while trying to build Exim.
1777
1778A0115: You are using FreeBSD, or another OS that has a \^make^\ command which
1779 tries to optimize the running of commands. Exim's \(Makefile)\ contains
1780 targets with sequential commands like this:
1781
1782==> buildpcre:
1783 @cd pcre; $(MAKE) SHELL=$(SHELL) AR="$(AR)" $(MFLAGS) CC="$(CC)" \
1784 CFLAGS="$(CFLAGS) $(PCRE_CFLAGS)" \
1785 RANLIB="$(RANLIB)" HDRS="$(PHDRS)" \
1786 INCLUDE="$(INCLUDE) $(IPV6_INCLUDE) $(TLS_INCLUDE)"
1787 @if $(SHELL) $(SCRIPTS)/newer pcre/libpcre.a exim; then \
1788 /bin/rm -f exim eximon.bin; fi
1789
1790 The second command assumes that the \"cd pcre"\ in the first command is
1791 no longer in effect. If you have \"-j3"\ in your default set of
1792 \"MAKEFLAGS"\, FreeBSD \^make^\ tries to optimize, and ends up up with both
1793 commands in the same shell process. The result is that \"$(SCRIPTS)"\
1794 (which has a value of \"../scripts"\) is not found.
1795
1796 The simplest solution is to force \^make^\ to use backwards compatibility
1797 mode with each command in its own shell, by using the \-B\ flag. To
1798 ensure that this happens throughout the build, it's best to export it in
1799 your environment:
1800
1801==> MAKEFLAGS='-B'
1802 export MAKEFLAGS
1803 make
1804
1805
1806Q0116: I have tried to build Exim with Berkeley DB 3 and 4, but I always get
1807 errors.
1808
1809A0116: One common problem, especially when you have several different versions
1810 of BDB installed on the same host, is that the header files and library
1811 files for BDB are not in a standard place. You therefore need to tell
1812 Exim where they are, by setting INCLUDE and DBMLIB in your
1813 \(Local/Makefile)\. For example, I use this on my workstation when
1814 I want to build with DB 4.1:
1815
1816==> INCLUDE=-I/opt/local/include/db-4.1
1817 DBMLIB=/opt/local/lib/db-4.1/libdb.a
1818
1819 Specifying the complete library file like this will cause it to be
1820 statically linked with Exim. You'll have to check to see where these
1821 files are on your system. For example, on FreeBSD 5, the header is in
1822 \(/usr/local/include/db4)\ and the library is in \(/usr/local/lib)\ and
1823 called \(libdb4)\. In that environment, you could use:
1824
1825==> INCLUDE=-I/usr/local/include/db4
1826 DBMLIB=-L/usr/local/lib -ldb4
1827
1828 This time, DBMLIB is specifying the library directory (\(/usr/local/lib)\)
1829 and the name of the library (\(db4)\) separately. The name of the actual
1830 library file is \(/usr/local/lib/libdb4.something)\. If the library was
1831 compiled for dynamic linking, that will be used.
1832
1833
1834Q0117: Is there a quick walk-through of an Exim install from source anywhere?
1835
1836A0117: Here! This is a contribution from a RedHat user, somewhat edited. On
1837 other operating systems things may be slightly different, but the
1838 general approach is the same.
1839
1840 (1) Install the db needed for Exim. This needs to be done first if you
1841 don't have a DBM library installed. Go to \?http://www.sleepycat.com?\
1842 and download \(db-4.1.25.tar.gz)\, or whatever the current release is.
1843 Then:
1844
1845==> gunzip db-4.1.25.tar.gz
1846 tar -xvf db-4.1.25.tar
1847 cd db-4.1.25
1848 cd build_unix
1849 ../dist/configure
1850 make
1851 make install
1852
1853 (2) Add a user for use by Exim, unless you want to use an existing user
1854 such as \/mail/\:
1855
1856==> adduser exim
1857
1858 (3) Now you can prepare to build Exim. Go to \?http://www.exim.org?\ or
1859 one of its mirrors, or the master ftp site
1860 \?ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/email/exim/exim4?\, and download
1861 \(exim-4.20.tar.gz)\ or whatever the current release is. Then:
1862
1863==> gunzip exim-4.20.tar.gz
1864 tar -xvf exim-4.20.tar
1865 cd exim-4.20
1866 cp src/EDITME Local/Makefile
1867 cp exim_monitor/EDITME Local/eximon.conf
1868
1869 (4) Edit \(Local/Makefile)\:
1870
1871 Comment out EXIM_MONITOR= unless you want to install the Exim
1872 monitor (it requires X-windows).
1873
1874 Set the user you want Exim to use for itself:
1875
1876==> EXIM_USER=exim
1877
1878 If your DBM library is Berkeley DB, set up to use its native interface:
1879
1880==> USE_DB=yes
1881
1882 Make sure Exim's build can find the DBM library and its headers. If
1883 you've installed Berkeley DB 4 you'll need to have settings like this
1884 in \(Local/Makefile)\:
1885
1886==> INCLUDE=-I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.1/include
1887 DBMLIB=/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.1/lib/libdb.a
1888
1889 (Check that the first directory contains the db.h file and that the
1890 second library exists.)
1891
1892 You don't need to change anything else, but you might want to review
1893 the default settings in the ``must specify'' section.
1894
1895 (4) Build Exim by running the \/make/\ command.
1896
1897 (5) Install Exim by running, as \/root/\:
1898
1899==> make install
1900
1901 You \*must*\ be \/root/\ to do this. You do not have to be root for any of
1902 the previous building activity.
1903
1904 (6) Run some tests on Exim; see if it will do local and remote
1905 deliveries. Change the configuration if necessary (for example,
1906 uncommenting \group\ on the \%local_delivery%\ transport if you don't
1907 use a ``sticky bit'' directory).
1908
1909 (7) Change Sendmail to Exim (of course you need to have had Sendmail
1910 installed to do this).
1911
1912==> /etc/init.d/sendmail stop
1913 mv /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail.org
1914 ln -s /usr/exim/bin/exim /usr/sbin/sendmail
1915 /etc/init.d/sendmail start
1916
1917 (8) Check the Exim log. Either use the Exim monitor, or:
1918
1919==> tail -f /var/spool/exim/log/mainlog
1920
1921
1922Q0118: I've set \"LOOKUP_INCLUDE=-I/client/include"\ in Local/Makefile, but the
1923 compilation of \^exim_dumpdb^\ is ignoring this option and failing. Why?
1924
1925A0118: LOOKUP_INCLUDE is the special include file for lookup modules in Exim
1926 (e.g. mysql, LDAP). Confusingly, it doesn't apply to basic DBM code
1927 which is used also for other things. Try setting INCLUDE and DBMLIB
1928 instead. For example:
1929
1930==> USE_DB=yes
1931 INCLUDE=-I/client/include
1932 DBMLIB=/client/lib/libdb.a
1933
1934
1935Q0119: I know there are some 3rd-party patches for Exim, for exiscan and
1936 other things. Where are they?
1937
1938A0119: Exiscan is at \?http://duncanthrax.net/exiscan-acl/?\.
1939[[br]]
1940 Scanexi is at \?http://w1.231.telia.com/~u23107873/scanexi.html?\
1941[[br]]
1942 A sample \^^local_scan()^^\ function for interfacing to \^uvscan^\ is
1943 at \?http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/~mb/local_scan/?\.
1944[[br]]
1945 An interface to SpamAssassin at SMTP time is at
1946 \?http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html?\.
1947[[br]]
1948 A mini-HOWTO (PDF file) about scanning and virus scanning, and some RPMs
1949 can be found at \?http://www.timj.co.uk/linux/exim.php?\.
1950
1951
1952
19532. ROUTING IN GENERAL
1954
1955Q0201: How can I arrange that messages larger than some limit are handled by
1956 a special router?
1957
1958A0201: You can use a \condition\ option on the router line this:
1959
1960==> condition = ${if >{$message_size}{100K}{yes}{no}}
1961
1962
1963Q0202: Can I specify a list of domains to explicitly reject?
1964
1965A0202: Set up a named domain list containing the domains in the first section
1966 of the configuration, for example:
1967
1968==> domainlist reject_domains = list:of:domains:to:reject
1969
1970 You can use this list in an ACL to reject any SMTP recipients in those
1971 domains. You can also give a customized error message, like this:
1972
1973==> deny message = The domain $domain is no longer supported
1974 domains = +reject_domains
1975
1976 If you also want to reject these domains in messages that are submitted
1977 from the command line (not using SMTP), you need to set up a router to
1978 do it, like this:
1979
1980==> reject_domains:
1981 driver = redirect
1982 domains = +reject_domains
1983 allow_fail
1984 data = :fail: The domain $domain is no longer supported
1985
1986
1987Q0203: How can I arrange to do my own qualification of non-fully-qualified
1988 domains, and then pass them on to the next router?
1989
1990A0203: If you have some list of domains that you want to qualify, you can do
1991 this using a redirect router. For example,
1992
1993==> qualify:
1994 driver = redirect
1995 domains = *.a.b
1996 data = ${quote:$local_part}@$domain.c.com
1997
1998 This adds \".c.com"\ to any domain that matches \"*.a.b"\.
1999 If you want to do this in conjunction with a \%dnslookup%\ router, the
2000 \widen_domains\ option of that router may be another way of achieving
2001 what you want.
2002
2003
2004Q0204: Every system has a \"nobody"\ account under which httpd etc run. I would
2005 like to know how to restrict mail which comes from that account to users
2006 on that host only.
2007
2008A0204: Set up a first router like this:
2009
2010==> fail_nobody:
2011 driver = redirect
2012 senders = nobody@your.domain
2013 domains = ! +local_domains
2014 allow_fail
2015 data = :fail: Nobody may not mail off-site
2016
2017 This assumes you have defined \+local_domains\ as in the default
2018 configuration.
2019
2020
2021Q0205: How can I get Exim to deliver to me locally and everyone else at the same
2022 domain via SMTP to the MX record specified host?
2023
2024A0205: Create an \%accept%\ router to pick off the one address and pass it to
2025 an appropriate transport. Put this router before the one that does MX
2026 routing:
2027
2028==> me:
2029 driver = accept
2030 domains = dom.com
2031 local_parts = me
2032 transport = local_delivery
2033
2034 In the transport you will have to specify the \user\ option. An
2035 alternative way of doing this is to add a condition to the router that
2036 does MX lookups to make it skip your address. Subsequent routers can then
2037 deliver your address locally. You'll need a condition like this:
2038
2039==> condition = \
2040 ${if and {{eq{$domain}{dom.com}}{eq{$local_part}{me}}}{no}{yes}}
2041
2042
2043Q0206: How can I get Exim to deliver certain domains to a different SMTP port
2044 on my local host?
2045
2046A0206: You must set up a special \%smtp%\ transport, where you can specify the
2047 \port\ option, and then set up a router to route the domains to that
2048 transport. There are two possibilities for specifying the host:
2049
2050 (1) If you use a \%manualroute%\ router, you can specify the local host
2051 in the router options. You must also set
2052
2053==> self = send
2054
2055 so that it does not object to sending to the local host.
2056
2057 (2) If you use a router that cannot specify hosts (for example, an
2058 \%accept%\ router with appropriate conditions), you have to specify
2059 the host using the \hosts\ option of the transport. In this case,
2060 you must also set \allow_localhost\ on the transport.
2061
2062
2063Q0207: Why does Exim lower-case the local-part of a non-local domain when
2064 routing?
2065
2066A0207: Because \caseful_local_part\ is not set (in the default configuration)
2067 for the \%dnslookup%\ router. This does not matter because the local
2068 part takes no part in the routing, and the actual local part that is
2069 sent out in the RCPT command is always the original local part.
2070
2071
2072
20733. ROUTING TO REMOTE HOSTS
2074
2075Q0301: What do \*lowest numbered MX record points to local host*\ and \*remote
2076 host address is the local host*\ mean?
2077
2078A0301: They mean exactly what they say. Exim expected to route an address to a
2079 remote host, but the IP address it obtained from a router was for the
2080 local host. If you really do want to send over TCP/IP to the local host
2081 (to a different version of Exim or another MTA, for example), see Q0206.
2082
2083 More commonly, these errors arise when Exim thinks it is routing some
2084 foreign domain. For example, the router configuration causes Exim to
2085 look up the domain in the DNS, but when Exim examines the DNS output,
2086 either the lowest numbered MX record points at the local host, or there
2087 are no MX records, and the address record for the domain contains an
2088 IP address that belongs to the local host.
2089
2090 There has been a rash of instances of domains being deliberately set up
2091 with MX records pointing to \"localhost"\ (or other names with A records
2092 that specify 127.0.0.1), which causes this behaviour. You can use the
2093 \ignore_target_hosts\ option to get Exim to ignore these records. The
2094 default contiguration does this. For more discussion, see Q0319. For
2095 other cases:
2096
2097 (1) If the domain is meant to be handled as a local domain, there
2098 is a problem with the configuration, because it should not then have
2099 been looked up in the DNS. Check the \domains\ settings on your
2100 routers.
2101
2102 (2) If the domain is one for which the local host is providing a
2103 relaying service (called ``mail hubbing''), possibly as part of a
2104 firewall, you need to set up a router to tell Exim where to send
2105 messages addressed to this domain, because the DNS directs them to
2106 the local host. You should put a router like this one before the one
2107 that does DNS lookups:
2108
2109==> hubbed_hosts:
2110 driver = manualroute
2111 transport = remote_smtp
2112 route_list = see discussion below
2113
2114 The contents of the \route_list\ option depend on how many hosts you
2115 are hubbing for, and how their names are related to the domain name.
2116 Suppose the local host is a firewall, and all the domains in
2117 \(*.foo.bar)\ have MX records pointing to it, and each domain
2118 corresponds to a host of the same name. Then the setting could be
2119
2120==> route_list = *.foo.bar $domain
2121
2122 If there isn't a convenient relationship between the domain names
2123 and the host names, you either have to list each domain separately,
2124 or use a lookup expansion to look up the host from the domain, or
2125 put the routing information in a file and use the \route_data\
2126 option with a lookup expansion.
2127
2128 (3) If neither (1) nor (2) is the case, the lowest numbered MX record or
2129 the address record for the domain should not be pointing to your
2130 host. You should arrange to get the DNS mended.
2131
2132
2133Q0302: Why does Exim say \*all relevant MX records point to non-existent hosts*\
2134 when MX records point to IP addresses?
2135
2136A0302: MX records cannot point to IP addresses. They are defined to point to
2137 host names, so Exim always interprets them that way. (An IP address is a
2138 syntactically valid host name.) The DNS for the domain you are having
2139 problems with is misconfigured.
2140
2141 However, it appears that more and more DNS zones are breaking the rules
2142 and putting IP addresses on the RHS of MX records. Exim follows the
2143 rules and rejects this, but other MTAs do support it, so the
2144 \allow_mx_to_ip\ was regretfully added at release 3.14 to permit this
2145 heinous activity.
2146
2147
2148Q0303: How do I configure Exim to send all messages to a central server? I
2149 don't want to do any local deliveries at all on this host.
2150
2151A0303: Use this as your first and only router:
2152
2153==> send_to_gateway:
2154 driver = manualroute
2155 transport = remote_smtp
2156 route_list = * central.server.host
2157
2158
2159Q0304: How do I configure Exim to send all non-local mail to a gateway host?
2160
2161A0304: Replace the \%dnslookup%\ router in the default configuration with the
2162 following:
2163
2164==> send_to_gateway:
2165 driver = manualroute
2166 domains = !+local_domains
2167 transport = remote_smtp
2168 route_list = * gate.way.host
2169
2170 If there are several hosts you can send to, you can specify them as a
2171 colon-separated list.
2172
2173
2174Q0305: How can I arrange for mail on my local network to be delivered directly
2175 to the relevant hosts, but all other mail to be sent to my ISP's mail
2176 server? The local hosts are all DNS-registered and behave like normal
2177 Internet hosts.
2178
2179A0305: Set up a first router to pick off all the domains for your local
2180 network. There are several ways you might do this. For example
2181
2182==> local_network:
2183 driver = dnslookup
2184 transport = remote_smtp
2185 domains = *.mydomain.com
2186
2187 This does a perfectly conventional DNS routing operation, but only for
2188 the domains that match \(*.mydomain.com)\. Follow this with a `smart
2189 host' router:
2190
2191==> internet:
2192 driver = manualroute
2193 domains = !+local_domains
2194 transport = remote_smtp
2195 route_list = * mail.isp.net
2196
2197 This routes any other non-local domains to the smart host.
2198
2199
2200Q0306: How do I configure Exim to send all non-local mail to a central server
2201 if it cannot be immediately delivered by my host? I don't want to have
2202 queued mail waiting on my host.
2203
2204A0306: Add to the \%remote_smtp%\ transport the following:
2205
2206==> fallback_hosts = central.server.name(s)
2207
2208 If there are several names, they must be separated by colons.
2209
2210
2211Q0307: The \route_list\ setting \"^foo$:^bar$ $domain"\ in a \%manualroute%\
2212 router does not work.
2213
2214A0307: The first thing in a \route_list\ item is a single pattern, not a list of
2215 patterns. You need to write that as \"^(foo|bar)$ $domain"\.
2216 Alternatively, you could use several items and write
2217
2218==> route_list = foo $domain; bar $domain
2219
2220 Note the semicolon separator. This is because the second thing in each
2221 item can itself be a list - of hosts.
2222
2223
2224Q0308: I have a domain for which some local parts must be delivered locally,
2225 but the remainder are to be treated like any other remote addresses.
2226
2227A0308: One possible way of doing this is as follows: Assuming you are using a
2228 configuration that is similar to the default one, first exclude your
2229 domain from the first router by changing it to look like this:
2230
2231==> non_special_remote:
2232 driver = dnslookup
2233 domains = ! +local_domains : ! special.domain
2234 transport = remote_smtp
2235 ignore_target_hosts = 127.0.0.0/8
2236 no_more
2237
2238 Then add a second router which handles the local parts that are not to
2239 be delivered locally:
2240
2241==> special_remote:
2242 driver = dnslookup
2243 domains = special.domain
2244 local_parts = ! lsearch;/list/of/special/localparts
2245 transport = remote_smtp
2246 ignore_target_hosts = 127.0.0.0/8
2247 no_more
2248
2249 The remaining local parts will fall through to the remaining routers,
2250 which can delivery them locally.
2251
2252
2253Q0309: How can I configure Exim on a firewall machine so that if mail arrives
2254 addressed to a domain whose MX points to the firewall, it is forwarded
2255 to the internal mail server, without having to have a list of all the
2256 domains involved?
2257
2258A0309: As your first router, have the standard \%dnslookup%\ router from the
2259 default configuration, with the added option
2260
2261==> self = pass
2262
2263 This will handle all domains whose lowest numbered MX records do not
2264 point to your host. Because of the \no_more\ setting, if it encounters
2265 an unknown domain, routing will fail. However, if it hits a domain whose
2266 lowest numbered MX points to your host, the \self\ option comes into
2267 play, and overrides \no_more\. The \"pass"\ setting causes it to pass
2268 the address on to the next router. (The default causes it to generate an
2269 error.)
2270
2271 The only non-local domains that reach the second router are those with
2272 MX records pointing to the local host. Set it up to send them to the
2273 internal mail server like this:
2274
2275==> internal:
2276 driver = manualroute
2277 domains = ! +local_domains
2278 transport = remote_smtp
2279 route_list = * internal.server
2280
2281
2282Q0310: If a DNS lookup returns no MX records why doesn't Exim just bin the
2283 message?
2284
2285A0310: If a DNS lookup returns no MXs, Exim looks for an address record, in
2286 accordance with the rules that are defined in the RFCs. If you want to
2287 break the rules, you can set \mx_domains\ in the \%dnslookup%\ router, but
2288 you will cut yourself off from those sites (and there still seem to be
2289 plenty) who do not set up MX records.
2290
2291
2292Q0311: When a DNS lookup for MX records fails to complete, why doesn't Exim
2293 send the messsage to the host defined by the A record?
2294
2295A0311: The RFCs are quite clear on this. Only if it is known that there are no
2296 MX records is an MTA allowed to make use of the A record. When an MX
2297 lookup fails to complete, Exim does not know whether there are any MX
2298 records or not. There seem to be some name servers (or some
2299 configurations of some name servers) that give a ``server fail'' error when
2300 asked for a non-existent MX record. Exim uses standard resolver calls,
2301 which unfortunately do not distinguish between this case and a timeout,
2302 so all Exim can do is try again later.
2303
2304
2305Q0312: Is it possible to use a conditional expression for the host item in a
2306 \route_list\ for \%manualroute%\ router? I tried the following, but it
2307 doesn't work:
2308
2309==> route_list = * ${if match{$header_from:}{\N.*\.usa\.net$\N} \
2310 {<smarthost1>}{<smarthost2>}
2311
2312A0312: The problem is that the second item in \route_list\ contains white
2313 space, which means that it gets terminated prematurely. To avoid this,
2314 you must put the second item in quotes:
2315
2316==> route_list = * "${if match{$header_from:}{\N.*\.usa\.net$\N} \
2317 {<smarthost1>}{<smarthost2>}}"
2318
2319
2320Q0313: I send all external mail to a smart host, but this means that bad
2321 addresses also get passed to the smart host. Can I avoid this?
2322
2323A0313: Assuming you have DNS availability, set up a conventional \%dnslookup%\
2324 router to do the routing, but in the \%remote_smtp%\ transport set this:
2325
2326==> hosts = your.smart.host
2327 hosts_override
2328
2329 This will override the hosts that the router finds so that everything
2330 goes to the smart host, but any non-existent domains will be failed by
2331 the router.
2332
2333
2334Q0314: I have a really annoying intermittent problem where attempts to mail to
2335 valid sites are rejected with \*unknown mail domain*\. This only happens a
2336 few times a day and there is no particular pattern to the sites it
2337 rejects. If I try to lookup the same domain a few minutes later then it
2338 is OK.
2339
2340A0314: This is almost certainly a problem with the DNS resolver or the the
2341 domain's name servers.
2342
2343 (1) Have you linked Exim against the newest DNS resolver library that
2344 comes with Bind? If you are using SunOS4 that may be your problem, as
2345 the resolver that comes with that OS is known to be buggy and to give
2346 intermittent false negatives.
2347
2348 (2) Effects like this are sometimes seen if a domain's name servers get
2349 out of step with each other.
2350
2351
2352Q0315: I'd like route all mail with addresses that can't be resolved (the DNS
2353 lookup times out) to a relay machine.
2354
2355A0315: Set \pass_on_timeout\ on your \%dnslookup%\ router, and add below it a
2356 \%manualroute%\ router that routes all relevant domains to the relay.
2357
2358
2359Q0316: I would like to forward all incoming email for a particular domain to
2360 another host via SMTP. Whereabouts would I configure that?
2361
2362A0316: Use this as your first router:
2363
2364==> special:
2365 driver = manualroute
2366 transport = remote_smtp
2367 route_list = the.particular.domain the.other.host
2368
2369 You will also need to adjust the ACL for incoming SMTP so that this
2370 domain is accepted for relaying. If you are using the default
2371 configuration, there is a domain list called \relay_domains\ that is
2372 set up for this.
2373
2374
2375Q0317: What I'd like to do is have alternative smart hosts, where the one to be
2376 used is determined by which ISP I'm connected to.
2377
2378A0317: The simplest way to do this is to arrange for the name of the smart host
2379 du jour to be placed in a file when you connect, say \(/etc/smarthost)\.
2380 Then you can read this file from a \%manualroute%\ router like this:
2381
2382==> smarthost:
2383 driver = manualroute
2384 transport = remote_smtp
2385 route_list = * ${readfile{/etc/smarthost}{}}
2386
2387 The second argument of the \"readfile"\ item is a string that replaces
2388 any newline characters in the file (in this case, with nothing).
2389 By keeping the data out of the main configuration file, you avoid having
2390 to HUP the daemon when it changes.
2391
2392
2393Q0318: Exim won't route to a host with no MX record.
2394
2395A0318: More than one thing may cause this.
2396
2397 (1) Are you sure there really is no MX record? Sometimes a typo results
2398 in a malformed MX record in the zone file, in which case some name
2399 servers give a SERVFAIL error rather than NXDOMAIN. Exim has to treat
2400 this as a temporary error, so it can't go on to look for address records.
2401 You can check for this state using one of the DNS interrogation commands,
2402 such as \(nslookup)\, \(host)\, or \(dig)\.
2403
2404 (2) Is there a wildcard MX record for \(your)\ domain? Is the
2405 \search_parents\ option on in your \%dnslookup%\ router? If the answer to
2406 both these questions is ``yes'', that is the cause of the problem. When
2407 the DNS resolver fails to find the MX record, it tries adding on your
2408 domain if \search_parents\ is true, and thereby finds your wildcard MX
2409 record. For example:
2410
2411 . There is a wildcard MX record for \(*.a.b.c)\.
2412
2413 . There is a host called \(x.y.z)\ that has an A record and no MX record.
2414
2415 . Somebody on the host \(m.a.b.c)\ domain tries to mail to \(user@x.y.z)\.
2416
2417 . Exim calls the DNS to look for an MX record for \(x.y.z)\.
2418
2419 . The DNS doesn't find any MX record. Because \search_parents\ is true,
2420 it then tries searching the current host's parent domain, so it
2421 looks for \(x.y.z.a.b.c)\ and picks up the wildcard MX record.
2422
2423 Setting \search_parents\ false makes this case work while retaining the
2424 wildcard MX record. However, anybody on the host \(m.a.b.c)\ who mails to
2425 \(user@n.a)\ (expecting it to go to \(user@n.a.b.c)\) now has a problem. The
2426 \widen_domains\ option of the \%dnslookup%\ router may be helpful in this
2427 circumstance.
2428
2429
2430Q0319: I have some mails on my queues that are sticking around longer than
2431 the retry time indicates they should. They are all getting frozen
2432 because some remote admin has set their MX record to 127.0.0.1.
2433
2434A0319: The admin in question is an idiot. Exim will always freeze such messages
2435 because they are apparently routed to the local host. To bounce these
2436 messages immediately, set
2437
2438==> ignore_target_hosts = 127.0.0.1
2439
2440 on the \%dnslookup%\ router. This causes Exim to completely ignore any hosts
2441 with that IP address. In fact, there are quite a number of IP addresses
2442 that should never be used. Here is a suggested configuration list for
2443 the IPv4 ones:
2444
2445==> # Don't allow domains whose single MX (or A) record is a
2446 # "special-use IPv4 address", as listed in RFC 3330.
2447 ignore_target_hosts = \
2448 # Hosts on "this network"; RFC 1700 (page 4) states that these
2449 # are only allowed as source addresses
2450 0.0.0.0/8 : \
2451 # Private networks, RFC 1918
2452 10.0.0.0/8 : 172.16.0.0/12 : 192.168.0.0/16 : \
2453 # Internet host loopback address, RFC 1700 (page 5)
2454 127.0.0.0/8 : \
2455 # "Link local" block
2456 169.254.0.0/16 : \
2457 # "TEST-NET" - should not appear on the public Internet
2458 192.0.2.0/24 : \
2459 # 6to4 relay anycast addresses, RFC 3068
2460 192.88.99.0/24 : \
2461 # Network interconnect device benchmark testing, RFC 2544
2462 198.18.0.0/15 : \
2463 # Multicast addresses, RFC 3171
2464 224.0.0.0/4 : \
2465 # Reserved for future use, RFC 1700 (page 4)
2466 240.0.0.0/4
2467
2468
2469Q0320: How can I arrange for all mail to \*user@some.domain*\ to be forwarded
2470 to \*user@other.domain*\?
2471
2472A0320: Put this as your first router:
2473
2474==> forward:
2475 driver = redirect
2476 domains = some.domain
2477 data = ${quote:$local_part}@other.domain
2478
2479
2480Q0321: How can I tell an Exim router to use only IPv4 or only IPv6 addresses
2481 when it finds both types in the DNS?
2482
2483A0321: You can do this by making it ignore the addresses you don't want. This
2484 example ignores all IPv6 addresses and all IPv4 addresses in the 127
2485 network:
2486
2487==> ignore_target_hosts = <; 0000::0000/0 ; 127.0.0.0/8
2488
2489 To ignore all IPv4 addresses, use
2490
2491==> ignore_target_hosts = 0.0.0.0/0
2492
2493 See Q0319 for a general discussion of \ignore_target_hosts\.
2494
2495
2496Q0322: How can I reroute all messages bound for 192.168.10.0 and 10.0.0.0 to
2497 a specific mail server?
2498
2499A0322: That is an odd requirement. However, there is an obscure feature in
2500 Exim, originally implemented for packet radio people, that perhaps can
2501 help. Check out the \translate_ip_address\ generic router option.
2502
2503
2504
25054. ROUTING FOR LOCAL DELIVERY
2506
2507Q0401: I need to have any mail for \(virt.dom.ain)\ that doesn't match one of the
2508 aliases in \(/usr/lib/aliases.virt)\ delivered to a particular address, for
2509 example, \(postmaster@virt.dom.ain)\.
2510
2511A0401: Adding an asterisk to a search type causes Exim to look up ``*'' when the
2512 normal lookup fails. So if your aliasing router is something like this:
2513
2514==> virtual:
2515 driver = redirect
2516 domains = virt.dom.ain
2517 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/usr/lib/aliases.virt}}
2518 no_more
2519
2520 you should change \"lsearch"\ to \"lsearch*"\, and put this in the alias
2521 file:
2522
2523==> *: postmaster@virt.dom.ain
2524
2525 This solution has the feature that if there are several unknown
2526 addresses in the same message, only one copy gets sent to the
2527 postmaster, because of Exim's normal de-duplication rules.
2528
2529 NOTE: This solution works only if there is also an entry for \(postmaster)\
2530 in the alias file, ultimately resolving to an address that is not in
2531 \(virt.dom.ain)\. See also Q0434.
2532
2533
2534Q0402: How do I arrange for all incoming email for \(*@some.domain)\ to go into one
2535 pop3 mail account? The customer doesn't want to add a list of specific
2536 local parts to the system.
2537
2538A0402: Set up a special transport that writes to the mailbox like this:
2539
2540==> special_transport:
2541 driver = appendfile
2542 file = /pop/mailbox
2543 envelope_to_add
2544 return_path_add
2545 delivery_date_add
2546 user = exim
2547
2548 The file will be written as the user \"exim"\. Then arrange to route all
2549 mail for that domain to that transport, with a router like this:
2550
2551==> special_router:
2552 driver = accept
2553 domains = some.domain
2554 transport = special_transport
2555
2556
2557Q0403: How do I configure Exim to send messages for unknown local users to a
2558 central server?
2559
2560A0403: Assuming you are using something like the default configuration, where
2561 local users are processed by the later routers, you should add the
2562 following router at the end:
2563
2564==> unknown:
2565 driver = manualroute
2566 transport = remote_smtp
2567 route_list = * server.host.name
2568 no_verify
2569
2570 However, you should if possible try to verify that the user is known on
2571 the central server before accepting the message in the first place. This
2572 can be done by making use of Exim's ``call forward'' facility.
2573
2574
2575Q0404: How can I arrange for messages submitted by (for example) Majordomo to
2576 be handled specially?
2577
2578A0404: You can use the \condition\ option on a router, with a setting such as
2579
2580==> condition = ${if and {{eq {$sender_host_address}{}} \
2581 {eq {$sender_ident}{majordom}}} {yes}{no}}
2582
2583 This first tests for a locally-submitted message, by ensuring there is
2584 no sending host address, and then it checks the identity of the user
2585 that ran the submitting process.
2586
2587
2588Q0405: On a host that accepts mail for several domains, do I have to use fully
2589 qualified addresses in \(/etc/aliases)\ or do I have to set up an alias
2590 file for each domain?
2591
2592A0405: You can do it either way. The default aliasing router contains this line:
2593
2594==> data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
2595
2596 which is what does the actual lookup. To make it look up the complete
2597 address instead of just the local part, use
2598
2599==> data = ${lookup{$local_part@$domain}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
2600
2601 If you want to use a separate file for each domain, use
2602
2603==> data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases/$domain}}
2604
2605
2606Q0406: Some of my users are using the \(.forward)\ to pipe to a shell command which
2607 appends to the user's INBOX. How can I forbid this?
2608
2609A0406: If you allow your users to run shells in pipes, you cannot control which
2610 commands they run or which files they write to. However, you should point
2611 out to them that writing to an INBOX by arbitrary commands is not
2612 interlocked with the MTA and MUAs, and is liable to mess up the contents
2613 of the file.
2614
2615 If a user simply wants to choose a specific file for the delivery of
2616 messages, this can be done by putting a file name in a \(.forward)\ file
2617 rather than using a pipe, or by using the \"save"\ command in an Exim
2618 filter file.
2619
2620 You can set \forbid_pipe\ on the router, but that will prevent them from
2621 running any pipe commands at all. Alternatively, you can restrict which
2622 commands they may run in their pipes by setting the \allow_commands\
2623 and/or \restrict_to_path\ options in the \%address_pipe%\ transport.
2624
2625
2626Q0407: How can I arrange for a default value when using a query-style lookup
2627 such as LDAP or NIS+ to handle aliases?
2628
2629A0407: Use a second query in the failure part of the original lookup, like
2630 this:
2631
2632==> data = ${lookup ldap\
2633 {ldap://x.y.z/l=yvr?aliasaddress?sub?(&(mail=$local_part@$domain))}\
2634 {$value}\
2635 {\
2636 ${lookup ldap \
2637 {ldap://x.y.z/l=yvr?aliasaddress?sub?(&(mail=default@$domain))}}\
2638 }}
2639
2640 Of course, if the default is a fixed value you can just include it
2641 directly.
2642
2643
2644Q0408: If I don't fully qualify the addresses in a virtual domain's alias file
2645 then mail to aliases which also match the local domain get delivered to
2646 the local domain.
2647
2648A0408: Set the \qualify_preserve_domain\ option on the \%redirect%\ router.
2649
2650
2651Q0409: I want mail for any local part at certain virtual domains to go
2652 to a single address for each domain.
2653
2654A0409: One way to to this is
2655
2656==> virtual:
2657 driver = redirect
2658 data = ${lookup{$domain}lsearch{/etc/virtual}}
2659
2660 The \(/etc/virtual)\ file contains a list of domains and the addresses to
2661 which their mail should be sent. For example:
2662
2663==> domain1: postmaster@some.where.else
2664 domain2: joe@xyz.plc
2665
2666 If the number of domains is large, using a DBM or cdb file would be more
2667 efficient. If the lookup fails to find the domain in the file, the value
2668 of the \data\ option is empty, causing the router to decline.
2669
2670
2671Q0410: How can I make Exim look in the alias NIS map instead of \(/etc/aliases)\?
2672
2673A0410: The default configuration does not use NIS (many hosts don't run it).
2674 You need to change this line in the \%system_aliases%\ router:
2675
2676==> data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
2677
2678 Change it to
2679
2680==> data = ${lookup{$local_part}nis{mail.aliases}}
2681
2682 If you want to use \(/etc/aliases)\ as well as NIS, put this router (with
2683 a different name) before or after the default one, depending on which
2684 data source you want to take precedence.
2685
2686
2687Q0411: Why will Exim deliver a message locally to any username that is longer
2688 than 8 characters as long as the first 8 characters match one of the
2689 local usernames?
2690
2691A0411: The problem is in your operating system. Exim just calls the \^^getpwnam()^^\
2692 function to test a local part for being a local login name. It does not
2693 presume to guess the maximum length of user name for the underlying
2694 operating system. Many operating systems correctly reject names that are
2695 longer than the maximum length; yours is apparently deficient in this
2696 regard. To cope with such systems, Exim has an option called
2697 \max_user_name_length\ which you can set to the maximum allowed length.
2698
2699
2700Q0412: Why am I seeing the error \*bad mode (100664) for /home/test/.forward*\?
2701 I've looked through the documentation but can't see anything to suggest
2702 that Exim has to do anything other than read the \(.forward)\ file.
2703
2704A0412: For security, Exim checks for mode bits that shouldn't be set, by
2705 default 022. You can change this by setting the \modemask\ option of the
2706 \%redirect%\ router that is handling \(.forward)\ files.
2707
2708
2709Q0413: When a user's \(.forward)\ file is syntactially invalid, Exim defers
2710 delivery of all messages to that user, which sometimes include the
2711 user's own test messages. Can it be told to ignore the \(.forward)\ file
2712 and/or inform the user of the error?
2713
2714A0413: Setting \skip_syntax_errors\ on the redirect router causes syntax
2715 errors to be skipped. When dealing with users' \(.forward)\ files it is best
2716 to combine this with a setting of \syntax_errors_to\ in order to send
2717 a message about the error to the user. However, to avoid an infinite
2718 cascade of messages, you have to be able to send to an address that
2719 bypasses \(.forward)\ file processing. This can be done by including a
2720 router like this one
2721
2722==> real_localuser:
2723 driver = accept
2724 check_local_user
2725 transport = local_delivery
2726 prefix = real-
2727
2728 before the \%redirect%\ router that handles \(.forward)\ files. This will
2729 do an ordinary local delivery without \(.forward)\ processing, if the
2730 local part is prefixed by \"real-"\. You can then set something like
2731 the following options on the \%redirect%\ router:
2732
2733==> skip_syntax_errors
2734 syntax_errors_to = real-$local_part@$domain
2735 syntax_errors_text = "\
2736 This is an automatically generated message. An error has been \
2737 found\nin your .forward file. Details of the error are reported \
2738 below. While\nthis error persists, messages addressed to you will \
2739 get delivered into\nyour normal mailbox and you will receive a \
2740 copy of this message for\neach one."
2741
2742 A final tidying setting to go with this is a rewriting rule that changes
2743 \"real-username"\ into just \"username"\ in the headers of the message:
2744
2745==> \N^real-([^@]+)@your\.dom\.ain$\N $1@your.dom.ain h
2746
2747 This means that users won't ever see the \"real-"\ prefix, unless they
2748 look at the ::Envelope-To:: header.
2749
2750
2751Q0414: I have set \caseful_local_part\ on the routers that handle my local
2752 domain because my users have upper case letters in their login names,
2753 but incoming mail now has to use the correct case. Can I relax this
2754 somehow?
2755
2756A0414: If you really have to live with caseful user names but want incoming
2757 local parts to be caseless, then you have to maintain a file, indexed by
2758 the lower case forms, that gives the correct case for each login, like
2759 this:
2760
2761==> admin: Admin
2762 steven: Steven
2763 mcdonald: McDonald
2764 lamanch: LaManche
2765 ...
2766
2767 and at the start of the routers that handle your local domain, put one
2768 like this:
2769
2770==> set_case_router:
2771 driver = redirect
2772 data = ${lookup{${lc:$local_part}}lsearch{/the/file}}
2773 qualify_preserve_domain
2774
2775 For efficiency, you should also set the \redirect_router\ option to cause
2776 processing of the changed address to begin at the next router. If you
2777 are otherwise using the default configuration, the setting would be
2778
2779==> redirect_router = system_aliases
2780
2781 If there are lots of users, then a DBM or cdb file would be more
2782 efficient than a linear search. If you are handling several domains,
2783 you will have to extend this configuration to cope appropriately.
2784
2785
2786Q0415: Can I use my existing alias files and forward files as well as procmail
2787 and effectively drop in Exim in place of Sendmail ?
2788
2789A0415: Yes, as long as your alias and forward files don't assume that pipes are
2790 going to run under a shell. If they do, you either have to change them,
2791 or configure Exim to use a shell (which it doesn't by default).
2792
2793
2794Q0416: What is quickest way to set up Exim so any message sent to a
2795 non-existing user would bounce back with a different message, based
2796 on the name of non-existing user?
2797
2798A0416: Place this router last, so that it catches any local addresses that
2799 are not otherwise handled:
2800
2801==> non_exist:
2802 driver = accept
2803 transport = non_exist_reply
2804 no_verify
2805
2806 Then add the following transport to the transports section:
2807
2808==> non_exist_reply:
2809 driver = autoreply
2810 user = exim
2811 to = $sender_address
2812 subject = User does not exist
2813 text = You sent mail to $local_part. That's not a valid user here. \
2814 The subject was: $subject.
2815
2816 If you want to pick up a message from a file, you can use the \file\
2817 option (use \file_expand\ if you want its contents expanded).
2818
2819
2820Q0417: What do I need to do to make Exim handle \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ processing
2821 automatically, so that people could just create a \(.vacation.msg)\ file in
2822 their home directory and not have to edit their \(.forward)\ file?
2823
2824A0417: Add a new router like this, immediately before the normal \%localuser%\
2825 router:
2826
2827==> vacation:
2828 driver = accept
2829 check_local_user
2830 require_files = $home/.vacation.msg
2831 transport = vacation_transport
2832 unseen
2833
2834 and a matching new transport like this:
2835
2836==> vacation_transport:
2837 driver = pipe
2838 command = /usr/ucb/vacation $local_part
2839
2840 However, some versions of \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ do not work properly unless
2841 the DBM file(s) it uses are created in advance - it won't create them
2842 itself. You also need a way of removing them when the vacation is over.
2843
2844 Another possibility is to use a fixed filter file which is run whenever
2845 \(.vacation.msg)\ exists, for example:
2846
2847==> vacation:
2848 driver = redirect
2849 check_local_user
2850 require_files = $home/.vacation.msg
2851 file = /some/central/filter
2852 allow_filter
2853
2854 The filter file should use the \"if personal"\ check before sending mail,
2855 to avoid generating automatic responses to mailing lists. If sending a
2856 message is all that it does, this doesn't count as a ``significant''
2857 delivery, so the original message goes on to be delivered as normal.
2858
2859 Yet another possibility is to make use of Exim's \%autoreply%\ transport,
2860 and not use \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ at all.
2861
2862
2863Q0418: I want to use a default entry in my alias file to handle unknown local
2864 parts, but it picks up the local parts that the aliases generate. For
2865 example, if the alias file is
2866
2867==> luke.skywalker: luke
2868 ls: luke
2869 *: postmaster
2870
2871 then messages addressed to \/luke.skywalker/\ end up at \/postmaster/\.
2872
2873A0418: The default mechanism works best with virtual domains, where the
2874 generated address is not in the same domain. If you just want to pick up
2875 all unknown local parts and send them to postmaster, an easier way to do
2876 it is to put this as your last router:
2877
2878==> unknown:
2879 driver = redirect
2880 data = postmaster
2881 no_verify
2882
2883 Another possibility is to put the redirect router for these aliases
2884 after all the other routers, so that local parts which are user names
2885 get picked off first. You will need to have two aliasing routers if
2886 there are some local parts (e.g. \/root/\) which are login names, but which
2887 you want to handle as aliases.
2888
2889
2890Q0419: I have some obsolete domains which people have been warned not to use
2891 any more. How can I arrange to delete any mail that is sent to them?
2892
2893A0419: To reject them at SMTP time, with a customized error message, place
2894 statments like this in the ACL:
2895
2896==> deny message = The domain $domain is obsolete
2897 domains = lsearch;/etc/exim/obsolete.domains
2898
2899 For messages that don't arrive over SMTP, you can use a router like
2900 this to bounce them:
2901
2902==> obsolete:
2903 driver = redirect
2904 domains = lsearch;/etc/exim/obsolete.domains
2905 allow_fail
2906 data = :fail: the domain $domain is obsolete
2907
2908 If you just want to throw away mail to those domains, accept them at
2909 SMTP time, and use a router like this:
2910
2911==> obsolete:
2912 domains = lsearch;/etc/exim/obsolete.domains
2913 data = :blackhole:
2914
2915
2916Q0420: How can I arrange that mail addressed to \(anything@something.mydomain.com)\
2917 gets delivered to \(something@mydomain.com)\?
2918
2919A0420: Set up a router like this:
2920
2921==> user_from_domain:
2922 driver = redirect
2923 data = ${if match{$domain}{\N^(.+)\.mydomain\.com$\N}\
2924 {$1@mydomain.com}}
2925
2926
2927Q0421: I can't get a regular expression to work in a \local_parts\ option on
2928 one of my routers.
2929
2930A0421: Have you remembered to protect any backslash and dollar characters in
2931 your regex from unwanted expansion? The easiest way is to use the
2932 \"@\N"\ facility, like this:
2933
2934==> local_parts = \N^0740\d{6}\N
2935
2936
2937Q0422: How can I arrange for all addresses in a group of domains \(*.example.com)\
2938 to share the same alias file? I have a number of such groups.
2939
2940A0422: For a single group you could just hard wire the file name into a router
2941 that had
2942
2943==> domains = *.example.com
2944
2945 set, to restrict it to the relevant domains. For a number of such groups
2946 you can create a file containing the domains, like this:
2947
2948==> *.example1.com example1.com
2949 *.example2.com example2.com
2950 ...
2951
2952 Then create a router like this
2953
2954==> domain_aliases:
2955 driver = redirect
2956 domains = partial-lsearch;/that/file
2957 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch*{/etc/aliases.d/$domain_data}}
2958
2959 The variable \$domain_data$\ contains the data that was looked up when the
2960 \domains\ option was matched, i.e. \"example1.com"\, \"example2.com"\, etc.
2961 in this case.
2962
2963
2964Q0423: Some of our users have no home directories; the field in the password
2965 file contains \(/no/home/dir)\. This causes the error \*failed to stat
2966 /no/home/dir (No such file or directory)*\ when Exim tries to look for a
2967 \(.forward file)\, and the delivery is deferred.
2968
2969A0423: There are two issues involved here:
2970
2971 (1) With the default configuration, you are asking Exim to check for a
2972 \(.forward)\ file in the user's home directory. If no file is found,
2973 Exim tries to \^^stat()^^\ the home directory. This is so that it will
2974 notice a missing NFS home directory, and not treat it as if the
2975 \(.forward)\ file did not exist. This \^^stat()^^\ is failing when the
2976 home directory really doesn't exist. You should arrange for the
2977 \%userforward%\ router not to run for these special users, by adding
2978 this line:
2979
2980==> condition = ${if eq {$home}{/no/home/dir}{no}{yes}}
2981
2982 (2) If you use \check_local_user\ on another router to route to a local
2983 transport (again, this is what is in the default configuration), you
2984 will also have to specify a current directory for the transport, because
2985 by default it makes the home directory current. This is easily done by
2986 adding
2987
2988==> current_directory = /
2989
2990 to the transport or
2991
2992==> transport_current_directory = /
2993
2994 to the router. Or you can add \home_directory\ to the transport, because
2995 the current directory defaults to the home directory.
2996
2997
2998Q0424: How can I disable Exim's de-duplication features? I want it to do two
2999 deliveries if two different aliases expand to the same address.
3000
3001A0424: This is not possible. Duplication has other ramifications other than
3002 just (in)convenience. Consider:
3003
3004 . Message is addressed to A and to B.
3005
3006 . Both A and B are aliased to C.
3007
3008 . Without de-duplication, two deliveries to C are scheduled.
3009
3010 . One delivery happens, Exim records that it has delivered the message
3011 to C.
3012
3013 . The next delivery fails (C's mailbox is over quota, say).
3014
3015 Next time round, Exim wants to know if it has already delivered to C or
3016 not, before scheduling a new delivery. Has it? Obviously, if duplicate
3017 deliveries are supported, it has to remember not only that it has
3018 delivered to C but also the ``history'' of how that delivery happened - in
3019 effect an ancestry list back to the original envelope address. This it
3020 does not do, and changing it to work in that way would be a lot of work
3021 and a big upheaval.
3022
3023 The best way to get duplicate deliveries if you want them is not to use
3024 aliases, but to route the addresses directly to a transport, e.g.
3025
3026==> duplicates:
3027 driver = accept
3028 local_parts = lsearch;/etc/list/of/special/local/parts
3029 transport = local_delivery
3030 user = exim
3031
3032
3033Q0425: My users' mailboxes are distributed between several servers according to
3034 the first letter of the user name. All the servers receive incoming mail
3035 at random. I would like to have the same configuration file for all the
3036 servers, which does local delivery for the mailboxes it holds, and sends
3037 other addresses to the correct other server. Is this possible?
3038
3039A0425: It is easiest if you arrange for all the users to have password entries
3040 on all the servers. This means that non-existent users can be detected
3041 at the first server they reach. Set up a file containing a mapping from
3042 the first letter of the user names to the servers where their mailboxes
3043 are held. For example:
3044
3045==> a: server1
3046 b: server1
3047 c: server2
3048 ...
3049
3050 Before the normal \%localuser%\ router, place the following router:
3051
3052==> mailbox_host:
3053 driver = manualroute
3054 check_local_user
3055 transport = remote_smtp
3056 route_list = * ${lookup{${substr_0_1:$local_part}}lsearch{/etc/mapfile}}
3057 self = pass
3058
3059 This router checks for a local account, then looks up the host from the
3060 first character of the local part. If the host is not the local host,
3061 the address is routed to the \%remote_smtp%\ transport, and sent to the
3062 correct host. If the host is the local host, the \self\ option causes
3063 the router to pass the address to the next router, which does a local
3064 delivery.
3065
3066 The router is skipped for local parts that are not the names of local
3067 users, and so these addresses fail.
3068
3069
3070Q0426: One of the things I want to set up is for \(anything@onedomain)\ to forward
3071 to \(anything@anotherdomain)\. I tried adding \($local_part@anotherdomain)\ to
3072 my aliases but it did not expand - it sent it to that literal address.
3073
3074A0426: If you want to do it that way, you can use the \"expand"\ operator on
3075 the lookup used in the data option of the redirect router. For example:
3076
3077==> data = ${expand:${lookup{$local_part}lsearch*{/etc/aliases}}}
3078
3079 Another approach is to use a router like this:
3080
3081==> forwarddomain:
3082 driver = redirect
3083 domains = onedomain
3084 data = $local_part@anotherdomain
3085
3086 The value of \data\ can, of course, be more complicated, involving
3087 lookups etc. if you have lots of different cases.
3088
3089
3090Q0427: How can I have an address looked up in two different alias files, and
3091 delivered to all the addresses that are found?
3092
3093A0427: Use a router like this:
3094
3095==> multi_aliases:
3096 driver = redirect
3097 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases1}\
3098 {$value${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases2}{,$value}}}\
3099 {${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases2}{$value}fail}}}\
3100
3101 If the first lookup succeeds, the result is its data, followed by the
3102 data from the second lookup, if any, separated by a comma. If the first
3103 lookup fails, the result is the data from the third lookup (which also
3104 looks in the second file), but if this also fails, the entire expansion
3105 is forced to fail, thereby causing the router to decline.
3106
3107 Another approach is to use two routers, with the first re-generating the
3108 original local part when it succeeds. This won't get processed by the
3109 same router again. For example:
3110
3111==> multi_aliases1:
3112 driver = redirect
3113 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases1}{$value,$local_part}}
3114
3115==> multi_aliases2:
3116 data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases2}}
3117
3118 This scales more easily to three or more alias files.
3119
3120
3121Q0428: I've converted from Sendmail, and I notice that Exim doesn't make use
3122 of the \"owner-"\ entries in my alias file to change the sender address in
3123 outgoing messages to a mailing list.
3124
3125A0428: If you have an alias file with entries like this:
3126
3127==> somelist: a@b, c@d, ...
3128 owner-somelist: postmaster
3129
3130 Sendmail assumes that the second entry specifies a new sender address
3131 for the first. Exim does not make this assumption. However, you can make
3132 it take the same action, by adding
3133
3134==> errors_to = owner-$local_part@whatever.domain
3135
3136 to the configuration for your aliasing router. This is fail-safe,
3137 because Exim verifies a new sender address before using it. Thus, the
3138 change of sender address occurs only when the owner entry exists.
3139
3140
3141Q0429: I would like to deliver mail addressed to a given domain to local
3142 mailboxes, but also to generate messages to the envelope senders.
3143
3144A0429: You can do this with an ``unseen'' router and an \%autoreply%\ transport,
3145 along the following lines:
3146
3147==> # Router
3148 auto_warning_r:
3149 driver = accept
3150 check_local_user
3151 domains = <domains you want to do this for>
3152 condition = ${if eq{$sender_address}{}{no}{yes}}
3153 transport = warning_t
3154 no_verify
3155 unseen
3156
3157 Place this router immediately before the normal \%localuser%\ router. The
3158 \unseen\ option means that the address is still passed on to the next
3159 router. The transport is configured like this:
3160
3161==> # Transport
3162 warning_t:
3163 driver = autoreply
3164 file = /usr/local/mail/warning.txt
3165 file_expand
3166 from = postmaster@your.domain
3167 to = $sender_address
3168 user = exim
3169 subject = Re: Your mail to $local_part@$domain
3170
3171 Note the use of the \condition\ option to avoid attempting to send a
3172 message when there is no sender (that is, when the incoming message is a
3173 bounce message). You can of course extend this to include other
3174 conditions. If you want to log the sending of messages, you can add
3175
3176==> log = /some/file
3177
3178 to the transport and also make use of the \once\ option if you want to
3179 send only one message to each sender.
3180
3181
3182Q0430: Whenever Exim tries to route a local address, it gives a permission
3183 denied error for the \(.forward)\ file, like this:
3184
3185==> 1998-08-10 16:55:32 0z5y2W-0000B8-00 == xxxx@yyy.zzz <xxxx@yyy.zz>
3186 D=userforward defer (-1): failed to open /home/xxxx/.forward
3187 (userforward router): Permission denied (euid=1234 egid=101)
3188
3189A0430: Have you remembered to make Exim setuid \/root/\?
3190
3191
3192Q0431: How do I configure Exim to allow arbitrary extensions in local parts, of
3193 the form \/+extension/\?
3194
3195A0431: Add this pre-condition to the relevant router:
3196
3197==> local_part_suffix = +*
3198
3199 If you want the extensions to be optional, also add the option
3200
3201==> local_part_suffix_optional
3202
3203 When the router runs, \$local_part$\ contains the local part with the
3204 extension removed, and the extension (if any) is in \$local_part_suffix$\.
3205 If you have set \check_local_user\, the test is carried out after the
3206 extension is removed.
3207
3208
3209Q0432: I use NIS for my user data. How can I stop Exim rejecting mail when my
3210 NIS servers are being restarted?
3211
3212A0432: Exim doesn't know that you are using NIS; it just calls the \^^getpwnam()^^\
3213 function, which is routed by nsswitch. Unfortunately, \^^getpwnam()^^\
3214 was never designed to be routed through NIS, and it returns NULL if the
3215 entry is not found or if the connection to the NIS server fails. This
3216 means that Exim cannot tell the difference between ``no such user'' and
3217 ``NIS is down''.
3218
3219 Crutches to help with this problem are \finduser_retries\ in Exim, and
3220 \^nscd^\ on the Unix side, but they are not perfect, and mail can still
3221 be lost. However, Nico Erfurth pointed out that you can create a router
3222 for Exim that tests for the availability of NIS, and force a defer if
3223 NIS is not running:
3224
3225==> check_nis:
3226 driver = redirect
3227 data = ${lookup {$local_part} nis {passwd}{}}
3228
3229 This should be placed before any router that makes any use of NIS,
3230 typically at the start of your local routers. How does it work? If
3231 your NIS server is reachable, the lookup will take place, and whether it
3232 succeeds or fails, the result is an empty strting. This causes the
3233 router to decline, and the address is passed to the following routers.
3234 If your NIS server is down, the lookup defers, and this causes the
3235 router to defer. A verification of an incoming address gets a temporary
3236 rejection, and a delivery is deferred till later.
3237
3238
3239Q0433: How can I arrange for a single address to be processed by \*both*\
3240 \%redirect%\ \*and*\ \%accept%\?
3241
3242A0433: Check out the \unseen\ option.
3243
3244
3245Q0434: How can I redirect all local parts that are not in my system aliases to
3246 a single address? I tried using an asterisk in the system alias file
3247 with an \"lsearch*"\ lookup, but that send \*all*\ messages to the
3248 default address.
3249
3250A0434: If your alias file generates addresses in the local domain, they are
3251 also processed as a potential aliases. For example, suppose this is your
3252 alias file:
3253
3254==> caesar: jc
3255 anthony: ma
3256 *: brutus
3257
3258 The local part \/caesar/\ is aliased to \/jc/\, but that address is then
3259 reprocessed by the routers. As the address is in the local domain, the
3260 alias file is again consulted, and this time the default matches. In
3261 fact after the second aliasing, \/brutus/\ is also processed again from
3262 the start, and is aliased to itself. However, this happens only once,
3263 because the next time, Exim notices that the aliasing router has already
3264 processed \/brutus/\, so the router is skipped in order to avoid
3265 looping.
3266
3267 There are several ways of solving this problem; which one you use
3268 depends on your aliasing data.
3269
3270 (1) If the result of aliasing is always a local user name, that is,
3271 aliasing never generates another alias, you can use the
3272 \redirect_router\ option on the router to specify that processing
3273 the generated addresses must start at the next router. For example:
3274
3275==> redirect_router = userforward
3276
3277 assuming that the next router is called \%userforward%\. This
3278 ensures that there is at most one pass through the aliasing router.
3279
3280 (2) If you cannot rely on aliases generating non-aliases, it is often
3281 easier not to use a default alias, but instead to place a router
3282 such as the one below after all the other local routers (for the
3283 relevant domains):
3284
3285==> catch_unknown:
3286 driver = redirect
3287 domains = ...
3288 data = brutus@$domain
3289
3290 Note that the default aliasing technique works more successfully for
3291 virtual domains (see Q0401) because the generated address for the
3292 default is not usually in the same virtual domain as the incoming
3293 address.
3294
3295
3296Q0435: My alias file contains fully qualified addresses as keys, and some
3297 wildcard domains in the form @foo.bar. Can Exim handle these?
3298
3299A0435: You can handle fully qualified addresses with this router:
3300
3301==> qualified_aliases:
3302 driver = redirect
3303 data = ${lookup{$local_part@$domain}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
3304
3305 (Add any other options you need for the \%redirect%\ router.) Place this
3306 router either before or after the default aliases router that looks up
3307 the local part only. (Or, if you have no unqualified aliases, replace
3308 the default router.)
3309
3310 To handle wildcards in the form @foo.bar you will need yet another
3311 router. (Wildcards of the form *@foo.bar can be handled by an lsearch*@
3312 lookup.) Something like this:
3313
3314==> wildcard_aliases:
3315 driver = redirect
3316 data = ${lookup{@$domain}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
3317
3318 Place this after the routers that handle the more specific aliases.
3319
3320
3321
33225. FILTERING
3323
3324Q0501: My filter isn't working. How can I test it?
3325
3326A0501: Use the \-bf-\ option (\-bF-\ for a system filter) to test the basic operation
3327 of your filter. You can request debugging information for filtering only
3328 by adding \"-d-all+filter"\ to the command.
3329
3330
3331Q0502: What I really need is the ability to obtain the result of a pipe
3332 command so that I can filter externally and redirect internally. Is
3333 this possible?
3334
3335A0502: The result of a pipe command is not available to a filter, because Exim
3336 does not run any actual deliveries while filtering. It just sets up
3337 deliveries at this time. They all actually happen later. If you want to
3338 run pipes and examine their results, you need to set up a single
3339 delivery to a delivery agent such as \^procmail^\ which provides this kind
3340 of facility.
3341
3342 An possible alternative is to use the \"${run"\ expansion item to run an
3343 external command while filtering. In this case, you can make use of some
3344 of the results of the command.
3345
3346
3347Q0503: I received a message with a ::Subject:: line that contained a non-printing
3348 character (a carriage return). This messed up my filter file. Is there a
3349 way to get round it?
3350
3351A0503: Instead of \"$h_subject:"\ use \"${escape:$h_subject:}"\
3352
3353
3354Q0504: I want to search for \"$"\ in the subject line, but I can't seem to get
3355 the syntax.
3356
3357A0504: Try one of these:
3358
3359==> if $h_subject: contains \$ then ...
3360 if $h_subject: contains "\\$" then ...
3361
3362
3363Q0505: My problem is that Exim replaces \$local_part$\ with an empty string in the
3364 system filtering. What's wrong or what did I miss?
3365
3366A0505: A message may have many recipients. The system filter is run just once
3367 at the start of a delivery attempt. Consequently, it does not make sense
3368 to set \$local_part$\. Which recipient should it be set to? However, you
3369 can access all the recipients from a system filter via the variable
3370 called \$recipients$\.
3371
3372
3373Q0506: Using \$recipients$\ in a system filter gives me another problem: how can
3374 I do a string lookup if \$recipients$\ is a list of addresses?
3375
3376A0506: Check out the section of the filter specification called \*Testing a list of
3377 addresses*\. If that doesn't help, you may have to resort to calling an
3378 embedded Perl interpreter - but that is expensive.
3379
3380
3381Q0507: What are the main differences between using an Exim filter and using
3382 \^procmail^\?
3383
3384A0507: Exim filters and \^procmail^\ provide different facilities. Exim filters run
3385 at routing time, before any deliveries are done. A filter is like a
3386 ``\(.forward)\ file with conditions''. One of the benefits is de-duplication.
3387 Another is that if you forward, you are forwarding the original message.
3388
3389 However, this does mean that pipes etc. are not run at filtering time,
3390 nor can you change the headers, because the message may have other
3391 recipients and Exim keeps only a single set of headers.
3392
3393 \^procmail^\ runs at delivery time. This is for one recipient only, and so
3394 it can change headers, run pipes and check the results, etc. However, if
3395 it wants to forward, it has to create a new message containing a copy
3396 of the original message.
3397
3398 It's your choice as to which of these you use. You can of course use
3399 both.
3400
3401
3402Q0508: How can I allow the use of relative paths in users' filter files when
3403 the directories concerned are not available from the password data?
3404
3405A0508: You need to be running Exim 4.11 or later. You can then specify a value
3406 for \$home$\ by setting the router_home_directory option on the
3407 \%redirect%\ router.
3408
3409 For earlier releases, there is no way to specify the value of \$home$\
3410 for a \%redirect%\ router; it either comes from the password data as a
3411 result of \check_local_user\, or is unset.
3412
3413
3414Q0509: How can I set up a filter file to detect and block virus attachments?
3415
3416A0509: Exim's filter facilities aren't powerful enough to do much more than
3417 very crude testing. Most people that want virus checking are nowadays
3418 using one of the separate scanning programs such as \^exiscan^\ (see
3419 \?http://duncanthrax.net/exiscan/?\). There is some further information
3420 about scanning with Exim via \?http://www.timj.co.uk/linux/exim.php?\.
3421
3422
3423Q0510: Is it possible to write code for scanning messages in Python?
3424
3425A0510: \^elspy^\ is a layer of glue code that enables you to write Python code
3426 to scan email messages at SMTP time. \^elspy^\ also includes a small
3427 Python library with common mail-scanning tools, including an interface
3428 to SpamAssassin and a simple but effective virus detector. You can
3429 optain \^elspy^\ from \?http://elspy.sourceforge.net/?\.
3430
3431
3432Q0511: Whenever my system filter uses a \mail\ command to send a message, I get
3433 the error \*User 0 set for address_reply transport is on the never_users
3434 list*\. What does this mean?
3435
3436A0511: The system filter runs as \/root/\ in Exim 4, unless you set
3437 \system_filter_user\ to specify otherwise. When you set up a delivery
3438 direct from a system filter (an autoreply is a special kind of
3439 ``delivery'') the transport runs as the same user, unless it has a
3440 \user\ setting of its own. Normally, deliveries are not allowed to run
3441 as \/root/\ as a security precaution; this is implemented by the
3442 \never_users\ option.
3443
3444 The easiest solution is to add this to your configuration:
3445
3446==> system_filter_user = exim
3447
3448 The system filter then runs as \/exim/\ instead of \/root/\.
3449 Alternatively, you can arrange for autoreplies from the system filter to
3450 use a special transport of their own, and set the \user\ option on that
3451 transport.
3452
3453
3454Q0512: I'm trying to reference the ::Envelope-To:: header in my filter, but
3455 \$h_envelope-to:$\ is always empty.
3456
3457A0512: ::Envelope-To:: is added at delivery time, by the transport. Therefore,
3458 the header doesn't exist at filter time. In a user filter, the values
3459 you probably want are in \$original_local_part$\ and
3460 \$original_domain$\. In a system filter, the complete list of all
3461 envelope recipients is in \$recipients$\.
3462
3463
3464Q0513: I want my system filter to freeze all mails greater than 500K in size,
3465 but to exclude those to a specific domain. However, I don't seem to be
3466 able to use \$domain$\ in a system filter.
3467
3468A0513: You cannot do this in a system filter, because a single message may have
3469 multiple recipients, some in the special domain, and some not. That is
3470 also the reason why \$domain$\ is not set in a system filter.
3471
3472 If you want to take actions on a per-recipient basis, you have to do it
3473 in a router. However, freezing is not appropriate, because freezing
3474 stops all deliveries. You could, however, delay delivery to all but the
3475 special domains by using something like this:
3476
3477==> delay_if_too_big:
3478 driver = redirect
3479 domains = !the.special.domain
3480 condition = ${if >{$message_size}{500K}{yes}{no}}
3481 allow_defer
3482 data = :defer: message too big.
3483
3484 However, there isn't an easy way of ``releasing'' such messages at
3485 present.
3486
3487
3488Q0514: When I try to send to two addresses I get an error in the filter
3489 file \*malformed address: , e@fgh.com may not follow a@bcd.com*\. What
3490 is going on?
3491
3492A0514: Have you got
3493
3494==> deliver "a@bcd.com, e@fgh.com"
3495
3496 in your filter? If so, that is your problem. You should have
3497
3498==> deliver a@bcd.com
3499 deliver e@fgh.com
3500
3501 Each \deliver\ command expects just one address.
3502
3503
3504
35056. DELIVERY
3506
3507Q0601: What does the error \*Neither the xxx router nor the yyy transport set
3508 a uid for local delivery of...*\ mean?
3509
3510A0601: Whenever Exim does a local delivery, it runs a process under a specific
3511 user and group id (uid and gid). For deliveries into mailboxes, and to
3512 pipes and files set up by forwarding, it normally picks up the uid/gid
3513 of the receiving user. However, if an address is directed to a pipe or a
3514 file by some other means, such an entry in the system alias file of the
3515 form
3516
3517==> majordomo: |/local/mail/majordomo ...
3518
3519 then Exim has to be told what uid/gid to use for the delivery. This can
3520 be done either on the routerr that handles the address, or on the
3521 transport that actually does the delivery. If a pipe is going to run a
3522 setuid program, then it doesn't matter what uid Exim starts it out with,
3523 and so the most straightforward thing is to put
3524
3525==> user = exim
3526
3527 on either the router or the transport. A setting on the transport
3528 overrides a setting on the router, so if the same transport is being
3529 used with several routers, you should set the user on it only if you
3530 want the same uid to be used in all cases.
3531
3532 In the default configuration, the transports used for file and pipe
3533 deliveries are the ones called \address_file\ and \address_pipe\. You
3534 can specify different transports by setting, for example,
3535
3536==> pipe_transport = special_pipe_transport
3537
3538 on the \%system_aliases%\ router. Then you can set up \%special_pipe_transport%\
3539
3540==> special_pipe_transport:
3541 driver = pipe
3542 user = ????
3543
3544 which will be used only for pipe deliveries from that one router.
3545 What you put for the ???? is up to you, and depends on the particular
3546 circumstances.
3547
3548
3549Q0602: Exim keeps crashing with segmentation errors (signal 11 or 139) during
3550 delivery. This seems to happen when it is about to contact a remote
3551 host or when a delivery is deferred.
3552
3553A0602: This could be a problem with Exim's databases. Try running a delivery
3554 with debugging turned on. If the last line of the debug output is
3555 something like this:
3556
3557==> locked /var/spool/exim/db/retry.lockfile
3558
3559 the crash is happening inside the DBM library. Check that your DBM
3560 library is correctly installed. In particular, if you have installed a
3561 second DBM library onto a system that already had one, check that its
3562 version of \(ndbm.h)\ is being seen first. For example, if the new
3563 version is in \(/usr/local/include)\, check that there isn't another
3564 version in \(/usr/include)\. If you are using Berkeley db, you can set
3565
3566==> USE_DB=yes
3567
3568 in your \(Local/Makefile)\ to avoid using \(ndbm.h)\ altogether. This is
3569 particularly relevant for version 2 (or later) of Berkeley db, because
3570 no \(ndbm.h)\ file is distributed with it. Another thing you can try is
3571 to run
3572
3573==> exim_dumpdb /var/spool/exim retry
3574
3575 to see if it also crashes, or build the \^test_dbfn^\ tool and fiddle
3576 around with it. If both fail, it is most almost certainly a problem with
3577 your DBM library. You could try to update it, or force Exim to use
3578 another library. See the file \(doc/dbm.discuss.txt)\ for hints about
3579 this.
3580
3581
3582Q0603: How can mails that are being routed through routers that do not set
3583 \check_local_user\ be delivered under the uid of the recipient?
3584
3585A0603: Q0601 contains background information on this. If you are using, say, an
3586 alias file to direct messages to specific mailboxes, you can use
3587 the \user\ option on either the router or the transport to set the uid.
3588 What you put in the setting depends on how the required uid is to be
3589 found. It could be looked up in a file or computed somehow from the
3590 local part, for example.
3591
3592
3593Q0604: I want to use MMDF-style mailboxes. How can I get Exim to append the
3594 ctrl-A characters that separate indvidual emails?
3595
3596A0604: Set the \message_suffix\ option in the \%appendfile%\ transport. In fact,
3597 for MMDF mailboxes you need a prefix as well as a suffix to get it
3598 working right, so your transport should contain these settings:
3599
3600==> message_prefix = "\1\1\1\1\n"
3601 message_suffix = "\1\1\1\1\n"
3602
3603 Also, you need to change the \check_string\ and \escape_string\ settings so
3604 that the escaping happens for lines in the message that happen to begin
3605 with the MMDF prefix or suffix string, rather than ``From'' (the default):
3606
3607==> check_string = "\1\1\1\1\n"
3608 escape_string = "\1\1\1\1 \n"
3609
3610 Adding a space to the line is sufficient to prevent it being taken as a
3611 separator.
3612
3613
3614Q0605: If a user's mailbox is over quota, is there a way for me to set it up so
3615 that the mail bounces to the sender and is not stored in the mail queue?
3616
3617A0605: In the retry section of the configuration, put
3618
3619==> *@your.dom.ain quota
3620
3621 That is, provide no retry timings for over quota errors. They will then
3622 bounce immediately. Alternatively, you can set up retries for a short
3623 time only, or use something like this:
3624
3625==> *@your.dom.ain quota_7d
3626 *@your.dom.ain quota F,2h,15m; F,3d,1h
3627
3628 which bounces immediately if the user's mailbox hasn't been read for 7
3629 days, but otherwise tries for up to 3 days after the first quota
3630 failure.
3631
3632
3633Q0606: I'm using tmail to do local deliveries, but when I turned on the
3634 \use_crlf\ option on the \%pipe%\ transport (tmail prefers \"@\r@\n"\
3635 terminations) message bodies started to vanish.
3636
3637A0606: You need to unset the \mesage_prefix\ option, or change it so that its
3638 default \"@\n"\ terminator becomes \"@\r@\n"\. For example, the
3639 transport could be:
3640
3641==> local_delivery_mbx:
3642 driver = pipe
3643 command = /usr/local/bin/tmail $local_part
3644 user = exim
3645 current_directory = /
3646 use_crlf
3647 message_prefix =
3648
3649 The reason for this is as follows: tmail uses the line terminator on
3650 the first line it sees to determine whether lines are terminated by
3651 \"@\r@\n"\ or \"@\n"\. If the latter, it moans to stderr and changes subsequent
3652 \"@\n"\ terminators to \"@\r@\n"\. The default setting of the \message_prefix\
3653 option is \"From ...@\n"\, and this is unaffected by the \use_crlf\ option.
3654 If you don't change this, tmail sees the first line terminated by
3655 \"@\n"\ and prepends \"@\r"\ to the \"@\n"\ terminator on all subsequent
3656 lines. However, if \use_crlf\ is set, Exim makes all other lines
3657 \"@\r@\n"\ terminated, leading to doubled \"@\r@\r@\n"\ lines and
3658 corrupt mbx mailboxes.
3659
3660
3661Q0607: When I activate ``return receipt'' for example in Netscape Mailbox
3662 sending options, then I get an error message from Exim... something
3663 like \*not supported*\. Can I activate delivery confirmations?
3664
3665A0607: Exim does not support any kind of delivery notification.
3666
3667 (1) You can configure it to recognize headers such as
3668 \Return-receipt-to:\ if you wish.
3669
3670 (2) Some people want MSN (message status notification). Such services
3671 are implemented in MUAs, and don't impact on the MTA at all.
3672
3673 (3) I investigated the RFCs which describe the DSN (delivery status
3674 notification) system. However, I was unable to specify any sensible way
3675 of actually doing anything with the data. There were comments on the
3676 mailing list at the time; many people, including me, conclude that DSN
3677 is in practice unworkable. The killer problem is with forwarding and
3678 aliasing. Do you propagate the DSN data with the generated addresses?
3679 Do you send back a ``reached end of the DSN world'' or ``expanded'' message?
3680 Do you do this differently for different kinds of aliasing/forwarding?
3681 For a user who has a \(.forward)\ file with a single address in, this
3682 might seem easy - just propagate the data. But what if there are several
3683 forwardings? If you propagate the DSN data, the sender may get back
3684 several DSN messages - and should the sender really know about the
3685 detail of the receiver's forwarding arrangements? There isn't really
3686 any way to distinguish between a \(.forward)\ file that is forwarding
3687 and one that is a mini mailing list. And so on, and so on. There are so
3688 many questions that don't have obvious answers.
3689
3690
3691Q0608: What does the message \*retry time not reached [for any host]*\ on the log
3692 mean? Why won't Exim try to deliver the message?
3693
3694A0608: That is not an error. It means exactly what it says. A previous attempt
3695 to deliver to that address failed with a temporary error, and Exim
3696 computed the earliest time at which to try again. This can apply to
3697 local as well as to remote deliveries. For remote deliveries, each host
3698 (if there are several) has its own retry time.
3699
3700 If you are running on a dial-up host, the rest of this answer probably
3701 does not apply to you. Go and read Q1404 instead. If your host is
3702 permanently online, read on...
3703
3704 Some MTAs have a retrying schedule for each message. Exim does not work
3705 like this. Retry timing is normally host-based for remote deliveries and
3706 address-based for local deliveries. (There are some exceptions for certain
3707 kinds of remote failure - see \*Errors in outgoing SMTP*\ in the manual.)
3708
3709 If a new message arrives for a failing address and the retry time has
3710 not yet arrived, Exim will log \*retry time not reached*\ and leave the
3711 message on the queue, without attempting delivery. Similarly, if a queue
3712 runner notices the message before the time to retry has arrived, it
3713 writes the same log entry. When the retry time has past, Exim attempts
3714 delivery at the next queue run. If you want to know when that will be,
3715 run the exinext utility on the address, for example:
3716
3717==> exinext user@some.domain
3718
3719 You can suppress these messages on the log by including \"-retry_defer"\
3720 in the setting of \log_selector\. You can force a delivery attempt on a
3721 specific message (overriding the retry time) by means of the -M option:
3722
3723==> exim -M 10hCET-0000Bf-00
3724
3725 If you want to do this for the entire queue, use the \-qf-\ option.
3726
3727
3728Q0609: Exim seems to be sending the same message twice, according to the log,
3729 although there is a difference in capitalization of the local part of
3730 the address.
3731
3732A0609: That is correct. The RFCs are explicit in stating that capitalization
3733 matters for local parts. For remote domains, Exim is not entitled to
3734 assume case independence of local parts. I know, it is utterly silly,
3735 and it causes a lot of grief, but that's what the rules say. Here is a
3736 quote from RFC 2821:
3737
3738 ... a command verb, an argument value other than a mailbox local-part,
3739 and free form text MAY be encoded in upper case, lower case, or any
3740 mixture of upper and lower case with no impact on its meaning. This
3741 is NOT true of a mailbox local-part. The local-part of a mailbox
3742 MUST BE treated as case sensitive. Therefore, SMTP implementations
3743 MUST take care to preserve the case of mailbox local-parts. Mailbox
3744 domains are not case sensitive. In particular, for some hosts the
3745 user "smith" is different from the user "Smith". However, exploiting
3746 the case sensitivity of mailbox local-parts impedes interoperability
3747 and is discouraged.
3748
3749
3750Q0610: How can I force the next retry time for a host to be now?
3751
3752A0610: You can change the retry time with the \^exim_fixdb^\ utility, but its
3753 interface is very clumsy. If you have a message for the host on the
3754 queue, the simplest thing to do is to force a delivery with the \-M-\
3755 command line option. If delivery succeeds, the retry data will get
3756 cleared. If the host is past the cutoff time, so that messages are
3757 bouncing immediately without trying a delivery, you can use \-odq-\ to
3758 put a message on the queue without a delivery attempt, and then use
3759 \-M-\ on it.
3760
3761
3762Q0611: I set up \"|/bin/grep Subject|/usr/bin/smbclient -M <netbiosname>"\ as an
3763 alias but it doesn't work.
3764
3765A0611: That is a shell command line. Exim does not run pipe commands under a
3766 shell by default (for added security - and it saves a process). You
3767 need something like
3768
3769==> "|/bin/sh -c '/bin/grep Subject|/usr/bin/smbclient -M <netbiosname>'"
3770
3771
3772Q0612: Why does the \%pipe%\ transport add a line starting with \">From"\ to
3773 messages?
3774
3775A0612: Actually, it adds a line starting with \"From"\ followed by a space.
3776 This is commonly referred to as the \"From_"\ line, to emphasize the
3777 fact that \"From"\ is followed by a space and not a colon. This is a
3778 pseudo-header line that contains the envelope sender address and the
3779 time of delivery. It originated as a separator line in Berkeley format
3780 mailboxes, but is also used in other contexts. (And yes, it is often
3781 confused with the ::From:: header line, and this causes a lot of grief.
3782 The use of \"From_"\ was one of the really bad email design decisions.)
3783
3784 Exim's \%pipe%\ transport adds this pseudo-header line by default
3785 because \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ needs it, and that is one of the the most
3786 common uses of piping. The \^procmail^\ local delivery agent also makes
3787 use of the \"From_"\ line. If you do not want it, change the setting of
3788 \message_prefix\ on the \%pipe%\ transport. For example, to remove the
3789 line altogether, use
3790
3791==> message_prefix =
3792
3793 If you are not piping to \(/usr/ucb/vacation)\ or \^procmail^\, it is
3794 likely that you do not need a \"From_"\ line, and indeed it may cause
3795 problems if it is present.
3796
3797 One user reported that this line gave trouble when a pipe was used to
3798 send messages to Courier's \^deliverquota^\ program. The line was
3799 retained with the message, and caused problems for MS Exchange 2000 when
3800 retrieving messages with its built-in POP collector. Specifically, it
3801 caused Exchange to not be able to recognise message attachments.
3802
3803
3804Q0613: I have set \fallback_hosts\ on my \%smtp%\ transport, but after the error
3805 \*sem@chat.ru cannot be resolved at this time*\ Exim isn't using them.
3806
3807A0613: \fallback_hosts\ works only if an attempt at delivery to the original
3808 host(s) fails. In this case, Exim couldn't even resolve the domain
3809 \(chat.ru)\ to discover what the original hosts were, so it never got as far
3810 as the transport. However, see Q0315 for a possible solution.
3811
3812
3813Q0614: After the holidays my ISP has always hundreds of e-mails waiting for me.
3814 These are forced down Exim's throat in one go. Exim spawns a lot of
3815 kids, but is there some limit to the number of processes it creates?
3816
3817A0614: Unless you have changed \smtp_accept_queue_per_connection\ it should
3818 spawn only that many processes per connection (default 10). Your ISP
3819 may be making many connections, of course. That is limited by
3820 \smtp_accept_max\.
3821
3822
3823Q0615: When a message in the queue got to 12h old, Exim wrote \*retry timeout
3824 exceeded*\ and removed all messages in the queue to this host - even
3825 recent messages. How I can avoid this behaviour? I only want to remove
3826 messages that have exceeded the maximum retry time.
3827
3828A0615: Exim's retrying is host-based rather than message-based. The philosophy
3829 is that if a host has been down for a very long time, there is no point
3830 in keeping messages hanging around. However, you might like to check
3831 out \delay_after_cutoff\ in the \%smtp%\ transport. It doesn't do what you
3832 want, but it might help.
3833
3834
3835Q0616: Can Exim add a ::Content-Length:: header to messages it delivers?
3836
3837A0616: You could include something like
3838
3839==> headers_remove = "content-length"
3840 headers_add = "Content-Length: $message_body_size"
3841
3842 to the \%appendfile%\ transport. However, the use of ::Content-Length:: can
3843 cause several problems, and is not recommended unless you really know
3844 what you are doing. There is a discussion of the problems in
3845 \?http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/content-length.html?\.
3846
3847
3848Q0617: Exim seems to be trying to deliver a message every 10 minutes, though
3849 the retry rules specify longer times after a while, because it is
3850 writing a log entry every time, like this:
3851
3852==> 1999-08-26 14:51:19 11IVsE-000MuP-00 == example@example.com T=smtp defer
3853 (-34): some host address lookups failed and retry time not reached for
3854 other hosts or connection limit reached
3855
3856A0617: It is looking at the message every 10 minutes, but it isn't actually
3857 trying to deliver. It's looking up \(example.com)\ in the DNS and finding
3858 this information:
3859
3860==> example.com. MX 10 example-com.isp.example.com.
3861 example.com. MX 0 mail.example.com.
3862 mail.example.com. A 202.77.183.45
3863 A lookup for example-com.isp.example.com. yielded NXDOMAIN
3864
3865 The last line means that there is no address (A) record in the DNS for
3866 \(example-com.isp.example.com)\. That accounts for \*some host address
3867 lookups failed*\, but the retry time for \(mail.example.com)\ hasn't been
3868 reached, which accounts for \*retry time not reached for other hosts*\.
3869
3870
3871Q0618: I am trying to set exim up to have a automatic failover if it sees that
3872 the system that it is sending all mail to is down.
3873
3874A0618: Add to the \%remote_smtp%\ transport the following:
3875
3876==> fallback_hosts = failover.server.name(s)
3877
3878 If there are several names, they must be separated by colons.
3879
3880
3881Q0619: I can't get Exim to deliver over NFS. I get the error \*fcntl() failed:
3882 No locks available*\, though the lock daemon is running on the NFS server
3883 and other hosts are able to access it.
3884
3885A0619: Check that you have \(lockd)\ running on the NFS client. This is not
3886 always running by default on some systems (Red Hat is believed to be one
3887 such system).
3888
3889
3890Q0620: Why does Exim bounce messages without even attempting delivery, giving
3891 the error \*retry time not reached for any host after a long failure
3892 period*\?
3893
3894A0620: This message means that all hosts to which the message could be sent
3895 have been failing for so long that the end of the retry period
3896 (typically 4 or 5 days) has been reached. In this situation, Exim still
3897 computes a next time to retry, but any messages that arrive in the
3898 meantime are bounced straight away. You can alter this behaviour by
3899 unsetting the \delay_after_cutoff\ option on the smtp transport. Then Exim
3900 will try most messages for those hosts once before giving up.
3901
3902
3903Q0621: My \(.forward)\ file is \"|/usr/bin/procmail -f-"\ and mail gets delivered,
3904 but there was a bounce to the sender, sending him the output of procmail.
3905 How can I prevent this?
3906
3907A0621: Exim's default configuration is set up like this:
3908
3909==> address_pipe:
3910 driver = pipe
3911 return_output
3912
3913 The \return_output\ option requests that any output that the pipe
3914 produces be returned to the sender. That is the safest default. If you
3915 don't want this, you can either remove the option altogether, or change
3916 it to \return_fail_output\, to return output only if the command fails.
3917 Note that this will affect all pipes that users run, not just your
3918 procmail one. It might be better to arrange for procmail not to produce
3919 any output when it succeeds.
3920
3921
3922Q0622: Can I write an ordinary file when I run a perl script as a transport
3923 filter for the \%remote_smtp%\ and \%address_pipe%\ transports?
3924
3925A0622: Yes, provided the file is writeable by the uid under which the transport
3926 runs (the Exim user in the case of the remote transport). However, if two
3927 messages are being delivered at once, their data will get mixed up in
3928 the file unless you implement your own locking scheme. If all you want
3929 to do is to take a copy of the message, another approach that avoids
3930 the locking problem is to use a system filter to set up an ``unseen''
3931 delivery to a file. If you only want the message's headers, you can
3932 set \message_filter_file_transport\ to point to a special \%appendfile%\
3933 transport that has \headers_only\ set.
3934
3935
3936Q0623: My \(/var/spool/mail)\ has grown drastically. Is there any possibility of
3937 using two directories?
3938
3939A0623: You can use an expansion string to split mailboxes between two
3940 directories. For example,
3941
3942==> file = /var/spool/mail${nhash_2:$local_part}/$local_part
3943
3944 which does a hash on the local part, producing either 0 or 1, thereby
3945 using \(mail0) or \(mail1)\. But remember, the MUAs that read these mailboxes
3946 also have to know where they are.
3947
3948
3949Q0624: Sendmail has a program called \^smrsh^\ that restricts what binaries
3950 can be run from sendmail aliases. Is there something like this in Exim ?
3951
3952A0624: Check out the \allow_commands\ option in the \%pipe%\ transport.
3953
3954
3955Q0625: I wish to have large emails go out one at a time.
3956
3957A0625: One possibility is to set up a router that defers all large messages,
3958 except in queue runs. Since queue runners deliver just one
3959 message at a time, if you limited the number of simultaneous queue
3960 runners to 1, you would get the effect you wanted. A suitable router
3961 might be
3962
3963==> defer_if_large_unless_queue_run:
3964 driver = redirect
3965 condition = ${if or{{queue_running}{<{$message_size}{200K}}}{no}{yes}}
3966 allow_defer
3967 data = :defer: too large for immediate delivery
3968 no_verify
3969
3970 Of course, this would always delay any large message until the next
3971 queue runner, but if you run them fairly regularly, this shouldn't be a
3972 huge problem, and may even be desirable. Note the use of \no_verify\ to
3973 ensure that this router is not used when Exim is verifying addresses.
3974
3975
3976Q0626: Exim can route local parts independent of their case, but the Cyrus LMTP
3977 daemon requires the correct case. How can I fix this?
3978
3979A0626: You need to rewrite the local part to the correct case before running
3980 the router that routes to Cyrus. For example, if you require all lower
3981 case, and your router is called \local_user\, put this router in front
3982 of it:
3983
3984==> lowercase_local:
3985 driver = redirect
3986 redirect_router = local_user
3987 domains = +local_domains
3988 data = ${lc:$local_part}@$domain
3989
3990 The setting of \redirect_router\ causes processing of the rewritten
3991 address to start at the next router, instead of the first router. See
3992 also Q0630, and C045 for a more complete Cyrus configuration.
3993
3994
3995Q0627: Is there a command I can send to Exim to retry all queued messages
3996 regardless of their retry schedule?
3997
3998A0627: The \-qff-\ option starts a queue runner that forces a delivery attempt
3999 for all messages, including frozen ones. If you use \-qf-\, frozen
4000 messages are skipped.
4001
4002
4003Q0628: I have the default retry rule, which I thought meant that Exim should
4004 keep trying for four days, but it seems to be bouncing some messages
4005 immediately.
4006
4007A0628: See Q0615 and Q0620.
4008
4009
4010Q0629: I'm having trouble with quotas and Courier, because Exim is not handling
4011 maildirsize files.
4012
4013A0629: You will do better to move the quota handling to Courier. Use \^maildrop^\
4014 as your MDA rather than direct Exim delivery. This also has the
4015 advantage that if you give web access to the mail spool (over \^sqwebmail^\)
4016 you can then use the web front end to edit \^maildrop^\ filter files.
4017
4018
4019Q0630: How can I configure Exim to deliver to a Cyrus message store?
4020
4021A0630: (1) The reference manual contains an example that uses pipe delivery.
4022
4023 (2) Here is a transport that uses LMTP delivery, assuming that
4024 \$local_part$\ contains the username:
4025
4026==> cyrus_inbox:
4027 driver =lmtp
4028 user = cyrus
4029 socket = /var/cyrus/socket/lmtp
4030
4031 (3) This is a transport that delivers direct to a non-inbox mailbox:
4032
4033==> cyrus_mailbox:
4034 driver = pipe
4035 user = $local_part
4036 message_prefix =
4037 message_suffix =
4038 log_fail_output
4039 return_output
4040 command = "/usr/cyrus/bin/deliver -a $local_part \
4041 -m <mailbox-name> $local_part"
4042
4043 This delivers to the Cyrus mailbox \"user.$local_part.<mailbox-name>"\.
4044 Using \"user = $local_part"\ and \"-a $local_part"\ makes it work
4045 without needing an explicit `p' ACL set for `anyone' on the mailbox.
4046
4047
4048Q0631: I would like to choose a retry rule based on on the sender rather than
4049 the recipient address. Is this possible?
4050
4051A0631: Yes. The address part of a retry rule is matched as a single-item
4052 address list. Such lists are always expanded, so you can use something
4053 like this:
4054
4055==> "${if eq{$sender_address}{xxx}{*@*}{no@no}}" quota F,1h,10m; ...
4056
4057 If the sender address is ``xxx'', the pattern expands to ``*@*'', which
4058 matches all recipient addresses; if you want to, you can make this a
4059 more restrictive pattern. If the sender address is not ``xxx'', the
4060 pattern expands to ``no@no'', which is assumed to be a recipient address
4061 that can never match, so the retry rule is skipped.
4062
4063
4064Q0632: What does the error \*User 1 set for local_mbx_delivery transport is on
4065 the never_users list*\ mean?
4066
4067A0632: You have configured the \%local_mbx_delivery%\ to run as the user whose
4068 id (uid) is 1. However, this user is on the list defined by the
4069 \never_users\ runtime option, or the \\FIXED_NEVER_USERS\\ compile-time
4070 option. These are ``safety catch'' lists; Exim refuses to deliver to any
4071 user that is on them. The most common use of \never_users\ is to avoid
4072 doing any deliveries as \/root/\, but it can contain other uids.
4073
4074
4075Q0633: Why is \$domain$\ not set in the \%smtp%\ transport?
4076
4077A0633: The \%smtp%\ transport can handle several recipient addresses at once.
4078 This happens by default if the host lists for the addresses are
4079 identical. A single copy of the message is sent, using multiple \\RCPT\\
4080 commands to transmit multiple envelope recipients. The \$domain$\
4081 variable is set in the \%smtp%\ transport only if all the recipient
4082 addresses have the same domain. You must have a case where several
4083 addresses with different domains resolve to the same set of hosts.
4084
4085 If you want to restrict the transport so that it handles only a single
4086 domain at once (but still possibly with more than one recipient), set
4087
4088==> multi_domain = false
4089
4090 If you want to restrict the transport so that it handles only a single
4091 address at once, set
4092
4093==> max_rcpt = 1
4094
4095
4096Q0634: How can I stop a local transport from trying to access the user's home
4097 directory, even when the delivery is to a file that is elsewhere?
4098
4099A0634: See answer (2) for Q0423.
4100
4101
4102Q0635: The log message \*error ignored*\ appears after some delivery failures.
4103 What does it mean?
4104
4105A0635: This message is written when Exim fails to deliver a bounce message whose
4106 age is greater than \ignore_bounce_errors_after\. It indicates that the
4107 failing bounce message has been discarded.
4108
4109 The same message is written after failed deliveries when a filter file
4110 uses the \noerror\ feature when setting up a delivery, or if a router
4111 has the setting
4112
4113==> errors_to = <>
4114
4115 Both of these specify that delivery failures are to be discarded.
4116
4117
4118
41197. POLICY CONTROLS
4120
4121Q0701: How do I block unwanted messages from outside my host?
4122
4123A0701: Exim uses Access Control Lists (ACLs) for controlling incoming mail from
4124 other hosts. A whole chapter in the reference manual is devoted to
4125 describing how they work. A wide variety of conditions can be imposed on
4126 incoming messages.
4127
4128 The default Exim run time configuration contains an example of an ACL
4129 which blocks all relaying, and messages whose senders cannot be
4130 verified. This example is heavily commented and worth studying.
4131
4132
4133Q0702: I don't want to block spam entirely; how can I inspect each message
4134 before deciding whether or not to deliver it?
4135
4136A0702: Wherever possible, inspection and rejection is best done automatically
4137 in an ACL, that is, before the message is accepted. If you want to
4138 verify manually each message that is classified as spam by an automatic
4139 check, you can arrange for a system filter to freeze such messages after
4140 they have been accepted.
4141
4142 If, after inspection, you decide not to deliver the message, it is
4143 safest to discard it, using the \-Mrm-\ option. Use of the \-Mg-\ option
4144 to force a bounce carries the risk of ``collateral spam'' if the sender
4145 address is faked.
4146
4147
4148Q0703: How can I test that my spam blocks are working?
4149
4150A0703: The \-bh-\ option allows you to run a testing SMTP session as if from a
4151 given IP address. For example,
4152
4153==> exim -bh 192.168.178.39
4154
4155 In addition to the normal SMTP replies, it outputs commentary about
4156 which tests have succeeded or failed. If you are not interested in the
4157 details, but just want to know if a particular sender at a particular IP
4158 address is able to mail to a particular recipient, you can use the
4159 \exim_checkaccess\ utility, which provides a ``packaged'' version of
4160 \-bh-\. You call it like this:
4161
4162==> exim_checkaccess 192.168.53.23 recip@my.domain -f sender@some.domain
4163
4164 If you don't give a sender, \"<>"\ is used (that it, it acts like a
4165 bounce message).
4166
4167
4168Q0704: How can I test that Exim is correctly configured to use the Realtime
4169 Blackhole List (RBL)?
4170
4171A0704: The \-bh-\ option allows you to run a testing SMTP session as if from a
4172 given address. The \^exim_checkaccess^\ utility provides a more packaged
4173 version of this facility. You need to know a blocked IP address with
4174 which to test. Such a testing address is kindly provided by Russell
4175 Nelson:
4176
4177==> linux.crynwr.com [192.203.178.39]
4178
4179 You can also send mail to \(nelson@linux.crynwr.com)\ from the server
4180 whose RBL block you are testing. The robot that receives that email
4181 will attempt to send a piece of test email in reply. If your RBL block
4182 didn't work, you get a message to that effect. Regardless of whether the
4183 RBL block succeeds or not, it emails you the results of the SMTP
4184 conversation from a host that is not on the RBL, so you can see how your
4185 server looks from the view of someone on the RBL.
4186
4187
4188Q0705: How can I use tcpwrappers in conjunction with Exim?
4189
4190A0705: Exim's own control facilities can do all that tcpwrappers can do.
4191 However, if you are already using tcpwrappers for other things it might
4192 be convenient to include Exim controls in the same place.
4193
4194 First of all, ensure that Exim is built to call the tcpwrappers library,
4195 by including \\USE_TCPWRAPPERS=yes\\ in \(Local/Makefile)\. You also need to
4196 ensure that the header file \(tcpd.h)\ is available at compile time, and the
4197 \(libwrap.a)\ library is available at link time, typically by including it in
4198 \\EXTRALIBS\\. You may need to copy these two files from the tcpwrappers
4199 build directory to, for example, \(/usr/local/include)\ and \(/usr/local/lib)\,
4200 respectively. Then you could reference them by
4201
4202==> CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include
4203 EXTRALIBS=-L/usr/local/lib -lwrap
4204
4205 in \(Local/Makefile)\. There are two ways to make use of the functionality,
4206 depending on how you have tcpwrappers set up. If you have it set up to
4207 use only one file, you ought to have something like:
4208
4209==> /etc/hosts.allow:
4210
4211==> exim : <client_list> : <allow_or_deny>
4212
4213 For example:
4214
4215==> exim : LOCAL 192.168.0. .friendly.domain special.host : ALLOW
4216 exim : ALL : DENY
4217
4218 This allows connections from local hosts (chiefly //localhost//), from
4219 the subnet 192.168.0.0/24, from all hosts in \(*.friendly.domain)\, and
4220 from a specific host called \(special.host)\. All other connections are
4221 denied. If you have tcpwrappers set up to use two files, use the
4222 following:
4223
4224==> /etc/hosts.allow:
4225
4226==> exim : <client_list>
4227
4228==> /etc/hosts.deny:
4229
4230==> exim : <client_list>
4231
4232 Read the \^hosts_access^\ man page for more ways of specifying clients,
4233 including ports, etc., and on logging connections.
4234
4235
4236Q0706: How can I get POP-auth-before-relay (aka POP-before-SMTP) support in
4237 Exim?
4238
4239A0706: Exim 4 supports the ``whoson'' (\?http://whoson.sourceforge.net?\)
4240 facility for doing this. If you set this up, you can do the check in an
4241 Exim ACL by a statement like this:
4242
4243==> require condition = \
4244 ${lookup whoson {$sender_host_address}{yes}{no}}
4245
4246 Otherwise you need to arrange for a list of permitted IP addresses to be
4247 maintained in a file or database, and use this in a \hosts\ condition in
4248 an ACL statement. An Exim user has published this recipe:
4249
4250 \#\#\#\#\?http://www.zeiss.cx/memo/computer/linux/email/exim-s-a-p.html?\
4251
4252 Another Exim user submitted the following idea:
4253
4254 Use a script to grab authenticated IP addresses from the log files of
4255 the POP3 and IMAP4 daemons. These are used to create files in the
4256 directory tree \(/var/db/popb4smtp)\. The existence of a file represents a
4257 valid ``popped recently token'' for the IP address used as the filename.
4258
4259 Another script periodically removes stale files from the tree (after two
4260 hours). There's a small race condition here; it's possible for a file
4261 to be deleted just after it has been updated by the script that watches
4262 the logs. For low-volume servers, the odds of hitting this window are
4263 low.
4264
4265 A POPB4SMTP_CLIENT macro in the Exim configure file provides a reusable
4266 ``has this sender popped recently?'' query:
4267
4268==> POPB4SMTP_SUBDIR = /var/db/popb4smtp/${substr_-1_1:$sender_host_address}
4269 POPB4SMTP_CLIENT = ${if exists {POPB4SMTP_SUBDIR/$sender_host_address} \
4270 {$sender_host_address} {0} }
4271
4272 Now you can use it just about anywhere, including in your ACLs. Simple
4273 examples include:
4274
4275==> hostlist relay_hosts = 127.0.0.1/32 : ... : POPB4SMTP_CLIENT
4276 host_lookup = !127.0.0.1/32 : ... : !POPB4SMTP_CLIENT
4277 rfc1413_hosts = !127.0.0.1/32 : ... : !POPB4SMTP_CLIENT
4278
4279 The two scripts (and a FreeBSD startup script for them) are available
4280 for download at:
4281
4282 \#\#\#\#\?http://people.FreeBSD.org/~sheldonh/popb4smtp-nodb.tar.gz?\
4283
4284
4285Q0707: I have one or two cases where my host correctly rejects messages, but
4286 the remote host is quite persistent, and keeps trying over and over.
4287
4288A0707: It is an unfortunate fact that a number of SMTP clients, in violation of
4289 the SMTP RFC, do not treat a permanent error code that is given after
4290 the DATA portion of the transaction as a permanent error. Consequently
4291 they keep resending the message, and the worst offenders do so at very
4292 short intervals.
4293
4294 The only way to stop such behaviour is to blacklist the IP address, or
4295 the envelope sender, or both, in such a way that future messages get
4296 rejected at RCPT time instead of at DATA time. You could also complain
4297 to the remote host's administrators.
4298
4299
4300Q0708: How can I run customized verification checks on incoming addresses?
4301
4302A0708: There are a number of possibilities:
4303
4304 (1) If you can implement your checks in Perl, you can use Exim's
4305 facility for running an embedded Perl interpreter. For example, if you
4306 want to run special checks on local addresses, you could use ACL
4307 an statement like this:
4308
4309==> require domains = my.local.domain
4310 condition = ${perl{verify}{$local_part}}
4311
4312 The result of the Perl function should be ``yes'' or ``no''.
4313
4314 (2) You could also run an external program in a similar way, by a
4315 statement such as:
4316
4317==> require domains = my.local.domain
4318 condition = ${run{/my/verifier $local_part}}
4319
4320 This requires the use of another process, so could prove more expensive
4321 than Perl.
4322
4323 (3) If you are prepared to write C code, read the chapter in the manual
4324 entitled \*Adding a local scan function to Exim*\.
4325
4326
4327Q0709: Does Exim apply RBL checks to error messages, those with an envelope
4328 sender of \"<>"\ ?
4329
4330A0709: This depends on the ACL configuration. You can test for bounce messages
4331 (by looking for an empty sender address) and thereby exclude them from
4332 RBL checking if you want. This ACL statement does that:
4333
4334==> deny senders = ! :
4335 dnslist = blackholes.mail-abuse.org
4336
4337 However, some spam does come with an empty sender address, so this may
4338 not be a good idea.
4339
4340
4341Q0710: I want to reject certain sender-recipient combinations, with a specific
4342 message for each such combination.
4343
4344A0710: Set up a file (or database) containing the messages, keyed by the
4345 combination, for example:
4346
4347==> sender1@sdomain1=>recipient1@rdomain1: blocked because...
4348 sender2@sdomain2=>recipient2@rdomain2: blocked because...
4349
4350 If you have lots of recipients for the same sender, it might be easier
4351 to generate this file from more convenient data. In your ACL that is run
4352 for each RCPT command, you can then put:
4353
4354==> deny message = ${lookup{$sender_address=>$local_part@$domain}\
4355 lsearch{/that/file}}
4356 condition = ${lookup{$sender_address=>$local_part@$domain}\
4357 lsearch{/that/file}}{yes}{no}}
4358
4359 The condition is tested first. If the lookup succeeds, the condition
4360 succeeds so access is denied. The message is then expanded, but the
4361 lookup won't be repeated, because Exim will have cached the previous
4362 result.
4363
4364 This approach blocks only incoming SMTP messages. If you need to do
4365 similar blocks for messages that do not arrive over SMTP, you have to
4366 set up a suitable \%redirect%\ router with a \:fail:\ setting.
4367
4368
4369Q0711: Will Exim allow me to create a file of regexs and match incoming
4370 external email to the list - and if a match is found file the offending
4371 message into a special location? Also is it possible to make Exim only
4372 filter parts of an incoming email - e.g. ignore large MIME attachments
4373 for example and only process text/plain?
4374
4375A0711: You can do some of this in a system filter. For example:
4376
4377==> if $message_body matches <...some complicated regex...> or
4378 $message_body matches <...some other regex...> or
4379 $header_from: matches <...regex...> or
4380 etc.
4381 then
4382 save /some/special/file
4383 endif
4384
4385 or instead of \"save"\ you could have \"deliver"\ (to some address) or
4386 \"pipe"\ (to some script).
4387
4388 There isn't any mechanism for ignoring attachments, but \$message_body$\
4389 only looks at the first n bytes of the body, where n defaults to 500 but
4390 can be changed.
4391
4392 A more expensive alternative would be to run a Perl subroutine using the
4393 embedded Perl mechanism. If you passed over the message id, the Perl
4394 code could read the message files on the spool and implement any
4395 algorithm it liked for deciding what should be done.
4396
4397
4398Q0712: I've hacked sendmail to make an ioctl call at the time of the SMTP RCPT
4399 command, to check if a user has exceeded their email quota. If they have
4400 I issue a temporary failure and a message - can I do this with Exim?
4401
4402A0712: If you can make this happen in Perl you can use the embedded Perl
4403 facility, and use it from a \condition\ condition in an ACL statement.
4404 You can also use the expansion facility to run an external program, but
4405 this uses more resources because it uses another process.
4406
4407
4408Q0713: I'd like to pass all messages through a virus-scanning system before
4409 delivery. Can Exim do this?
4410
4411A0713: One way of achieving this is to deliver all messages via a pipe to a
4412 checking program that resubmits them for delivery in some private way
4413 that can be checked (e.g. on a specific SMTP port, or IP address). One
4414 possibility is to use the `received protocol` field that can be set
4415 for locally submitted mail via the \-oMr-\ command line option. This
4416 router sends all messages that are not from the local host and whose
4417 received protocol is not \"scanned-ok"\ to the \%virus_scan%\ transport:
4418
4419==> vircheck:
4420 driver = accept
4421 transport = virus_scan
4422 condition = ${if or {{eq {$received_protocol}{scanned-ok}} \
4423 {eq {$sender_host_address}{127.0.0.1}}}\
4424 {0}{1}}
4425
4426 One problem is that this approach scans the message for each recipient,
4427 not just once per message.
4428
4429 The virus_scan transport should be set up to pipe the message to a
4430 suitable checking program or script which runs as a trusted user. This
4431 can then re-submit the message to Exim, using \-oMr-\ to set the received
4432 protocol to \"scanned-ok"\, and the \-f-\ option to set the correct envelope
4433 sender address. \**Warning:**\ If you forget to make the resubmitting process
4434 run as a trusted user, the received protocol does not get set, and you
4435 are likely to generate a loop.
4436
4437
4438Q0714: Is there a way to configure Exim to reject mail to a certain local host?
4439
4440A0714: No, only to certain domains. To reject at SMTP time, you can put a line
4441 like this in your ACL:
4442
4443==> deny message = this domain is deliberately rejected
4444 domains = a.certain.domain
4445
4446 To fail addresses in messages that do not arrive over SMTP, you can set
4447 up a router like this:
4448
4449==> reject_a_certain_domain:
4450 driver = redirect
4451 domains = a.certain.domain
4452 allow_fail
4453 data = :fail: this domain is deliberately rejected
4454
4455
4456Q0715: How can I get Exim to remove attachments from messages?
4457
4458A0715: Exim does not contain facilities for modifying messages. You must use
4459 an external program if you want to do this. You can route messages that
4460 have a ::Content-type:: header line via a pipe to a command that does
4461 the job and then re-submits the message to Exim. Alternatively, you
4462 could use a transport filter to do this job.
4463
4464
4465Q0716: How can I arrange for each user to have a file listing the only sender
4466 addresses from which she will accept mail? I want to do this so my
4467 family members don't get any spam (or other inappropriate mail).
4468
4469A0716: Let's assume each user has a file called \(.acceptlist)\ in the home
4470 directory. You can put in your ACL a line like this:
4471
4472==> require senders = /home/$local_part/.acceptlist
4473
4474 This will reject RCPT commands when the sender is not in the accept
4475 list for the recipient. (Replace \(/home/$local_part)\ with whatever
4476 the correct path to your user's home directories is.)
4477
4478 One problem with this is that it will block bounce messages, which have
4479 empty senders. You can get round this, by changing the line to this:
4480
4481==> require senders = : /home/$local_part/.acceptlist
4482
4483 However, this will, of course, let in spam that has a null sender.
4484
4485
4486Q0717: When using Nessus on a system that runs Exim, a number of security
4487 issues are raised. Nessus complains that Exim answers to EXPN and/or
4488 VRFY; sometimes it even complains that Exim allows relaying.
4489
4490A0717: Exim supports EXPN and VRFY only if you permit it to do so in the ACLs
4491 defined by \acl_smtp_expn\ and \acl_smtp_vrfy\, respectively. Otherwise,
4492 its responses are
4493
4494==> 550 Administrative prohibition
4495 252 Administrative prohibition
4496
4497 Maybe the use of 252 is the ``problem''. It is recommended that this be
4498 done (by those that discuss these things) because there are stupid
4499 clients that attempt VRFY before sending a message.
4500
4501
4502Q0718: Could anyone points me to right rules to prevent sending/receiving
4503 messages to/for domains which have one MX to localhost or only have
4504 address 127.0.0.1 ?
4505
4506A0718: See Q0319.
4507
4508
4509Q0719: I would like to have a per-user limit for the maximum size of messages
4510 that can be sent.
4511
4512A0719: The simplest way to do this is to put something in a system filter along
4513 these lines:
4514
4515==> if $message_size is above
4516 "${lookup{$sender_address}lsearch{/some/file}{$value}{10M}}"
4517 then
4518 fail "Message is larger than $sender_address is allowed to send"
4519 endif
4520
4521 In practice, an additional check that the message has arrived from your
4522 local host or local network is probably wise because sender addresses
4523 are easily forged.
4524
4525
4526Q0720: I set \"accept hosts=192.168.122.96/32"\ in order to accept mail for
4527 relaying from my local LAN, but it doesn't work. What's wrong?
4528
4529A0720: 192.168.122.96/32 is not a network, it is a single host. Exim uses CIDR
4530 notation for specifying networks, where the number after the slash is
4531 the number of bits in the IP address that must match. Your setting says
4532 ``32 bits must match''. If you really mean to specify ``the next 32
4533 IP addresses'', you need 192.168.122.96/27.
4534
4535
4536Q0721: I have POP-before-SMTP set up on my Exim server, but some clients use
4537 Outlook Express, which sends queued messages before checking the
4538 mailbox, so it doesn't work.
4539
4540A0721: Implement SMTP authentication.
4541
4542
4543Q0722: I installed Amavis and it is working, but bounces are simply vanishing.
4544
4545A0722: Check that you haven't inadvertently set up the transport like this:
4546
4547==> amavis:
4548 driver = pipe
4549 command = "/usr/sbin/amavis -f ${sender_address} -d ${pipe_addresses}"
4550
4551 The last line should be:
4552
4553==> command = /usr/sbin/amavis -f <$sender_address> -d $pipe_addresses
4554
4555 The important thing is the <> around the sender address; removal of
4556 the unnecessary "" and {} is just tidying. See the amavis FAQ at
4557 \?http://www.amavis.org/amavis-faq.php3?\.
4558
4559
4560Q0723: I can't get Pine to work with PLAIN authentication; Exim keeps
4561 responding "535 Incorrect authentication data".
4562
4563A0723: You need to have this setting in your PLAIN authenticator:
4564
4565==> server_prompts = :
4566
4567 This is missing in the examples in all but the most recent Exim
4568 documentation, because it was not realized that PLAIN authentication
4569 could be requested by a client without sending the data with the
4570 request. If the data is not sent, an empty prompt is expected.
4571
4572
4573Q0724: I have used \":fail:"\ in some aliases; when one of these addresses is
4574 refused, I see the message on the log, but the response to the remote
4575 user is ``unknown user'' instead of the message from the alias file.
4576 How can I change this?
4577
4578A0724: Have you got a \message\ qualifier in the relevant ACL? Exim uses the
4579 message line in the ACL in preference to the message returned by the
4580 router. This is so you can restrict the amount of information that
4581 ``escapes'' from your site via SMTP if you want to. Remove the \message\
4582 line in the ACL entry that has \"verify = recipient"\ and your message
4583 will get through.
4584
4585 Alternatively, if you are running Exim 4.10 or later, you can use the
4586 \$acl_verify_message$\ variable in your message to include the message
4587 from the router. See also Q0725.
4588
4589
4590Q0725: I've set up some specific rejection messages for certain recipients, but
4591 when I test them, the SMTP message is always \*550 5.1.1
4592 <user@mydomain.com>... User unknown*\.
4593
4594A0725: That is not an Exim message (the ``5.1.1'' is a clue; Exim doesn't use
4595 those extended codes). You are probably being defeated by software that
4596 sees the 550 error code, and insists on putting in its own text. There
4597 is stupid software that does this. You can test Exim by using \-bh-\ or
4598 making a telnet call to the SMTP port. That way, there's no other
4599 software intervening.
4600
4601
4602Q0726: My SMTP authentication can be bypassed by sending an unknown user name
4603 and an empty password. What is wrong with this condition in a PLAIN
4604 authenticator?
4605
4606==> server_condition = ${if eq{$2} {${lookup mysql{SELECT password FROM \
4607 accounts WHERE username='${local_part:$1}'}}}{1}{0}}
4608
4609A0726: Your lookup item returns an empty string when the user does not exist.
4610 You should instead arrange for the lookup to fail:
4611
4612==> server_condition = ${if eq{$2} {${lookup mysql{SELECT password FROM \
4613 accounts WHERE username='${local_part:$1}'}{$value}fail}}{1}{0}}
4614
4615
4616Q0727: When a message has many recipients, how can I stop SpamAssassin from
4617 being called for each of them? I'm running it from a pipe transport.
4618
4619A0727: In the transport configuration, set \batch_max\ to a value greater than
4620 one.
4621
4622
4623Q0728: How do I use Exiscan, SA-Exim, SpamAssassin, Clam Antivirus, Sophos
4624 SAVI, or sophie with Exim?
4625
4626A0728: There's a mini-HOWTO about these available via
4627 \?http://www.timj.co.uk/linux/exim.php?\.
4628 See also sample configuration C047.
4629
4630
4631Q0729: How can I screen out addresses that are neither valid usernames or
4632 distribution lists on mail being forwarded to an internal Win2K server?
4633
4634A0729: A user suggested using a router like this to do the recipient
4635 verification:
4636
4637==> verify_user_router:
4638 driver = accept
4639 domains = win2kdomain.com
4640 local_parts=\
4641 ldap;user="cn=ldap-guest,cn=Users,dc=win2kdomain,dc=com"\
4642 pass=guest \
4643 ldap:://win2kpdc/dc=win2kdomain,dc=com?mailNickname?\
4644 sub?(&(mailNickname=$local_part)\
4645 (showInAddressBook=*)(sAMAccountName=*))
4646 verify_only
4647
4648 Set up ldap-guest as a normal domain user on the Win2K PDC.
4649
4650 Also, you need to set \no_verify\ on all the other routers that handle
4651 that domain.
4652
4653
4654Q0730: How can I use the same passwords for SMTP authentication as I use for
4655 Courier IMAP access to my server?
4656
4657A0730: You can access the Courier authdaemon from an Exim authenticator. You
4658 must arrange for the Exim user (often \/exim/\ but sometimes \/mail/\)
4659 to be able to access \(/var/run/courier/authdaemon/socket)\. The
4660 configuration is something of a hack, but it is reported to work. Here
4661 is a LOGIN authenticator:
4662
4663==> login:
4664 driver = plaintext
4665 public_name = LOGIN
4666 server_prompts = Username:: : Password::
4667 server_condition = \
4668 ${if eq {${readsocket{/var/run/courier/authdaemon/socket}\
4669 {AUTH 76\n${length_76:exim\nlogin\n$1\n$2\
4670 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\
4671 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\
4672 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n}}}}{FAIL\n} {no}{yes}}
4673 server_set_id = $1
4674
4675 Here is a PLAIN authenticator:
4676
4677==> plain:
4678 driver = plaintext
4679 public_name = PLAIN
4680 server_prompts = :
4681 server_condition = \
4682 ${if eq {${readsocket{/var/run/courier/authdaemon/socket}\
4683 {AUTH 76\n${length_76:exim\nlogin\n$2\n$3\
4684 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\
4685 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\
4686 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n}}}}{FAIL\n} {no}{yes}}
4687 server_set_id = $2
4688
4689
4690Q0731: Is there any defence I can use against spam sent through an open proxy?
4691
4692A0731: The \*ident*\ feature can be used in some cases. See the discussion in
4693 Q5023.
4694
4695
4696Q0732: I would like to either warn or deny when a host uses an underscore in
4697 the EHLO command.
4698
4699A0732: First, set
4700
4701==> helo_allow_chars = _
4702
4703 This tells Exim not to reject the EHLO or HELO command immediately. Once
4704 you have done that, you can test for the underscore in an ACL. For
4705 example, to log a warning for hosts in your LAN, and reject for other
4706 hosts, you could do something like this:
4707
4708==> deny message = Underscores are not valid in host names
4709 hosts = ! +lan_hosts
4710 condition = ${if match{$sender_helo_name}{_}{yes}{no}}
4711
4712==> warn log_message = Accepted underscore from [$sender_host_address]
4713 condition = ${if match{$sender_helo_name}{_}{yes}{no}}
4714
4715
4716Q0733: Is there any way to tell Exim not to lookup the IP address against any
4717 DNS black list if the connection is over IPv6?
4718
4719A0733: Use this condition in your ACL:
4720
4721==> condition = ${if match{${mask:$sender_host_address/0}}\
4722 {${mask:::0/0}}{no}{yes}}
4723
4724 From Exim 4.23 onwards, this can be simplified to
4725
4726==> condition = ${if isip6{$sender_host_address}{no}{yes}}
4727
4728
4729Q0734: How do MailScanner and Exiscan compare? What are the pros and cons?
4730
4731A0734: The big advantage of Exiscan is that it can reject messages at SMTP time
4732 before you have accepted responsibility for them, which means you don't
4733 have to deal with bouncing messages and thereby becoming a collateral
4734 spammer.
4735
4736 The big advantage of MailScanner is that it gives you much greater
4737 control over the load on your machines. You configure it according to
4738 the maximum processing capacity of your computer and it will not exceed
4739 that; in fact because it deals with messages in batches the cost of
4740 processing a message actually goes down slightly as the load increases,
4741 because the per-batch costs are shared by more messages.
4742
4743 With Exiscan, you have to rely on Exim's load protection mechanisms,
4744 which basically means that you have to stop accepting messages when your
4745 machine gets too loaded. This is bad if the machine happens to be an
4746 SMTP smarthost. You therefore need more overcapacity with Exiscan than
4747 with MailScanner.
4748
4749
4750Q0735: How can I block non-FQDNs in HELO/EHLOs?
4751
4752A0735: Many workstation clients send single-component names; take care that you
4753 do not block legitimate mail. With that proviso, you can do it using
4754 something like this in an ACL:
4755
4756==> drop message = HELO doesn't look like a hostname
4757 log_message = Not a hostname
4758 condition = ${if match{$sender_helo_name} \
4759 {\N^[^.].*\.[^.]+$\N}{no}{yes}}
4760
4761 This means: Drop the HELO unless it contains a dot somewhere in the HELO
4762 string, but the string may not begin or end with a dot. Thus, the
4763 imposed minimum length is 3 characters.
4764
4765 The data for HELO/EHLO doesn't have to be a host name; it may
4766 legitimately be an IP address literal instead. The above test succeeds
4767 with an IPv4 address literal, but if you want also to accept IPv6
4768 address literals, you will have to modify the regular expression.
4769
4770
4771Q0736: Is it possible to tell exim to drop the connection after a server
4772 attempts to send a message to a number of unknown users?
4773
4774A0736: Yes. Use \$rcpt_fail_count$\ and the \^drop^\ ACL command, as in this
4775 example:
4776
4777==> drop message = Too many unknown users
4778 condition = ${if >{$rcpt_fail_count}{15}{yes}{no}}
4779
4780
4781Q0737: Is there some way to tell Exim not to consider 127.0.0.1 as a valid MX?
4782
4783A0737: See Q0319.
4784
4785
4786Q0738: How can I configure Exim to delay the SMTP connection if more than 10
4787 invalid recipients are received in one message?
4788
4789A0738: Put something like this in your RCPT ACL:
4790
4791==> deny message = Max $rcpt_fail_count failed recipients allowed
4792 condition = ${if >{$rcpt_fail_count}{10} {1}}
4793 ! verify = recipient
4794 delay = ${eval: $rcpt_fail_count * 10}s
4795 log_message = $rcpt_fail_count failed recipient attempts
4796
4797 This example increases the delay for each failed recipient.
4798
4799
4800Q0739: Does Exim support SPF?
4801
4802A0739: An Exim ACL can be used. See \?http://spf.pobox.com/downloads.html?\.
4803
4804
4805
48068. REWRITING ADDRESSES
4807
4808Q0801: How can I get Exim to strip the hostname from the sender's address?
4809
4810A0801: If you set up a rewriting rule in the following form:
4811
4812==> *@*.your.domain $1@your.domain
4813
4814 then Exim will rewrite all addresses in the envelope and the headers,
4815 removing anything between \"@"\ and \"your.domain"\. This applies to all
4816 messages that Exim processes. If you want to rewrite sender addresses
4817 only, the the rule should be
4818
4819==> *@*.your.domain $1@your.domain Ffrs
4820
4821 This applies the rule only to the envelope sender address and to the
4822 ::From::, ::Reply-to::, and ::Sender:: headers.
4823
4824
4825Q0802: I have Exim configured to remove the hostname portion of the domain on
4826 outgoing mail, and yet the hostname is present when the mail gets
4827 delivered.
4828
4829A0802: Check the DNS record for your domain. If the MX record points to a CNAME
4830 record instead of to an A record, some MTAs (not Exim) are liable to
4831 rewrite addresses, changing your domain name to its ``canonical'' form,
4832 as obtained from the CNAME record.
4833
4834
4835Q0803: I want to rewrite local addresses in mail that goes to the outside
4836 world, but not for messages that remain within the local intranet.
4837
4838A0803: You can use the \headers_rewrite\ option on a transport to do this.
4839 The rewriting will then apply to just those copies of a message that
4840 pass through the transport. The \return_path\ option can similarly be
4841 used to rewrite the sender address. There is no way of rewriting
4842 recipient addresses at transport time. However, as these are by
4843 definition remote addresses, you probably don't want to rewrite them.
4844
4845 You have to set up the configuration so that it uses different SMTP
4846 transports for internal and external mail. If you are using a single
4847 router in both cases, you could configure it like this:
4848
4849==> dnslookup:
4850 driver = dnslookup
4851 transport = ${if match{$domain}{\N\.my\.domain$\N}{int_smtp}{ext_smtp}}
4852
4853 This example uses the \%int_smtp%\ transport for domains ending in
4854 \(.my.domain)\, and \%ext_smtp%\ for everything else. The \%ext_smtp%\ transport
4855 could be something like this:
4856
4857==> ext_smtp:
4858 driver = smtp
4859 headers_rewrite = *@*.my.domain \
4860 ${lookup{$1}cdb{/etc/$2/mail.handles.cdb}{$value}fail}
4861 return_path = \
4862 ${if match{$return_path}{\N^([^@]+)@(.*)\.my\.domain$\N}\
4863 {\
4864 ${lookup{$1}cdb{/etc/$2/mail.handles.cdb}{$value}fail}\
4865 }\
4866 fail}
4867
4868 This example uses a separate file of local-to-external address
4869 translations for each domain. This is not the only possibility, of
4870 course. The \headers_rewrite\ and \return_path\ options apply the same
4871 rewriting to the header lines and the envelope sender address,
4872 respectively.
4873
4874
4875Q0804: I'm using this rewriting rule to change login names into ``friendly''
4876 names, but if mail comes in for an upper case login name, it doesn't
4877 get rewritten.
4878
4879==> *@my.domain ${lookup{$1}dbm{/usr/lib/exim/longforms}\
4880 {$value}fail}@my.domain bcfrtFT
4881
4882 The longforms database has entries of the form:
4883
4884==> ano23: A.N.Other
4885
4886A0804: Replace \"$1"\ in your rule by \"${lc:$1}"\ to force the local part to lower
4887 case before it is used as a lookup key.
4888
4889
4890Q0805: Is it possible to completely fail a message if the rewrite rules fail?
4891
4892A0805: It depends on what you mean by ``fail a message'' and what addresses you
4893 are rewriting. If you are rewriting recipient addresses for your local
4894 domain, you can do:
4895
4896==> *@dom.ain ${lookup{$1}dbm{/wher/ever}{$value}{failaddr}} Ehq
4897
4898 and in your alias file put something like
4899
4900==> failaddr: :fail: Rewriting failed
4901
4902 This fails a single recipient - others are processed independently.
4903
4904
4905Q0806: I'm using \$domain$\ as the key for a lookup in a rewriting rule, but its
4906 contents are not being lowercased. Aren't domains supposed to be handled
4907 caselessly?
4908
4909A0806: The value of \$domain$\ is the actual domain that appears in the address.
4910 It could of course be lower cased, but I know that would cause some
4911 unhappiness, because some people have mixed-case domain names which look
4912 silly if the case is changed. Thus, one wants to preserve the case in
4913 rewrites such as
4914
4915==> *@*.TheRap.com something@$domain
4916
4917 because ``therap'' doesn't look like two words. I know it seems trivial,
4918 but it is important to some people - especially if by some unfortunate
4919 accident the lowercased word is something indecent.
4920
4921 You can trivally force lower casing by means of the \"${lc:"\ operator.
4922 Instead of \"$domain"\ write \"${lc:$domain}"\.
4923
4924
4925Q0807: I want to rewrite local sender addresses depending on the domain of the
4926 recipient.
4927
4928A0807: In general, this is not possible, because a message may have more than
4929 one recipient and Exim keeps just a single copy of each message. It may
4930 also deliver one copy of a message with several recipient addresses.
4931 You can do an incomplete job by using a regular expression match in a
4932 rewrite rule to test, for example, the contents of the ::To:: header. This
4933 would work except in cases of multiple recipients.
4934
4935
4936
49379. HEADERS
4938
4939Q0901: I would like add some custom headers to selected outgoing mail based on
4940 a specific domain and the subject line.
4941
4942A0901: To the remote_smtp transport, add something like
4943
4944==> headers_add = ${if and{\
4945 {eq{$domain}{spec.dom}}\
4946 {matches{$h_subject:}{whatever}}}\
4947 {Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"} fail }
4948
4949 This example shows a ::Content-Type:: header, but you can have anything you
4950 like, and multiple headers can be inserted by using \"@\n"\ to separate them.
4951
4952
4953Q0902: Is it possible to have Exim add a header to only certain local parts of
4954 outgoing mail?
4955
4956A0902: Only if you arrange for each such local part to receive its own private
4957 copy of the mail. See \max_rcpt\ in the SMTP transport. If you set this
4958 to 1, you could use conditions in an expansion string to add or not add
4959 a header.
4960
4961
4962Q0903: How can I remove some part of the ::Received:: header?
4963
4964A0903: Set \received_header_text\.
4965
4966
4967Q0904: How I can insert the PGP header line using Exim filters?
4968
4969A0904: You can't insert headers in a user filter. A system filter can do so,
4970 but the inserted lines then are included for all recipients.
4971
4972
4973Q0905: I know I can use a system filter to replace certain headers in messages,
4974 but how can I add text to existing headers? I want to add [SPAM] to
4975 the subject line of messages that appear to be spam.
4976
4977A0905: You can only do this in a round about way, using filter commands like
4978 this:
4979
4980==> headers add "New-Subject: SPAM: $h_subject:"
4981 headers remove subject
4982 neaders add "Subject: $h_new-subject:"
4983 headers remove new-subject
4984
4985 This trick works only in system filters, where the commands are obeyed
4986 in order, and affect the master list of headers that apply to the whole
4987 message. You cannot do this with the \headers_add\ and \headers_remove\
4988 options on drivers.
4989
4990
4991
499210. PERFORMANCE
4993
4994Q1001: I'm running a large mail server. Should I set \split_spool_directory\ to
4995 improve performance?
4996
4997A1001: Splitting the spool directory has most benefit if there are times when
4998 there are a large number of messages on the queue. If all mail is
4999 delivered very quickly, and the queue is always less than, say, a few
5000 hundred messages, there isn't any need to do this. With larger queues,
5001 there is a definite performance benefit to splitting the spool. It shows
5002 up earlier on some types of filing system, compared with others.
5003
5004 Exim was not designed for handling large queues. If you are in an
5005 enviroment where lots of messages remain on the queue for long periods
5006 of time, consider implementing a back up host to which you pass these
5007 messages, so that the main host's queue remains short. You can use
5008 \fallback_hosts\ to do this, or a router that is conditional on
5009 \$message_age$\.
5010
5011
5012Q1002: How well does Exim scale?
5013
5014A1002: Although the author did not specifically set out to write a high-
5015 performance MTA, Exim does seem to be fairly efficient. The biggest
5016 server at the University of Cambridge (a large Sun box) goes over
5017 100,000 deliveries per day on busy days (it has over 20,000 users).
5018 There was a report of a mailing list exploder that sometimes handles
5019 over 100,000 deliveries a day on a big Linux box, the record being
5020 177,000 deliveries (791MB in total). Up to 13,000 deliveries an hour
5021 have been reported.
5022
5023 These are quotes from some Exim users:
5024
5025 "... Canada's largest internet provider, uses Exim on all of our mail
5026 machines, and we're absolutely delighted with it. It brought life back
5027 into one of our machines plagued with backlogs and high load averages.
5028 Here's just an example of how much email our largest mail server
5029 (quad SS1000) is seeing ... " [230,911 deliveries in a day: 4,475MB]
5030
5031 "... Exim has to ... do gethostbyname()s and RBL lookups on all of the
5032 incoming mail servers, and he runs from inetd (TCP Wrappers connected).
5033 All the same, it seems to me that he runs as fast as lightning on our
5034 SCO 5.0.4 box (1 Pentium 166) - far faster than MMDF which I (and many
5035 customers) had before."
5036
5037 "On a PII 400 with 128M of RAM running Linux 2.2.5, I have achieved
5038 36656 messages per hour (outgoing unique messages and recipients). For
5039 about a 5 minute period, I was able to achieve an average of 30 messages
5040 per second (that would be 108000 m/hour)! We are using: (options that
5041 make a difference):
5042
5043==> queue_only
5044 split_spool_directory
5045 queue_run_max = 1
5046 remote_max_parallel = 1
5047
5048 We have a cron job hat runs every five minutes that spawns 5 \"exim -q"\ if
5049 there are less that 120 exim processes currently running. We found
5050 that by manually controlling the concurrency of \"exim -q"\ processes
5051 contending for the spool for \%remote_smtp%\ delivery that we gained
5052 considerable performance - 10000 m/hour."
5053
5054
5055Q1003: We have a large password file. Can Exim use alternative lookups during
5056 delivery to speed things up?
5057
5058A1003: If you are using FreeBSD, this problem should not arise, because it
5059 automatically uses an indexed password file. In some other operating
5060 systems you can arrange for this to happen too. On Linux, for example,
5061 all you need to do is
5062
5063==> # cd /var/db
5064 # make
5065
5066 and put \"db"\ before \"files"\ in any \(/etc/nsswitch.conf)\ lines you want to
5067 use db for.
5068
5069 On systems that do not include support for indexed password files, you
5070 can build one yourself, and reference it from the Exim configuration.
5071 For example, for routing to local mailboxes you could use this:
5072
5073==> localuser:
5074 driver = accept
5075 condition = ${lookup{$local_part}cdb{/etc/passwd.cdb}{yes}{no}}
5076 transport = local_delivery
5077 user = ${extract{1}{:}{${lookup{$local_part}cdb{/etc/passwd.cdb}}}
5078
5079 This assumes a cdb version of the password file.
5080
5081
5082Q1004: I just wondered if it might be helpful to put the hints database on a
5083 RAM disk during regular operation. Did anybody try that yet?
5084
5085A1004: A user reported thus: ``I have found that this works great under Solaris.
5086 Make a RAM disk partition and keep everything in the \(db)\ directory on
5087 it. However, when I try the same thing on Linux, I don't see the same
5088 boost. I think that Linux's file buffer cache works about the same.
5089 Plus, this leave more room for processes to run.''
5090
5091 There have been other reports that Linux's delayed buffer write provides
5092 better overall performance in general.
5093
5094 Apparently there is support in the Solaris kernel for a delayed writing,
5095 as in Linux, but Sun's server policy is to have it disabled so that you
5096 don't lose so much if the server crashes. There is a program called
5097 \^fastfs^\ to enable and disable this support. You have to download and
5098 compile it yourself; find it by looking for \"fastfs.c"\ in a search
5099 engine. Solaris performance is reported to be much improved, but you
5100 should take care to understand the potential hazards. In particular,
5101 \^fsck^\ may be unable to ``fix'' disks automatically after a crash.
5102
5103
5104Q1005: A lot of incoming mail is pushing up my system load too much, and there
5105 are many Exim processes. How can I control this?
5106
5107A1005: Have you set any of the Exim configuration options that limit what it
5108 does under high load? For example, queue_only_load, deliver_queue_load_max?
5109 See the list in the section entitled \*Resource control*\ in the manual.
5110
5111 It sounds like a lot of simultaneous incoming mail pushes your system
5112 into uncontrolled overload. The multiple Exim processes are probably
5113 just multiple incoming messages. You can use the \^exiwhat^\ utility to
5114 confirm this.
5115
5116
5117
511811. MAJORDOMO
5119
5120Q1101: How do I set up Majordomo to work with Exim?
5121
5122A1101: Users have found several ways of setting up Exim for use with Majordomo.
5123 One way has been documented at
5124 \?http://www.averillpark.net/exim/majordomo.html?\.
5125
5126 Somewhere in the Majordomo docs or FAQ it mentions using batchmail or
5127 other additional programs to improve the performance of large lists.
5128 They are not needed with Exim, and their use can actually make things
5129 worse. However, it's a good idea to set \remote_max_parallel\ to a value
5130 greater than 1 in the Exim configuration.
5131
5132
5133Q1102: I have set \$mailer$\ in \(majordomo.cf)\, but it still isn't setting the
5134 sender correctly in the messages it sends.
5135
5136A1102: Make sure you have got the quoting correct in the \$mailer$\ setting. For
5137 example,
5138
5139==> $mailer = "$sendmail_command -oi -oee -f$sender\@lists.mydomain.de";
5140
5141 is not correct. It needs three backslashes, not one, and the $ at the
5142 start of \$sender$\ has to be escaped with a backslash.
5143
5144
5145Q1103: I'm trying to set up majordomo, but I'm getting a wrong mode error
5146 when I try to send it mail.
5147
5148A1103: Check the mode of \(/var/lib/majordomo/lists/lists.aliases)\ and compare it
5149 with the setting of the \modemask\ option in the Majordomo aliases
5150 router. This option specifies bits which must not be set for the alias
5151 file, and it defaults to 022.
5152
5153
5154Q1104: I'm getting return code 9 from \(/home/majordomo/majordomo-1.94.4/wrapper)\
5155 when it is passed a message from Exim.
5156
5157A1104: A problem like this turned out to be the Perl version that came with
5158 RedHat 5.2. Rebuilding Perl 5.005x solved it.
5159
5160
5161Q1105: Exim is complaining about an invalid command line when Majordomo tries
5162 to send it a message for delivery.
5163
5164A1105: Take a look at your \(majordomo.cf)\ file, It should have something that
5165 looks like
5166
5167==> $sendmail_command = "/usr/lib/sendmail";
5168
5169 and another line like
5170
5171==> $mailer = "$sendmail_command -oi -oee -f\$sender";
5172
5173 If you have modified \^resend^\ (one of the majordomo programs) to use
5174 \$sendmail_command$\ instead of \$mailer$\ you will be calling Exim with no
5175 command line arguments.
5176
5177
5178
517912. FETCHMAIL
5180
5181Q1201: When I run fetchmail, I get the error \*SMTP listener doesn't like
5182 recipient address xxx@localhost*\.
5183
5184A1201: Make sure that //localhost// is recognized as a domain that is to be
5185 delivered locally. If you are using the default Exim run time
5186 configuration, you'll see a line near the top like this:
5187
5188==> domainlist local_domains = @
5189
5190 Change it to
5191
5192==> domainlist local_domains = @ : localhost
5193
5194
5195Q1202: I'm currently using Exim with fetchmail and I'd like to use the RBL on
5196 Exim, but will it work? Do I need to configure fetchmail any particular
5197 way? As far as Exim knows, all mail is coming from 127.0.0.1. Will it
5198 check the source address against RBL? Or will it check the ::From:: header?
5199
5200A1202: It will check 127.0.0.1 (not very useful). The point of the RBL is to
5201 keep messages from black-listed hosts out of your machine. If you are
5202 using fetchmail, you have got the messages into your machine before you
5203 approach Exim. That kind of defeats the purpose of the RBL. The right
5204 way to do this would be for the host from which you fetch your mail to
5205 do the RBL checking and insert some kind of warning header for you to
5206 test, as Exim does if you run RBL checks in warning mode.
5207
5208
5209
521013. PERL
5211
5212Q1301: Exim built with Perl support exits with the error message \*./exim: can't
5213 load library 'libperl.so'*\.
5214
5215A1301: If you are using BSDI, see Q9401.
5216
5217
5218Q1302: Exim built with Perl support exits with several error messages of the
5219 form \*undefined reference to `PL_stack_sp'*\.
5220
5221A1302: This has been seen on FreeBSD systems that had two different versions of
5222 Perl installed, the older with an \^a.out^\ library and the newer with an
5223 ELF library. Ensure that the older package is removed.
5224
5225
5226
522714. DIAL-UP AND ISDN
5228
5229Q1401: When I'm not connected to the Internet, how can I arrange for mail to
5230 other hosts on my local network to be delivered, while at the
5231 same time mail to Internet hosts is queued without any delivery
5232 attempts?
5233
5234A1401: Use the \queue_domains\ option to control which domains are held
5235 on the queue for later delivery. For example,
5236
5237==> queue_domains = ! *.localnet
5238
5239 allows delivery to domains ending in \(.localnet)\, while queueing all the
5240 others.
5241
5242
5243Q1402: I have a dial-up machine, and I use the \queue_smtp_domains\ option so
5244 that remote mail only goes out when I do a queue run. However, any email
5245 I send with an address \(anything@aol.com)\ is returned within about 15
5246 minutes saying \*retry time exceeded*\, and all addresses are affected.
5247
5248A1402: You should be using \queue_domains\ rather than \queue_smtp_domains\.
5249 With the latter, Exim is trying to route the addresses, which involves a
5250 DNS lookup. This is presumably timing out, causing a retry time to be
5251 set for the domain, and somehow a valid lookup never happened before the
5252 maximum retry time (default of 4 days) passed. Hence the bounce. The
5253 fact that it is \(aol.com)\ is probably not relevant. You should probably
5254 also be using \-qq-\ to do your queue run rather than \-q-\.
5255
5256
5257Q1403: How should Exim be configured when it is acting as a temporary storage
5258 system for a domain on a dial-up host?
5259
5260A1403: Exim isn't really designed for this, but... The lowest-numbered MX
5261 record for the domain should be pointing to the dial-up host. A higher
5262 numbered MX record (lower priority) should point to the Exim server that
5263 is acting as a temporary storage system.
5264
5265 You should set a large retry time for the domain, so that Exim doesn't
5266 keep trying to deliver when the host is offline. When the host comes
5267 online, the waiting messages have to be kicked somehow. This can be done
5268 by calling Exim with the \-R-\ option, or via the SMTP ETRN command.
5269
5270 This works provided the number of messages is low. If you are handling
5271 lots of mail, keeping messages waiting for their host to connect and
5272 those that are having delivery problems to remote hosts all in the same
5273 queue doesn't work so well. It is better in this case to get Exim to
5274 deliver the mail for the dial-in hosts into some local files which then
5275 get transmitted by other software when the host connects. One tool for
5276 doing this can be found at \?http://cr.yp.to/serialmail.html?\.
5277
5278 For further discussion, see section entitled \*Intermittently connected
5279 hosts*\ in the manual, and also the section in the Exim book with the
5280 same name.
5281
5282
5283Q1404: I have \queue_domains\ or \queue_smtp_domains\ set, and use \-qf-\ to
5284 force delivery of waiting mail when I dial in. How can I arrange for any
5285 new messages that arrive while I'm connected to be delivered immediately?
5286
5287A1404: Instead of \queue_domains\ or \queue_smtp_domains\, use the \queue_only_file\
5288 option. This causes messages to be queued if a particular file exists.
5289 If you put the word ``smtp'' before the file name, the queueing applies
5290 only to domains that are delivered by SMTP, thus not affecting local
5291 deliveries:
5292
5293==> queue_only_file = smtp/etc/present/when/not/connected
5294
5295 Then, in the scripts which are run when you connect and disconnect,
5296 arrange to remove the file after connection, and create it just before
5297 disconnection.
5298
5299
5300Q1405: I have an ISDN connection and would like a way of running the queue
5301 automatically when it is up.
5302
5303A1405: The following shell commands test for the interface being up and then
5304 run the queue:
5305
5306==> ifconfig ppp0 | fgrep UP >/dev/null
5307 if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then exim -q ; fi
5308
5309 You could put these commands into a script which runs them at regular
5310 intervals. You might want to use \-qq-\ instead of \-q-\.
5311
5312 With Linux, the script \(/etc/ppp/ip-up)\ is run after a ISDN connection
5313 or a more general PPP connection has been established. If you are using
5314 Linux, you could put the call to Exim in that script.
5315
5316
5317Q1406: When I dial up to collect mail from my ISP, only the first 10 messages
5318 get delivered immediately; the remainder just sit on the queue until a
5319 queue runner process finds them.
5320
5321A1406: See Q0049.
5322
5323
5324Q1407: RFC 1985 specifies that the SMTP command \"ETRN host.domain"\ causes all
5325 mail queued for that host, no matter what domain it's for, to be
5326 delivered. Why doesn't Exim support this?
5327
5328A1407: Exim does not keep queues of mail for specific destinations. It just
5329 keeps one pool of undelivered messages. What is more, once you start a
5330 delivery of a message, it tries to deliver to all the addresses in the
5331 message, not just the one you may be interested in. (Of course, this
5332 doesn't usually do any harm.)
5333
5334 The only way it could be done within Exim would be, for every message
5335 on the queue, to go through the motions of routing each undelivered
5336 address and see if that resulted in a delivery to the host of interest.
5337 This could be extremely expensive (e.g. 1,000 messages on the queue,
5338 only 1 for the given host).
5339
5340 The bottom line is that Exim just wasn't designed for this kind of
5341 operation, that is, holding messages for intermittently connected hosts.
5342 The queueing arrangements are designed for handling delivery problems
5343 that are not expected to be common.
5344
5345 A better way to do this is to implement the required queues separately.
5346 After all, keeping such mail on an active queue (where Exim will keep
5347 trying to deliver) is silly. If there is a lot of mail for these hosts,
5348 it also masks genuine delivery problems when you inspect the queue.
5349
5350 Large ISPs who provide this kind of functionality do not usually leave
5351 waiting mail on the MTA's queue. Instead, they get it delivered into
5352 per-host directories, one message per file, in one of the special
5353 formats (BSMTP, maildir, or mailstore) and when an ETRN arrives, it
5354 kicks off some completely different program that establishes an SMTP
5355 connection to the host and shovels the waiting mail down it. That seems
5356 to me to be a much neater way of doing this. It means you can easily add
5357 additional functionality such as archiving or throwing away uncollected
5358 mail.
5359
5360 One program that has this functionality is \^ssmtp^\, which can be
5361 found in \?ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/mta/?\.
5362 Alternatively, sample configuration C037 demonstrates an elegant way of
5363 using Exim itself to deliver the saved messages when the client issues
5364 an ETRN.
5365
5366
5367Q1408: If email has been deferred to a member on a local mailing list
5368 (implemented through forward files), and one of our ETRN clients is on
5369 this mailing list, the \-R-\ won't flush the mailing list message for
5370 that client.
5371
5372A1408: That is because \-R-\ matches only original recipient addresses, not those
5373 produced as a result of expansion, because these are not (by default)
5374 preserved from delivery to delivery. You can get round this by setting
5375 \one_time\ on the forwarding router, but you are not allowed to have
5376 expansions to pipes or files on routers that have \one_time\ set.
5377 Therefore, you will have to have a separate router for mailing lists
5378 (with \one_time\ set) to the one used for normal forward files that might
5379 specify pipe or file deliveries. However, the problem will still be
5380 present for any user who sets up a \(.forward)\ file to redirect to any of
5381 the ETRN domains. See the last 3 paragraphs of Q1407 for a discussion of
5382 an alternative approach.
5383
5384
5385Q1409: I would like to have a separate queue per domain for hosts which dial
5386 in to collect their mail.
5387
5388A1409: Exim isn't really designed for this kind of operation. The only way to
5389 do this would be to cause it to send those messages to a differently
5390 configured version of Exim with its own spool area. This could be done
5391 via a pipe or SMTP to a private port. The main Exim, listening on port
5392 25, would then be configured to run an appropriate command to prod one
5393 of the others when it received ETRN, by means of the \smtp_etrn_command\
5394 option.
5395
5396 You could probably manage this with a single Exim binary and a number of
5397 different configuration files, passed to the special versions using the
5398 \-C-\ option. For this application they could all run as \^exim^\, since no
5399 root privilege would be needed.
5400
5401 An alternative approach id to get Exim to deliver mail for such hosts
5402 in batch SMTP format into some directory, and have the ETRN run
5403 something to pass such messages to the dialled-in host. See also Q1403.
5404
5405
5406
540715. UUCP
5408
5409Q1501: The MX records for some UUCP domains point to my local host. How do I
5410 get it to pass the messages on to UUCP?
5411
5412A1501: The simplest way is to create a file containing a list of domains, and
5413 the hosts to which their messages should be sent, like this:
5414
5415==> uucp1.domain.example: uucp1.host.example
5416 uucp2.domain.example: uucp2.host.example
5417 ....
5418
5419 Then you can use a router like this:
5420
5421==> uucp_router:
5422 driver = accept
5423 domains = lsearch;/etc/uucp/domains
5424 transport = uucp_transport
5425
5426 and a transport like this:
5427
5428==> uucp_transport:
5429 driver = pipe
5430 user = nobody
5431 command = /usr/local/bin/uux - -r $domain_data!rmail $local_part
5432 return_fail_output
5433
5434 The \$domain_data$\ variable retains the value that is looked up when
5435 the \domains\ option in the router is matched.
5436
5437
5438Q1502: How can I get Exim to handle ``bang path'' addresses?
5439
5440A1502: In general, you can't (Exim is an Internet mailer and recognizes only
5441 RFC 2822 domain-style addresses) but some restricted kinds of bang path
5442 can be dealt with by appropriate rewriting - but please note the warning
5443 below.
5444
5445 Exim treats a bang path address as an unqualified local part, and so
5446 will qualify it with your domain. A rule such as
5447
5448==> \N^([^!]+)!(.+)@your\.domain$\N $2@$1
5449
5450 turns \(a!b@your.domain)\ into \(b@a)\. You can also use a repeating rule to
5451 turn multi-component paths into the ``percent hack'' notation with a rule
5452 such as
5453
5454==> \N^([^!]+)!([^@%]+)(.+)$\N $2%$1$3 R
5455
5456 which turns \(a!b@c)\ into \(b%a@c)\ and \(a!b!c@d)\ first into \(b!c%a@d)\ and then,
5457 because of the R flag, into \(c%b%a@d)\. The R flag causes repetition up to
5458 10 times.
5459
5460 \**Warning:**\ If you install a general rewriting rule like the above, you are
5461 opening yourself up to the possibility of unwanted relaying. A host that
5462 is not permitted to relay through your system could send a message with
5463 an SMTP command line such as
5464
5465==> RCPT TO:<victim-host!victim-user@your.domain>
5466
5467 and this would be accepted because it is addressed to your domain.
5468 However, the rewriting then converts the address, and the message does
5469 in fact get relayed. One way round this, if all your bang path messages
5470 are passed to Exim via SMTP, is to use the \"S"\ rewriting flag. This
5471 applies a rewriting rule to incoming SMTP addresses as soon as they are
5472 received, before checking for qualification, relaying, etc. So a rule
5473 such as
5474
5475==> \N^([^!]+)!(.+)$\N $2@$1 S
5476
5477 rewrites simple two-component bang paths before the result is checked
5478 for relaying. However, this does not rewrite addresses in the headers of
5479 the message.
5480
5481
5482Q1503: We see something strange on our system in regards to mail coming in via
5483 rmail from a UUCP link. The sender is being set to mailmaster instead of
5484 the real sender, and a ::Sender:: header is being added to the message.
5485
5486A1503: If \(mailmaster)\ is the user that is running rmail, you need to include
5487 that user in the \trusted_users\ configuration option. Only trusted users
5488 are permitted to specify senders when mail is passed to Exim via the
5489 command line.
5490
5491
5492
549316. MODIFYING MESSAGE BODIES
5494
5495Q1601: How can I add a disclaimer or an advertisement to a message?
5496
5497A1601: There are a number of technical and potential legal problems that arise
5498 in connection with message modification. Some of them are listed below.
5499 Some comment on the legal position of email disclaimers in English law
5500 can be found at \?http://www.weblaw.co.uk/artemail.htm?\.
5501
5502 See also \?http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/?\. There is
5503 some discussion about the problems of actually adding disclaimers in
5504 \?http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/apply.html?\.
5505
5506 In many cases, email disclaimers will make your company look ridiculous,
5507 at the very least. At worst, they may interfere with the normal
5508 processing of mail.
5509
5510 If, despite these considerations, you still want to modify messages, you
5511 can do so using Exim, but not directly in Exim itself. It is not the job
5512 of an MTA to modify messages, something that requires understanding of
5513 their content and format.
5514
5515 Exim provides a hook called a ``transport filter'' that lets you pass
5516 any outgoing message through a program or script of your choice. It
5517 is the job of this script to make any changes to the message that you
5518 require. By this means, you have full control over what changes are
5519 made, and Exim does not need to know anything about message bodies.
5520 However, using a transport filter requires additional resources, and may
5521 slow down mail delivery.
5522
5523 You can use Exim's routers to arrange for those messages that you want
5524 to modify to be delivered via a transport filter. For example, suppose
5525 you want to do this for messages from addresses in your domain that are
5526 being delivered to a remote host. First you need to set up a special
5527 \%smtp%\ transport that uses a filter, like this:
5528
5529==> remote_smtp_filter:
5530 driver = smtp
5531 transport_filter = /your/filter/command
5532
5533 Then you need to modify the \%dnslookup%\ router to use this transport
5534 when the conditions are right:
5535
5536==> dnslookup:
5537 driver = dnslookup
5538 domains = ! +local_domains
5539 transport = ${if eq {$sender_address_domain}{your.domain}\
5540 {remote_smtp_filter}{remote_smtp}}
5541 ignore_target_hosts = 127.0.0.0/8
5542 no_more
5543
5544 This is the standard \%dnslookup%\ router, but with a modified setting of
5545 the \transport\ option. When the sender address is in your domain, it
5546 routes to the special transport instead of the standard one.
5547
5548 The entire message is passed to your filter command on its standard
5549 input. It must write the modified version to the standard output, taking
5550 care not to break the RFC 2822 syntax. The command is run as the Exim
5551 user.
5552
5553 There are a number of potential problems in doing this kind of
5554 modification in an MTA. Many people believe that to attempt is it wrong,
5555 because:
5556
5557 1. It breaks digital signatures, which are becoming legally binding
5558 in some countries. It may well also break encryption.
5559
5560 2. It is likely to break MIME encoding, that is, it is likely to wreck
5561 attachments, unless great care is taken. And what about the case of a
5562 message containing only binary MIME parts?
5563
5564 3. It is illegal under German and Dutch law to change the body of
5565 a mail message in transit. It might potentially be illegal in
5566 the UK under European law. This consideration applies to ISPs and
5567 other ``common carriers''. It would presumably not apply in a corporate
5568 environment where modification was done only to messages originating
5569 from the employees, before they left the company's network. It might
5570 also not apply if the senders have explicitly given their consent
5571 (e.g. agreed to have advertisements added to their incoming mail).
5572
5573 4. Since the delivered message body was produced by the MTA (not the
5574 originator, because it was modified), the MTA operator could
5575 potentially be sued for any content. This again applies to `common
5576 carrier' MTAs. It's interesting that adding a disclaimer of liability
5577 could be making you liable for the message, but this case seems
5578 more likely to involve adding advertisements than disclaimers. After
5579 all, no postal service in the world opens all the mail it carries to
5580 add disclaimers.
5581
5582 5. Some mail clients (old versions of MS outlook) crash if the message
5583 body of an incoming MIME message has been tampered with.
5584
5585 There are also potential problems that could arise if a scheme to add
5586 disclaimers goes wrong for some messages:
5587
5588 1. False negatives: `Ah, this guy usually says he does not represent
5589 their views, but in this message he doesn't have the disclaimer'.
5590
5591 2. False positives: `This official announcement does not represent our
5592 views, oh no'.
5593
5594 An alternative approach to the disclaimer problem would be to insist
5595 that all relevant messages have the disclaimer appended by the MUA. The
5596 MTA should refuse to accept any that do not. Again, however, the MTA
5597 must understand the format of messages in order to do this. Simply
5598 checking for appropriate wording at the end of the body is not good
5599 enough. It would probably be necessary to run a Perl script from within
5600 an Exim system filter, or write a \^^local_scan()^^\ function in order
5601 to adopt this approach.
5602
5603 Finally, it's a trivial matter to add customized headers of the sort:
5604
5605==> X-Disclaimer: This is a standard disclaimer that says that the views
5606 X-Disclaimer: contained within this message are somebody else's.
5607
5608 which is a much easier alternative to modifying message bodies.
5609
5610
5611Q1602: How can I remove attachments from messages?
5612
5613A1602: The answer to this is essentially the same as for Q1601.
5614
5615
5616
561717. ENCRYPTION (TLS/SSL)
5618
5619Q1701: I am trying to set up an Exim server that uses a self-signed certificate
5620 to enable my clients to use TLS. However, clients other than Exim
5621 refuse to accept this certificate. What's wrong?
5622
5623A1701: It seems that some clients require that the certificate presented by
5624 the server be a user (also called ``leaf'' or ``site'') certificate, and not
5625 a self-signed certificate. In this situation, the self-signed
5626 certificate must be installed on the client as a trusted root
5627 \*certification authority*\ (CA), and the certificate used by the server
5628 must be a user certificate signed with that self-signed certificate.
5629
5630 For information on creating self-signed CA certificates and using them
5631 to sign user certificates, see the \*General implementation overview*\
5632 chapter of the Open-source PKI book, available online at
5633 \?http://ospkibook.sourceforge.net/?\. Here is a quick overview. First,
5634 read this message:
5635
5636 \?http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?id=3C3F3A93.C1ECF9B0%40mindspring.com?\
5637
5638 Then, follow the instructions found on these two (consecutive) pages:
5639
5640 \?http://ospkibook.sourceforge.net/docs/OSPKI-2.4.6/OSPKI/initialisation.htm?\
5641 \?http://ospkibook.sourceforge.net/docs/OSPKI-2.4.6/OSPKI/keygensign.htm?\
5642
5643 Two points on the PKI Book literature:
5644
5645 (1) It's assumed that it's okay to use a passphrase-protected key to
5646 encrypt the user/site/leaf certificate. If this isn't acceptable,
5647 you seem to be able to strip out the passphrase as follows:
5648
5649==> openssl rsa -in user.key -our user.key.new
5650 mv user.key.new
5651
5652 This should be done immediately after \(user.key)\ is created.
5653
5654 (2) The \*sign.sh*\ script is available in the \*mod_ssl*\ distribution,
5655 available at \?http://www.modssl.org/source/?\.
5656
5657 Having followed the instructions, you end up with the following files:
5658
5659 (a) \(ca.crt)\
5660
5661 This file should be installed into the client software as a trusted
5662 root certification authority. In Windows XP, this can be done as follows:
5663
5664 \#\#Call the file \(ca_cert.cer)\
5665 [[br]]
5666 \#\#Double-click on the file
5667 [[br]]
5668 \#\#"Install Certificate";
5669 [[br]]
5670 \#\#"Next"
5671 [[br]]
5672 \#\#"Place all certificates in the following store"
5673 [[br]]
5674 \#\#"Browse..."
5675 [[br]]
5676 \#\#"Trusted Root Certification Authorities"
5677 [[br]]
5678 \#\#"OK"
5679 [[br]]
5680 \#\#"Next"
5681 [[br]]
5682 \#\#"Finish"
5683 [[br]]
5684 \#\#"Yes"
5685 [[br]]
5686 \#\#"OK"
5687
5688 (b) \(user.crt)\ and \(user.key)\
5689
5690 These files should be installed into the server software. In Exim, this
5691 can be done by adding these lines to the configuration file:
5692
5693==> tls_certificate = /usr/local/etc/exim/tls_cert
5694 tls_privatekey = /usr/local/etc/exim/tls_key
5695
5696 Then install \(user.crt)\ and \(user.key)\ under the names \(tls_cert)\
5697 and \(tls_key)\ in the appropriate directory.
5698
5699
5700Q1702: How can I arrange for Exim to advertise support for SMTP authentication
5701 only when the session is encrypted?
5702
5703A1702: Use this setting:
5704
5705==> auth_advertise_hosts = ${if eq{$tls_cipher}{}{}{*}}
5706
5707
5708Q1703: I have some legacy clients that don't use STARTTLS, but which expect to
5709 negotiate a TLS session automatically on connection to the ssmtp port
5710 (465). Can Exim handle this?
5711
5712A1703: The \-tls-on-connect-\ option is available to handle this. You need to
5713 run two instances of an Exim listener, listening on different ports, one
5714 of which is started with \-tls-on-connect-\. You can either use two
5715 daemons, or a single daemon, with the other listenever using \^inetd^\.
5716 For example, here are commands to start two daemons:
5717
5718==> exim -bd -q15m
5719 exim -bd -oX '[0.0.0.0]::465' -tls-on-connect
5720
5721 The first is a ``normal'' daemon; the second listens on port 465 and
5722 expects to negotiate a TLS session at the start of each connection.
5723
5724
5725Q1704: When my Outlook Express 6.0 client sends a STARTTLS command to begin a
5726 TLS session, Exim doesn't seem to receive it.
5727
5728A1704: See Q0059.
5729
5730
5731Q1705: I have listed some hosts in \tls_try_verify_hosts\, but when they
5732 connect, no data appears in \$tls_peerdn$\.
5733
5734A1705: This means that the clients have not sent certificates when asked by
5735 the server to do so. If the clients are running Exim, check that
5736 \tls_certificate\ is correctly set in their \%smtp%\ transports. Note
5737 that this value is not automatically inherited from the global
5738 \tls_certificate\ option.
5739
5740
5741Q1706: I have listed some hosts in \tls_verify_hosts\ and provided them with
5742 certificates, but their connections are always rejected.
5743
5744A1706: Make sure that the server file containing the expected certificates
5745 (defined by \tls_verify_certificates\) is readable by the Exim user.
5746 See also the answer to Q1705.
5747
5748
5749Q1707: I am trying to use TLS with Evolution as a client, and keep seeing this
5750 error: \*SMTP protocol violation: synchronization error (next input
5751 sent too soon): rejected "\200F^A^C".*\ What does it mean?
5752
5753A1707: See Q0086 for a general explanation of the error. In this case, it
5754 probably means that Evolution is trying to negotiate a TLS session
5755 immediately it connects, without first using the STARTTLS command. This
5756 was an older way of starting up TLS, before STARTTLS was defined. You
5757 will have to run a separate instance of Exim using the
5758 \-tls-on-connect-\ command line option to cater for this usage, and
5759 listening on a different port. For example:
5760
5761==> exim -bd -oX 465 -tls-on-connect
5762
5763 465 is the ``smtps'' port which is an unofficial standard for this kind
5764 of SMTP server.
5765
5766
5767Q1708: I trying to use TLS with Outlook as a client on a box that is running
5768 Norton Antivirus, but all my email is being rejected with \*Unsupported
5769 command*\ errors. Why?
5770
5771A1708: Norton Antivirus does not support TLS or AUTH. It puts a broken SMTP
5772 proxy between you and the Exim server. You need to turn off outbound
5773 scanning of email.
5774
5775
5776
577720. MILLENNIUM
5778
5779Q2000: Are there any Y2K issues with Exim?
5780
5781A2000: The author of Exim believes that it is Y2K-compliant, as long as the
5782 underlying operating system and C library are. Exim does not parse dates
5783 or times at all. Internally, it makes some use of binary timestamps in
5784 Unix format (number of seconds since 1-Jan-1970) and uses C library
5785 services to convert these to printing forms (e.g. for logging). The
5786 printing forms all use 4-digit years. Some people have tried various
5787 tests. No problems have been reported, but details of what tests have
5788 been done are not available.
5789
5790 Well, it's now November 2001, and no Y2K problems have been reported, so
5791 it looks like I was right. This entry is retained as historical
5792 nostalgia.
5793
5794
5795
579650. MISCELLANEOUS
5797
5798Q5001: How can I arrange to allow a limited set of users to perform a limited
5799 set of Exim administration functions? I don't want to put them all in
5800 the //exim// group.
5801
5802A5001: See \?http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ian/userv/?\. Using \^userv^\ you can
5803 arrange (for example) for certain users to be able to invoke \^mailq^\ or
5804 \^runq^\ or other preset commands as \^exim^\ (or any other user, as configured)
5805 with only \^userv^\ configuration. If you want to check the particular Exim
5806 options available you can easily do it with shell or Perl scripts and
5807 \^userv^\ configuration, and provided you know how to do argument
5808 ``unparsing'' properly in shell or Perl it will be secure.
5809
5810
5811Q5002: I want to ``tail'' the Exim log, but I have a number of other logs I also
5812 want to ``tail'', and the number of tailing windows is getting to be a
5813 nuisance.
5814
5815A5002: Look for a program called \^xtail^\ (despite its name, it's not an
5816 X-windows application). It allows you to do multiple tails, even of
5817 entire directories.
5818
5819 Alternately, get the GNU version of \^tail^\, from the GNU textutils
5820 package (\?ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/textutils/?\). GNU tail lets you run
5821 \"tail -f\" on multiple files at the same time, although it doesn't work
5822 on entire directories like \^xtail^\ can. If you are running Linux, you
5823 probably already have a version of GNU \^tail^\ that can follow multiple
5824 files.
5825
5826
5827Q5003: How can I persuade Exim to accept ETRN commands without the leading
5828 # character?
5829
5830A5003: Set the option
5831
5832==> smtp_etrn_command = /usr/lib/sendmail -R $domain
5833
5834 This causes Exim to run that command, with \$domain$\ replaced by the
5835 argument of ETRN. The default action of Exim is to require the # sign
5836 in order to be RFC-compliant, and to run the equivalent of
5837
5838==> smtp_etrn_command = /usr/lib/sendmail -R ${substr_1:$domain}
5839
5840 which uses the argument without the leading # as the value for the \-R-\
5841 option. You aren't restricted to running Exim with the \-R-\ option, of
5842 course. You can specify any command you like, with any number of
5843 arguments. In particular, you can pass over the IP address of the caller
5844 via \$sender_host_address$\. However, if you make use of expansion strings
5845 in the arguments, each one must be entirely contained in a single
5846 argument. For example, if you want to remove the first character of the
5847 ETRN argument when it is @ or #, you could use
5848
5849==> smtp_etrn_command = "/usr/lib/sendmail -R \
5850 \"${if match {$domain}{^[@#]}{${substr_1:$domain}}{$domain}}\""
5851
5852 The internal quotes are necessary because of the white space inside the
5853 expansion string.
5854
5855
5856Q5004: I've recently noticed that emails I send with a ::Bcc:: line are being
5857 delivered to their final destination with the ::Bcc:: line still present.
5858
5859A5004: Exim removes ::Bcc:: lines only if you call it with the \-t-\ option (i.e.
5860 when it is acting partly as an MUA). It does not remove ::Bcc:: lines that
5861 are present in incoming SMTP mail or command-line mail that does not
5862 use \-t-\. Indeed, it should not remove them, because only the
5863 initiating software (i.e. the MUA) can tell what to do with ::Bcc::
5864 lines; any MTA software has to leave them alone. This is what RFC 2822
5865 has to say about ::Bcc::
5866
5867 \*The ::Bcc:: field (where the ``Bcc'' means ``Blind Carbon Copy'') contains
5868 addresses of recipients of the message whose addresses are not to be
5869 revealed to other recipients of the message. There are three ways in
5870 which the ::Bcc:: field is used. In the first case, when a message
5871 containing a ::Bcc:: field is prepared to be sent, the ::Bcc:: line is
5872 removed even though all of the recipients (including those specified
5873 in the ::Bcc:: field) are sent a copy of the message. In the second
5874 case, recipients specified in the ::To:: and ::Cc:: lines each are sent
5875 a copy of the message with the ::Bcc:: line removed as above, but the
5876 recipients on the ::Bcc:: line get a separate copy of the message
5877 containing a ::Bcc:: line. (When there are multiple recipient
5878 addresses in the ::Bcc:: field, some implementations actually send a
5879 separate copy of the message to each recipient with a ::Bcc::
5880 containing only the address of that particular recipient.) Finally,
5881 since a ::Bcc:: field may contain no addresses, a ::Bcc:: field can be
5882 sent without any addresses indicating to the recipients that blind
5883 copies were sent to someone. Which method to use with ::Bcc:: fields
5884 is implementation dependent, but refer to the ``Security
5885 Considerations'' section of this document for a discussion of each.*\
5886
5887
5888Q5005: I used \^gv^\ 3.5.8 (\^ghostview^\) to try printing \(spec.ps)\. After every
5889 printed page, the printer ejects a blank sheet. Is this something to do
5890 with using ``letter'' rather than A4 paper?
5891
5892A5005: This seems to be an effect of using \^ghostview^\. Although the PostScript
5893 is generated for A4 pages, the size of the page images is such that they
5894 should fit on a letter page (they are shorter than would normally be
5895 used on A4 paper). If the PostScript file is sent directly to a
5896 PostScript printer, there is no problem. An alternative is to get hold
5897 of the \^psutils^\ toolset, which is available from
5898 \?ftp://ftp.dcs.ed.ac.uk/pub/psutils/psutils.tar.gz?\.
5899 It contains utilities for extracting pages (which can be useful for
5900 double-sided printing) and for resizing pages. If you resize from A4 to
5901 letter the text shrinks a bit, but should then be printable via
5902 \^ghostview^\.
5903
5904
5905Q5006: Why aren't there any man pages for Exim? I don't always carry my printed
5906 documentation.
5907
5908A5006: A single man page which lists the command line options is provided in
5909 file \(doc/exim.8)\ in the Exim distribution. Several other forms of
5910 online documentation are available. As well as plain ASCII text, the
5911 there are two forms - Texinfo and HTML - which have a certain amount of
5912 built-in indexing for ease of finding your way around. There are no man
5913 pages apart from the command line one because the author of Exim hasn't
5914 the time (or desire :-) to maintain yet another documentation format.
5915 Besides, it is hard to know how to split the Exim manual up.
5916
5917
5918Q5007: When I send a message using the \-t-\ command line option, Exim sends only
5919 to the addresses within the message, not to those on the command line.
5920
5921A5007: There seems to be some confusion in the Sendmail community about the
5922 interpretation of recipient addresses on the command line if the \-t-\
5923 option is used. Some versions do one thing, and some another. Here is an
5924 except from one version of the Sendmail documentation for \-t-\:
5925
5926 \*Read message for recipients. ::To::, ::Cc::, and ::Bcc:: lines will
5927 be scanned for recipient addresses. The ::Bcc:: line will be
5928 deleted before transmission. Any addresses in the argument
5929 list will be suppressed, that is, they will not receive
5930 copies even if listed in the message header.*\
5931
5932 By default Exim follows this specification, and interprets addresses on
5933 the command line as addresses not to send to. You can set
5934
5935==> extract_addresses_remove_arguments = false
5936
5937 to change this behaviour so that command line addresses are added to the
5938 addresses that are taken from the header lines.
5939
5940
5941Q5008: If I set up a domain list to contain //*customer.com//, it matches
5942 //customer.com// and //abc.customer.com// as required, but it also matches
5943 //noncustomer.com//, which is wrong. How can I get round this?
5944
5945A5008: You have to specify two entries in the list:
5946
5947==> customer.com : *.customer.com
5948
5949 because * in a domain list matches any characters, including \"."\ and
5950 including a null sequence.
5951
5952
5953Q5009: I want to match all domains of the form //*.oyoy.org// but want a few
5954 exceptions. For instance I don't want //foo.oyoy.org// or //bar.oyoy.org// to be
5955 included. What is the best way to do this?
5956
5957A5009: Use negative items in the domain list, like this:
5958
5959==> domainlist local_domains = !foo.oyoy.org : !bar.oyoy.org : *.oyoy.org
5960
5961 If there are many exceptions, you can use a lookup instead of listing
5962 them all inline. If there are a number of exceptions that match a
5963 particular pattern, you could use a regular expression.
5964
5965
5966Q5010: I can't seem to find a pre-built version of Exim anywhere. The machine
5967 is a Sparc 5 running Solaris 2.6.
5968
5969A5010: The primary distribution is source-only. However, some people have built
5970 and distributed RPMs and debs for Linux systems, and ports for FreeBSD.
5971 I haven't heard of anyone doing this for Solaris. The main problem with
5972 binary distributions is that there are a number of build-time options,
5973 requiring the answers to questions like:
5974
5975 . Which DBM library do you have? (On Solaris probably ndbm, but no easy
5976 default on some other systems.)
5977
5978 . Which uid/gid do you want to use for Exim?
5979
5980 . Where do you want the configuration file to be? (Many different
5981 answers, even on the same OS, depending on local policy.)
5982
5983 . Ditto for the binaries.
5984
5985 . Which optional bits of Exim do you want to include?
5986
5987
5988Q5011: Is there a version of Exim available that runs under Windows?
5989
5990A5011: A long time ago somebody took a copy of the Exim source with the aim of
5991 trying to port it to Windows NT. However, I never heard anything more.
5992 However, current versions of Exim can be made to run under Cygwin.
5993
5994
5995Q5012: Does Exim support Delivery Status Notification (DSN), Message Status
5996 Notification (MSN), or any other form of delivery acknowledgement?
5997
5998A5012: See Q0607.
5999
6000
6001Q5013: What does ``Exim'' stand for?
6002
6003A5013: Originally, it was ``EXperimental Internet Mailer'', which was the best I
6004 could come up with when I was starting out. At that point it was
6005 experimental - I wanted to see if the ideas I had for extending Smail's
6006 approach actually worked. Then somebody discovered about it and wanted
6007 to start using it, and told other people about it...
6008
6009
6010Q5014: Although I haven't set \check_spool_space\, Exim is still checking the
6011 amount of space on the spool for incoming SMTP messages that use the
6012 SIZE option. Can I suppress this?
6013
6014A5014: The RFC for the SIZE option says:
6015
6016 \*If the server currently lacks sufficient resources to accept a
6017 message of the indicated size, but may be able to accept the
6018 message at a later time, it responds with code ``452
6019 insufficient system storage''.*\
6020
6021 and that is what Exim is trying to implement. This is entirely
6022 independent from \check_spool_space\, which says \*don't accept any mail
6023 if there is less than so much space in the spool partition*\, though the
6024 code is optimised to do both checks at the same time if required.
6025 However, you can suppress the SIZE check if you want to, by unsetting
6026 \smtp_check_spool_space\.
6027
6028
6029Q5015: I just noticed log entries that start off \"<= <>"\. Am I correct in
6030 assuming that the \"<>"\ indicates that the envelope did not contain any
6031 ``From'' data?
6032
6033A5015: Yes. This indicates a delivery failure report (aka a ``bounce message''),
6034 as specified in RFC 2821. The reason for using empty sender addresses is
6035 to identify bounce messages so that they themselves do not cause further
6036 bounces. Empty senders are also used for other kinds of report which
6037 should not themselves cause the generation of bounce messages. For
6038 example, Exim uses them when sending out warnings about delivery delays.
6039
6040
6041Q5016: I've received a message which does not have my address in the ::To::
6042 line. It is a spam message with the same address in both the ::From:: and
6043 the ::To:: headers. How can this happen, and why doesn't Exim reject it?
6044
6045A5016: There is an important distinction between the ``envelope'' from and to and
6046 the ``header'' from and to. The former are sometimes called the ``sender''
6047 and ``recipient''. An email message needs an ``envelope'' for the same
6048 reason that paper mail does - the envelope tells the delivery mechanism
6049 what to do with this copy of the message, whereas the ::To:: header lists
6050 all the recipients, including those who have been sent different copies
6051 of the message because their mailbox is on some other host.
6052
6053 An MTA such as Exim works entirely with the ``envelope'' addresses, not
6054 with those in the header lines. Don't try to block mail where envelope
6055 from and the header from differ. There are common legitimate cases where
6056 this happens, for example, messages forwarded from mailing lists and
6057 delivery failure reports.
6058
6059
6060Q5017: Can (or will) Exim ever handle a message delivery purely in memory,
6061 that is, it is handled without it ever hitting the disk?
6062
6063A5017: It doesn't, and never will. Accepting and delivering a message are two
6064 entirely separate, independent processes, which communicate only by
6065 writing/reading the message on the disk.
6066
6067
6068Q5018: If I am using dbm files for data that Exim reads, can I rebuild them
6069 on the fly, or do I need to restart Exim every time I make a change?
6070
6071A5018: Exim re-reads the file every time it consults it, so if you are using a
6072 cdb or a DBM library that uses just a single file (i.e. not ndbm),
6073 you can just build the new file with a temporary file name, and use
6074 \^mv^\ to rename it into the correct place on the fly. If there are two
6075 files to rename, there is a window of time during which the DBM database
6076 is inconsistent. On lightly loaded systems this may not matter.
6077
6078
6079Q5019: I need an option that is the opposite of \-bpa-\, that is, a listing of
6080 those addresses generated from a top-level address that have not yet
6081 been delivered.
6082
6083A5019: Exim does not keep this information. It saves only the top-level
6084 addresses and the list of addresses that are finished with. At each
6085 delivery attempt, generated addresses are recomputed from scratch. This
6086 makes it possible to correct errors in redirection data that is
6087 causing delivery delays. However, there is an option you can set on a
6088 \redirect\ router that changes things. It is called \one_time\, and if
6089 it is set, the list of generated addresses gets added to the top-level
6090 list at the first delivery attempt, and is never regenerated. Because
6091 top-level address lists must be real email addresses, this option cannot
6092 be used if any of the generated addresses are pipes, files, or
6093 autoreplies.
6094
6095
6096Q5020: How can I make Exim receive incoming mail, queue it, but not attempt to
6097 deliver it? I want to be in this state while moving some mailboxes.
6098
6099A5020: Set \queue_only\ in the Exim configuration. Then kill your daemon,
6100 and restart it without the \-q-\ option (i.e. with just the \-bd-\ option),
6101 so that it does not spawn any queue runners. This stops all deliveries,
6102 remote as well as local.
6103
6104
6105Q5021: What does Exim use for POP and IMAP as a default? Do I have to install
6106 anything else?
6107
6108A5021: Yes. Exim provides MTA functionality. That is, it delivers mail. POP and
6109 IMAP are two of several ways of reading previously-delivered mail. Exim
6110 does not provide that functionality. You need to install POP and/or IMAP
6111 daemons; there are several to choose from. There is a mailing list at
6112 //pop-imap@exim.org// for the discussion of POP/IMAP issues.
6113
6114
6115Q5022: Is there an easy way of removing all queued messages at once in a safe
6116 way?
6117
6118A5022: Try this command:
6119
6120==> exim -bp | awk '/^ *[0-9]+[mhd]/{print "exim -Mrm " $3}' | sh
6121
6122
6123Q5023: Why does Exim do \*ident*\ callbacks by default? Isn't this just a waste
6124 of resources? I've been told this is an ancient way of authentication.
6125 Is it obsolete?
6126
6127A5023: This is a common misunderstanding, at least partially resulting from the
6128 incorrect naming of the protocol when it was first published.
6129 The service on port 113 is an identification service, which allows a
6130 target host to record information identifying the user responsible for
6131 making a connection to it. The information may not be intelligible to
6132 the recording host - it could, for example, be encrypted so that only
6133 someone on the calling host can make sense of it. It is useful for
6134 providing additional information in an audit trail.
6135
6136 At least one site has found \^ident^\ effective against two rather
6137 prevalent kinds of open proxy (whether already blacklisted at the RBLs
6138 or not). An ACL statement is used to reject mail from servers that
6139 return \^ident^\ strings of \"squid"\ and \"CacheFlow Server"\.
6140 Snippets such as this in the RCPT ACL do the trick:
6141
6142==> deny condition = ${if eq{$sender_ident}{CacheFlow Server}{1}{0}}
6143 message = Rejected - appears to be an unsecured proxy: $sender_ident
6144
6145 The likelihood that a genuine mail process would return those specific
6146 ident strings is vanishingly small.
6147
6148 The \^ident^\ data should not be used for authentication in any form
6149 except on a closed secure network between cooperating hosts (probably
6150 not even then). The information from the source host is only as reliable
6151 as the host itself. If it's not under your control then you have to
6152 treat the information as opaque data that can be used only by the
6153 sysadmin of the source system to trace back connection data. Some
6154 \^ident^\ implementations send out opaque cookies or DES encrypted
6155 information. \^Ident^\ is hugely useful at times - especially for
6156 checking back on connections from multiuser machines (as opposed to
6157 one-person desktop boxes).
6158
6159 You can stop Exim making ident calls by adding
6160
6161==> rfc1413_query_timeout = 0s
6162
6163 to its configuration, but it is better to leave it active (reducing the
6164 timeout to 10s or less if it is causing problems) - it costs very
6165 little, and in cases of mail forgery from a multiuser system can track
6166 the sinner concerned very quickly.
6167
6168
6169Q5024: I often have the problem that a message gets stuck in the mail queue and
6170 I want it to be bounced to a certain address.
6171
6172A5024: You can do this using a combination of four command line options, like
6173 this:
6174
6175==> exim -Mf 14Fdlq-0003kM-00
6176 exim -Mmad 14Fdlq-0003kM-00
6177 exim -Mar 14Fdlq-0003kM-00 new@ddress
6178 exim -M 14Fdlq-0003kM-00
6179
6180 The first command freezes the message so that a queue runner won't start
6181 to deliver it while you are changing things. The second command marks
6182 all existing recipients as delivered. The third command adds a new
6183 recipient, and the fourth command forces a delivery of the message,
6184 which will cause it to be delivered to the new address, and then
6185 deleted.
6186
6187
6188Q5025: What precautions should I take when editing Exim's run time
6189 configuration file?
6190
6191A5025: Edit the file and save the result in a new file. Test the syntax of
6192 the new file by running a command like this:
6193
6194==> exim -bV -C exim.conf.new
6195
6196 That will check for syntax errors without disturbing your running
6197 configuration. If you are paranoid enough, run, as \/root/\,
6198
6199==> exim -C exim.conf.new <some address>
6200 <some message>
6201 .
6202
6203 and see if it delivers it. Carry on testing until happy. When happy,
6204
6205==> mv exim.conf.new exim.conf
6206 kill -HUP `cat /var/spool/exim/exim-daemon.pid`
6207
6208 Then check the Exim log to be sure the daemon restarted OK. Watch the
6209 log for a bit to see that mail is flowing.
6210
6211
6212Q5026: Is exim able to use RFC 2645, \*On-demand Mail Relay*\ (ODMR)?
6213
6214A5026: No.
6215
6216
6217Q5027: Is there any way I can send bounces to the postmaster, and nobody else?
6218 Basically, I want to receive them, and I don't want the reply/from
6219 person to get them. If I think they need it I will forward it myself.
6220
6221A5027: Put \"errors_to=postmaster"\ on every router.
6222
6223
6224Q5028: When I HUP the Exim daemon, the name shown in the process table changes
6225 from \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\ (which is a symlink) to the real binary name.
6226 Can I change this?
6227
6228A5028: Add this to your Exim configuration:
6229
6230==> exim_path = /usr/lib/sendmail
6231
6232
6233Q5029: A message with a recipient address that contains a non-printing character
6234 is stuck on my mail queue. How can I remove this address?
6235
6236A5029: You can use the \-Mmd-\ command line option to mark a recipient address
6237 ``delivered'', which effectively removes it. If you are using the Bash
6238 shell, you can enter non-printing characters using an escape sequence.
6239 For example:
6240
6241==> exim -Mmd 15HKvU-00013Q-00 $'\240'abc@x.y.z
6242
6243 In this example, the first character of the local part has a code value
6244 of 240. If you are using a shell that does not support this, create the
6245 command in a file and run it as a shell script.
6246
6247
6248Q5030: I am using exim in a two queues scenario, with two different
6249 configuration files. How can I run a second copy of \^eximon^\ to
6250 inspect and modify the alternate queue?
6251
6252A5030: Use these commands (or put them in a script):
6253
6254==> EXIMON_EXIM_CONFIG=/your/path/exim/configure.alternate
6255 export EXIMON_EXIM_CONFIG
6256 /your/path/exim/bin/eximon
6257
6258
6259Q5031: Why is there no sender address on bounce messages? It shows up as "<>".
6260
6261A5031: See the answer to Q0042.
6262
6263
6264Q5032: Are there any Exim web-based administration scripts?
6265
6266A5032: No (as far as is known). It seems likely that producing one that is
6267 generic enough would be a difficult task.
6268
6269
6270Q5033: How can I send a copy of all outgoing messages to another mailbox?
6271
6272A5033: The most straightforward way is to set up a system filter, and include
6273 a command such as:
6274
6275==> unseen deliver mailbox@whatever.domain
6276
6277 This sends a copy of every message to //mailbox@whatever.domain//
6278 (unless the message already has that recipient - Exim never does
6279 duplicate deliveries).
6280
6281 To save only ``outgoing'' messages, you need to come up with a
6282 definition of what ``outgoing'' means. Typically, this might be a check
6283 on the sender address and/or on the originating host. Here is an
6284 example:
6285
6286==> if $sender_address_domain is mydomain.com and
6287 ${mask:$sender_host_address/24} is 192.168.324.0/24
6288 then
6289 unseen deliver mailbox@whatever.domain
6290 endif
6291
6292
6293Q5034: Is there any way to make the \queue_only\ option conditional? I would
6294 like the ability to queue messages from external sources while deliver
6295 locally generated email as normal.
6296
6297A5034: There is no direct way of doing this. However, you can achieve the
6298 effect. In one of your ACLs that checks incoming mail from external
6299 sources, put
6300
6301==> warn control = queue_only
6302
6303 You can add other conditions as well, of course.
6304
6305
6306
630791. MAC OS X
6308
6309Q9101: How can I install Exim on Mac OS X?
6310
6311A9101: (1) There is useful advice on this web page:
6312 \?http://www.afp548.com/Articles/Jaguar/exim410.html?\.
6313
6314 (2) There is a package installer available at this URL:
6315 \?ftp://members.aol.com/AFP548dotcom/EximInstaller.sit?\.
6316
6317 (3) There is another package installer for the combination of MySQL,
6318 Exim, Exiscan, CourierIMAP, and SpamAssassin at this URL:
6319 \?http://maxo.captainnet.net/installs/mail-install.html?\.
6320
6321
6322
632392. FREEBSD
6324
6325Q9201: On FreeBSD, \(/usr/sbin/sendmail)\ is a symbolic link to
6326 \(/usr/sbin/mailwrapper)\; it doesn't contain the Sendmail binary. How
6327 should I replace Sendmail with Exim on FreeBSD?
6328
6329A9201: There is a file called \(/etc/mail/mailer.conf)\ which selects what to
6330 run for various MTA calls. Instead of changing \(/usr/sbin/sendmail)\,
6331 you should edit this file instead, to read something like this:
6332
6333==> sendmail /usr/exim/bin/exim
6334 send-mail /usr/exim/bin/exim
6335 mailq /usr/exim/bin/exim -bp
6336 newaliases /usr/bin/true
6337
6338 You probably also need to edit \(/etc/periodic.conf)\; see Q9202.
6339
6340
6341Q9202: A script that FreeBSD runs nightly uses \^mailq^\ with the \-Ac-\
6342 parameter. Why doesn't Exim recognize this?
6343
6344A9202: \-Ac-\ is a Sendmail option that requests that mailq ``Show the mail
6345 submission queue specified in \(/etc/mail/submit.cf)\ instead of the
6346 MTA queue specified in \(/etc/mail/sendmail.cf)\''. Exim doesn't have
6347 the concept of a ``submission queue''. You can disable this feature
6348 of the nightly script by adding the line
6349
6350==> daily_status_include_submit_mailq="NO" # No separate 'submit' queue
6351
6352 to the file \(/etc/periodic.conf)\.
6353
6354
6355Q9203: How can I use Exim for authenticated SMTP using Cyrus on FreeBSD?
6356
6357A9203: This web page may help: \?http://www.munk.nu/exim/exim-freebsd-asmtp.php?\.
6358
6359
6360
636193. HP-UX
6362
6363Q9301: I'm trying to compile on an HP machine and I don't have \^gcc^\ there. So I
6364 put \"CC=cc"\ in the \(Local/Makefile)\, but I got this error:
6365
6366==> (Bundled) cc: "buildconfig.c", line 54: error 1705: Function prototypes
6367 are an ANSI feature.
6368
6369A9301: The bundled compiler is not an ANSI C compiler. You either have to get a
6370 copy of \^gcc^\ from the HPUX Software Porting Archives or buy the ANSI cc
6371 from HP. The advice given by one user of HP systems on the Exim
6372 mailing list was as follows:
6373
6374 \*Personally, I wouldn't use anything but the ANSI C compiler. gcc
6375 works for compilation, but it doesn't know squat about PA-RISC chips
6376 past the 1.0 rev. Since then, HP has come out with PA-RISC 1.1, 2.0,
6377 and 2.1, each with better features. gcc will compile for them, but it
6378 doesn't produce anywhere near the optimization that HP's compiler
6379 does.*\
6380
6381 \*I took the gcc road when we moved from FreeBSD to HP-UX because I was
6382 familiar with it. After 6 months, I had to go and re-port everything
6383 over when we realized that gcc wasn't going to do it for us long-term.
6384 If I could give advice to any new HP-UX admin: don't use gcc if you
6385 can afford the ANSI C compiler. Based on the cost of even the lowest
6386 HP workstation, that usually isn't a problem.*\
6387
6388
6389
639094. BSDI
6391
6392Q9401: On BSDI 4.0, Exim built with Perl support exits with the error message
6393
6394==> ./exim: can't load library 'libperl.so'
6395
6396A9401: You probably compiled perl5 yourself, without looking into
6397
6398==> /usr/src/contrib/perl5/perl5.004_02/hints/bsdos.sh
6399
6400 first. The problem is that the command
6401
6402==> perl5 -MExtUtils::Embed -e ldopts
6403
6404 doesn't give you sufficient flags to link something with libperl.
6405 Since 5.004_02 the \(hints/bsdos.sh)\ file has changed to adapt to the
6406 changes between BSDI 3.1 and 4.0, but it is still not entirely right.
6407
6408 The solution is, when you compile perl, change the \ccdlflags\
6409 variable in config.sh to:
6410
6411==> -rdynamic -Wl,-rpath,/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00502/i386-bsdos/CORE
6412
6413 (or something similar). Alternatively, you can run \(./Configure)\ and
6414 answering the question \*Any special flags to pass to cc to use dynamic
6415 loading?*\ with the above line. It is not known what \-rdynamic-\ means
6416 (it's not apparently documented in any man page), but that's what BSDI
6417 guys did to compile perl5 which comes with BSDI 4.0 distribution.
6418
6419
6420
642195. IRIX
6422
6423Q9501: The IP addresses for incoming calls are all being given as
6424 255.255.255.255 or 0.0.0.0.
6425
6426A9501: This problem should no longer occur because a workaround has been
6427 installed in Exim.
6428
6429
6430
643196. LINUX
6432
6433Q9601: Exim is mysteriously crashing, usually when forking to send a delivery
6434 error message.
6435
6436A9601: This has been seen in cases where Exim has been incorrectly built with
6437 a muddled combination of an \(ndbm.h)\ include file and a non-matching
6438 DBM library.
6439
6440 Faults like this have also been seen on systems with faulty motherboards.
6441 You could try to compile the Linux kernel 10 times - if the compile
6442 process stops with signal 11, your hardware is to blame.
6443
6444
6445Q9602: I want to use \^logrotate^\ which is standard with RH5.2 Linux to rotate
6446 my mail logs. Anyone worked out the \^logrotate^\ config file that will
6447 do this?
6448
6449A9602: Here's one suggestion:
6450
6451==> /var/log/exim/main.log {
6452 create 644 exim exim
6453 rotate 4
6454 compress
6455 delaycompress
6456 }
6457
6458 The sleep is added to allow things to close the log file prior to
6459 compression. You also need similar entries for the panic log and the
6460 reject log, of course.
6461
6462
6463Q9603: I'm seeing the message \*inetd[334]: imap/tcp server failing (looping),
6464 service terminated*\ on a RedHat 5.2 system, causing \^imap^\ connections to
6465 be refused. The \^imapd^\ in use is Washington Univers 12.250. Could this
6466 be anything to do with Exim?
6467
6468A9603: No, it's nothing to do with Exim, but here's the answer anyway: there
6469 is a maximum connection rate for \^inetd^\. If connections come in faster
6470 than that, it thinks a caller is looping. The default setting on RedHat
6471 5.2 is 40 calls in any one minute before \^inetd^\ thinks there's a problem
6472 and suspends further calls for 10 mins. This default setting is very
6473 conservative. You should probably increase it by a factor of 10 or 20.
6474 For example:
6475
6476==> imap stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/etc/imapd
6477
6478 The rate setting is the number following ``nowait''. This syntax seems to
6479 be specific to the Linux version of \^inetd^\. Other operating systems
6480 provide similar functionality, but in different ways.
6481
6482
6483Q9604: I get the \*too many open files*\ error especially when a lot of messages
6484 land for Majordomo at the same time.
6485
6486A9604: The problem appears to be the number of open files the system can
6487 handle. This is changable by using the proc filesystem. To your
6488 \(/etc/rc.d/rc.local)\ file append something like the following:
6489
6490==> # Now System is up, Modify kernel parameters for max open etc.
6491
6492==> if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/file-max ]; then
6493 echo 16384 >> /proc/sys/kernel/file-max
6494 fi
6495 if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/inode-max ]; then
6496 echo 24576 >> /proc/sys/kernel/inode-max
6497 fi
6498 if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/file-nr ]; then
6499 echo 2160 >> /proc/sys/kernel/file-nr
6500 fi
6501
6502 By echoing the value you want for file-max to the file \(file-max)\ etc.,
6503 you actually change the kernel parameters.
6504
6505
6506Q9605: I installed debian 2.2 linux on a small 325mb 486 laptop. When I try
6507 to test the Mail program, I get the following error: \*Failed to open
6508 configuration file /etc/exim.conf*\.
6509
6510A9605: The Debian installation should have given you \(/usr/sbin/eximconfig)\,
6511 which asks you some questions and then sets up the configuration file
6512 in \(/etc/exim.conf)\. Try running that (you'll probably need \/root/\) and see
6513 how it goes. In any case you get a thoroughly commented conf file at
6514 the end, which will give you a sample from which to work if you need
6515 further modification.
6516
6517 The Exim docs in the Debian package are in \(/usr/doc/exim)\ where the full
6518 reference manual is \(spec.txt.gz)\.
6519
6520
6521Q9606: I'm having trouble configuring Exim 4 on a Debian system. How does
6522 \(/etc/exim4/conf.d)\ work?
6523
6524A9606: The Debian Exim 4 package uses a quite uncommon, but elegant,
6525 method of configuration where the ``real'' Exim configuration file is
6526 assembled from a tree of snippets by a script invoked just before the
6527 daemon is started (see Q9608).
6528
6529 This fits very well into the Debian system of configuration file
6530 management and is a great ease for the automatic configuration with
6531 Debconf. However, it is \*very*\ different from the normal way Exim 4 is
6532 configured. Non-Debian users on the Exim mailing list will probably have
6533 difficulty in trying to answer specific questions about it. You may have
6534 to find a Debian expert.
6535
6536
6537Q9607: I'm having difficulties trying to make Exim 4 with Redhat 9 and Berkeley
6538 DB 4.
6539
6540A9607: Have you remembered to install the db4-devel package?
6541
6542
6543Q9608: I'm running Exim 3 under Debian, and want to upgrade to Exim 4. How
6544 difficult is it?
6545
6546A9608: A user who did this, using the Debian Exim 4 package, reported as
6547 follows:
6548
6549 (1) The exim4 package installs easily, and the exim (3.38) package
6550 uninstalls at the same time.
6551
6552 (2) Exim runs from \^inetd^\. Exim4 runs from \^/etc/init.d^\. \*Much*\ nicer!
6553
6554 (3) The exim conffile lives in \(/etc/exim/exim.conf)\. The exim4 conffile
6555 lives in \(/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated)\. It is, as the name
6556 suggests, autogenerated.
6557
6558 (4) A new directory is created called \(/etc/exim4)\. This contains the
6559 conffiles to generate the above config. You make changes here.
6560
6561 (5) Once you have made changes to the files in \(/etc/exim4)\ you run the
6562 script \^update-exim4.conf^\ which generates a replacement
6563 \(config.autogenerated)\.
6564
6565 [Added comment by the Debian maintainer, slightly edited:
6566 You also need to tell the Exim daemon to reread the changed
6567 configuration. You can do this using SIGHUP by hand. Alternatively,
6568 instead of running \^update-exim4.conf^\ you can use
6569
6570==> invoke-rc.d exim4 reload
6571
6572 which does the rebuild and also tells Exim to reread the changed
6573 configuration.]
6574
6575 (6) In my experience, you need to \*carefully*\ check the generated
6576 configs. eg, it did not generate a system filter file reference in the
6577 \(config.autogenerated)\. I didn't bother too much, since this is a home
6578 setup.
6579
6580 (7) All of this may be in the docs. I've read some of them, obviously,
6581 but didn't come across an actual upgrade guide.
6582
6583 [The Debian maintainer says:
6584 \(/usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.gz)\ and \^update-exim4.conf(8)^\
6585 should answer most of the questions.]
6586
6587 (8) I've still got some minor things to tweak to get back to where I
6588 was before with Exim 3. But overall, it's no drama.
6589
6590
6591Q9609: Why do some servers refuse SMTP connections from my Linux box, but accept
6592 connections from hosts running other operating systems?
6593
6594A9609: If you are sure this isn't a policy issue (that is, your box isn't
6595 administratively blocked for some reason), this may be because your
6596 Linux box has ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) enabled in its
6597 TCP/IP stack. There are many broken firewalls that refuse connections
6598 from ECN-enabled hosts. You can check the state of your box by running
6599
6600==> cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
6601
6602 If the value is "1", you have ECN enabled. You can turn it off by
6603 running this command:
6604
6605==> echo "0" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
6606
6607
6608
660997. SUN SYSTEMS
6610
6611Q9701: Exim builds fine with \^gcc^\ on SunOS 4 but crashes inside \^^sscanf()^^\.
6612
6613A9701: Make sure you are liking with the GNU \^ld^\ linker and not the system
6614 version of \^ld^\.
6615
6616
6617Q9702: How can I get rid of spurious \"^M"\ characters in messages sent from
6618 CDE \^dtmail^\?
6619
6620A9702: CDE \^dtmail^\ passes messages to Exim via the command line interface with
6621 lines terminated by CRLF, instead of the Unix convention of just LF. As
6622 Exim is an 8-bit clean program it treats the CR as just another data
6623 character. Exim has a command line option called \-dropcr-\ which causes
6624 it to ignore all CR characters in an incoming non-SMTP message. You
6625 should configure \^dtmail^\ to add this option to the command it uses to
6626 call Exim (using the path \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\). However, it has been
6627 reported that it isn't possible to change this call from \^dtmail^\ by any
6628 official means. An alternative approach is to replace \(/usr/lib/sendmail)\
6629 by a filtering script which removes the spurious CRs from the input
6630 before passing it to Exim.
6631
6632
6633Q9703: On SunOS 4 Exim crashes when looking up domains in the DNS that have
6634 more than 10 A records.
6635
6636A9703: There are Sun library patches to fix this. It is not Exim's problem.
6637 For 4.13_U1 the patch is 101558-xx; for 4.1.3 the patch is 100891-xx.
6638 From the README: \*1054748 ftp, ping dump core when connecting to a host
6639 with multiple DNS A records.*\ An alternative is to build another
6640 resolver library - such as the ones that are part of the \^bind^\
6641 distribution - and explicitly link against those.
6642
6643
6644Q9704: I am experiencing mailbox locking problems with Sun's \^mailtool^\ used
6645 over a network.
6646
6647A9704: Under the \"Expert"\ settings of \^mailtool^\ is a option to turn on \*Use
6648 network aware mail file locking*\. By default \^dtmail^\ has this set, but
6649 \^mailtool^\ doesn't. You should set it. The help info on \^dtmail^\ has this
6650 to say about it:
6651
6652 \*Mailer tries to prevent two different instances of itself from opening
6653 the same mail file at the same time through a technique that detects
6654 this access when both instances of Mailer and the file are all on the
6655 same machine. A network-aware mail file locking protocol is available
6656 that uses ToolTalk to coordinate instances of Mailer running from more
6657 than one machine, or mail files accessed over the network. Mailer can
6658 only change this option when first opening a mail file.*\
6659
6660 If you are using the SunOS4 version of \^mailtool^\, this apparently
6661 doesn't work. The only thing which does seem to work it getting the user
6662 to hit the \"done"\ button to make it release the lock.
6663
6664
6665Q9705: Exim has been crashing on my Solaris x86 system, apparently while
6666 running DBM functions.
6667
6668A9705: The use of \^ndbm^\ with \^gcc^\ has caused problems on x86 Solaris systems.
6669 Try changing one or the other; using either DB with gcc, or Sun's
6670 WS compiler with \^ndbm^\, has fixed this in the past.
6671
6672
6673Q9706: The \^exiwhat^\ utility isn't working for me on a Solaris 2 system.
6674
6675A9706: Have you got \(/usr/ucb)\ on your path? If so, it is probably picking up the
6676 wrong version of the \^ps^\ command. The \^exiwhat^\ script is built on
6677 Solaris to expect the normal Solaris version of \^ps^\.
6678
6679
6680Q9707: How do I stop Sun's \^dtcm^\ from hanging?
6681
6682A9707: From qmail's FAQ: \*There is a novice programming error in dtcm, known as
6683 ``failure to close the output side of the pipe in the child.'' Sun has,
6684 at the time of this writing, not yet provided a patch.*\
6685
6686
6687Q9708: I want Exim to use only the resolver (i.e. ignore \(/etc/hosts)\), but don't
6688 want to alter the \(nsswitch.conf)\ file in Solaris 2.
6689
6690A9708: You need to rebuild Exim after fiddling with \(OS/os.h-SunOS5)\:
6691
6692==> #define gethostbyaddr res_gethostbyaddr
6693 #define gethostbyname res_gethostbyname
6694 #define endhostent res_endhostent
6695 #define endnetent res_endnetent
6696 #define gethostent res_gethostent
6697 #define getnetbyaddr res_getnetbyaddr
6698 #define getnetbyname res_getnetbyname
6699 #define getnetent res_getnetent
6700 #define sethostent res_sethostent
6701 #define setnetent res_setnetent
6702
6703 Note that \-lnsl-\ is still needed in the Makefile as it
6704 contains code used by the NIS lookup and also the \^^inet_addr()^^\ function
6705 that Exim uses.
6706
6707
6708Q9709: When I try to compile Exim 4.x on Solaris 2.5.1 I get an error along the
6709 lines of \*no such field in struct as 'value.ui32'*\.
6710
6711A9709: Look in the Exim file \(OS/os.h-SunOS5.h)\ for the line
6712
6713==> #define LOAD_AVG_FIELD value.ui32
6714
6715 and change \"ui32"\ to \"ul"\ (that's u followed by the letter ell, not
6716 the digit one). Solaris 2.5.1 is getting \*very*\ old now...
6717
6718
6719
672098. CONFIGURATION COOKBOOK
6721
6722Q9801: How do I configure Exim as part of TPC (\?http://www.tpc.int?\)?
6723
6724A9801: Suppose you want to accept faxes destined for 1(801)539-*. These are
6725 addressed to the domain //9.3.5.1.0.8.1.tpc.int//. Set up a transport to
6726 handle the delivery:
6727
6728==> tpc:
6729 driver = pipe
6730 command = /usr/local/tpc/tpcmailer.pl $local_part@$domain \
6731 $sender_address
6732 pipe_as_creator
6733
6734 \(/usr/local/tpc/tpcmailer.pl)\ is the mail processing script that can
6735 be obtained from the TPC distribution. Create a router to route mail
6736 for the TPC domain to that transport. This must be placed before your
6737 other routers:
6738
6739==> tpc_router:
6740 driver = accept
6741 transport = tpc
6742 domains = *.9.3.5.1.0.8.1.tpc.int
6743
6744 Of course, there are other things to do as well before your system is
6745 a functioning TPC server.
6746
6747
6748Q9802: How do I configure Exim so that it sends mail to the outside world only
6749 from a restricted list of our local users?
6750
6751A9802: You will need to have a convenient way of checking the list. If it is
6752 only a handful of users, you could just list them inline. Otherwise, you
6753 need to put them in a file or database. Let's suppose you've just got a
6754 list in a file. Put this as your first router:
6755
6756==> check_outgoing:
6757 driver = redirect
6758 domains = ! +local_domains
6759 senders = ! : ! lsearch;/etc/permitted/senders
6760 allow_fail
6761 data = :fail: you are not allowed to send outside
6762
6763 The senders should be listed as complete addresses, with both a local
6764 part and a domain. For a large list, use a DBM or cdb file instead, or
6765 a database. The first item in the \senders\ list is empty, to match the
6766 empty sender. This is necessary because bounce messages have null
6767 senders.
6768
6769
6770Q9803: A site for which I provide secondary MX is down for some time. Is there
6771 a way to run the queue for that destination separately from the main
6772 queue?
6773
6774A9803: No, because Exim does not have the concept of ``the queue for that
6775 destination''. It simply has a single pool of messages awaiting delivery
6776 (and some of them may have several destinations). The best approach to
6777 this is to arrange for all messages for the site to be saved somewhere
6778 other than the main spool, either on a separate dedicated MTA, or in
6779 BSMTP files.
6780
6781
6782Q9804: We want to be able to temporarily lock out a user by disabling the
6783 password and moving the home directory to another place. How can we
6784 arrange to reject mail for users in this state?
6785
6786A9804: Change the home directory pointer in the passwd file to something
6787 distinctive. For example, we use \(/home/CANCELLED)\ for cancelled users.
6788 Then you can pick up such users with this router, which is placed
6789 immediately after \%system_aliases%\:
6790
6791==> cancelled_users:
6792 driver = redirect
6793 check_local_user
6794 condition = ${if eq {$home}{/home/CANCELLED}{yes}{no}}
6795 allow_fail
6796 data = :fail: this account is cancelled
6797
6798
6799Q9805: How can I configure Exim so that all mails addressed to
6800 //something@username.domain.net// get delivered to
6801 \(/var/spool/mail/username)\?
6802
6803A9805: Assuming that you have set up //username// as a normal user, with
6804 conventional routing for //username@domain.net// to that mailbox, all
6805 you need to do is set up a redirection, using a router like this:
6806
6807==> user_in_domain:
6808 driver = redirect
6809 data = ${if match{$domain}{\N^(.*)\.domain\.net$\N}\
6810 {$1}fail}@domain.net
6811
6812 If you set \envelope_to\ in the \%appendfile%\ transport, the original
6813 envelope address is preserved in the message in an ::Envelope-to::
6814 header line.
6815
6816
6817Q9806: How do I get exim not to add a ::Sender:: header to locally originated
6818 mail?
6819
6820A9806: It adds it only if the ::From:: header doesn't correspond to the user
6821 sending the message. You can suppress this by setting
6822 \no_local_from_check\. If your real question is \*How do I submit mail
6823 from UUCP without it adding ::Sender::?*\, see Q1503.
6824
6825
6826Q9807: Is there any way to have messages sent to a specific local address
6827 delayed by - say - 24 hours?
6828
6829A9807: Set up a router like this:
6830
6831==> delay:
6832 driver = redirect
6833 domains = the.domain
6834 local_parts = thelocalpart
6835 condition = ${if < {$message_age}{86400}{yes}{no}}
6836 allow_defer
6837 data = :defer: message not old enough
6838 no_verify
6839
6840 Of course, this will also have the effect of setting a retry time for
6841 the address. You may want to set a special retry rule for it. Note the
6842 use of \no_verify\ to ensure that this router is not used when Exim is
6843 verifying addresses.
6844
6845
6846Q9808: I have a mailing list exploder on one host, and three other hosts where
6847 I want to do the actual deliveries from. How can I get Exim to split
6848 a message into groups of recipients between the three hosts?
6849
6850A9808: Set up a router that routes all remote addresses to a specific
6851 transport, with a list of your three hosts. For example:
6852
6853==> send_to_three:
6854 driver = manualroute
6855 transport = to_three_smtp
6856 route_list = !+local_domains hostA:hostB:hostC
6857
6858 The transport looks like this:
6859
6860==> to_three_smtp:
6861 driver = smtp
6862 hosts_randomize
6863
6864 By setting \hosts_randomize\, you request that the host list be sorted
6865 randomly each time the transport is called, in order to spread the load.
6866 The number of times the transport is called for each message depends on
6867 the setting of the global option \remote_max_parallel\. If it is set to
6868 1, the transport is called only once for each message, so only one host
6869 is used, but different messages use different hosts because of the
6870 randomizing.
6871
6872 The \max_rcpt\ option (default 100) controls the number of addresses
6873 sent in each copy of the message - several copies are sent over the
6874 same connection if necessary.
6875
6876 If you want individual messages to be split between the three hosts, you
6877 must set the global option \remote_max_parallel\ to 3. This allows Exim
6878 to run 3 separate instances of the transport at once. It will pass
6879 one-third of all the addresses to each instance. Because the host list
6880 is randomized, not round-robinned, there is no guarantee that a single
6881 message will use all three hosts, but on average it should.
6882
6883
6884Q9809: Can I configure Exim so that my gateway host sends a copy of each
6885 incoming message to each of two internal hosts?
6886
6887A9809: The easiest way to do this is to make use of the \unseen\ router option,
6888 and set up two separate routers. You need to be able to identify
6889 incoming messages somehow. Typically this can be done by testing the
6890 domain of the recipient address, in which case the configuration should
6891 contain something like this:
6892
6893==> r1:
6894 driver = manualroute
6895 domains = ! *.your.domain.example
6896 route_data = * host1.your.domain.example
6897 transport = remote_smtp
6898 unseen
6899
6900==> r2:
6901 driver = manualroute
6902 domains = ! *.your.domain.example
6903 route_data = * host2.your.domain.example
6904 transport = remote_smtp
6905
6906 The \unseen\ setting on \%r1%\ means that after it has accepted an
6907 address, the address is also passed on to \%r2%\, and so two deliveries
6908 occur.
6909
6910
6911Q9810: How can I implement ``SMTP-after-POP'' with Exim?
6912
6913A9810: See Q0706.
6914
6915
6916Q9811: I would like to ``tap off'' a proportion of real mail traffic from my
6917 live mail server to use in tests of a new server. I want to preserve the
6918 envelope contents, but to suppress any error notifications to the
6919 original sender.
6920
6921A9811: See C046.
6922
6923
6924Q9812: How can I lookup data from a single file using both single IP addresses
6925 and IP address blocks as keys? I want to set \smtp_accept_max_per_host\
6926 by this means, and also include a default.
6927
6928A9812: You cannot do this in a single lookup, because you need separate lookups
6929 for individual addresses and address blocks. However, these lookups can
6930 be nested in a single expansion string. For example, suppose you are
6931 using an lsearch file with entries like this:
6932
6933==> 192.168.34.35: 4
6934 192.168.34.0/24: 2
6935 *: 1
6936
6937 You can use this setting:
6938
6939==> smtp_accept_max_per_host = \
6940 ${lookup{$sender_host_address}lsearch{/path/to/file}\
6941 {$value}\
6942 {\
6943 ${lookup{${mask:$sender_host_address/24}}lsearch*{/path/to/file}}\
6944 }}
6945
6946 Note that the first lookup does \*not*\ have an asterisk on the search
6947 type. If you have blocks of different sizes (/24, /26, etc) you have to
6948 configure it to do a separate lookup for each size, with just the final
6949 one using a default.
6950
6951
6952
695399. LIST OF SAMPLE CONFIGURATIONS
6954
6955As well as being hyperlinked from the HTML version of this document, each
6956sample configuration is also available as a file in the \(config.samples)\
6957directory, which can be independently downloaded.
6958
6959Samples whose names are of the form Cnnn are Exim configurations; those with
6960names of the form Fnnn are filter file fragments; those with names of the form
6961Lnnn are sample \^^local_scan()^^\ functions, and those with names of thf form
6962Snnn are scripts of various kinds. There are other examples of
6963\^^local_scan()^^\ functions at a number of web sites (for example,
6964\?http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html?\).
6965
6966There are gaps in the C and F numbers because I have omitted the Exim 3 samples
6967that have not been converted for Exim 4.
6968
6969C002: ``Although exim not intended for use in UUCP environment (it doesn't
6970 know anything about bang!path addresses), I'm successfully using it for
6971 delivering mail to UUCP clients.''
6972
6973C006: ``This is how I have configured a PP-inspired vacationnote, there is
6974 (was?) such a feature in PP. The user makes a file \(tripnote)\ in his/her
6975 home directory, the message is passed to the sender once with a short
6976 leading text.''
6977
6978C022: ``This is the Exim configuration file of a machine which delivers mail to
6979 several local domains where the mail is delivered locally, several hairy
6980 domains, handled as described below, and a half-virtual domain, which is
6981 first processed by its special alias file, then processed as other local
6982 domains (including the processing by the global alias file).''
6983
6984C037: An elegant way of using ETRN, which does immediate delivery if the host
6985 is online, but saves mail in a BSMTP file after some time on the queue.
6986 ETRN then re-injects the mail.
6987
6988C042: ``Since the Exim 4 configuration needed to get Mailman to work differs a
6989 little bit from Exim 3 and since I still haven't seen a recipe for
6990 Mailman with Exim 4, I'm providing my configuration (based heavily on
6991 \?http://www.exim.org/howto/mailman.html?\).''
6992
6993C043: ``Attached is an Exim 4 config file which is designed for an Exim server
6994 that is put in front of an Exchange 5.5 system but which verifies the
6995 valid addresses that are stored in Exchange via LDAP lookups against the
6996 Exchange server.''
6997
6998C044: ``I thought I'd submit this as an example of an authenticated mail hub
6999 configuration. Several people have asked for it so I thought it
7000 might be of interest.''
7001
7002C045: ``Here it is, for Exim 4.10 and Cyrus IMAPD 2.1.5 using db3/db4-format
7003 mailbox database. This configuration delivers the messages to Cyrus
7004 IMAPD using LMTP over a TCP/IP socket.''
7005
7006C046: ``Deliver a duplicate of some proportion of all messages to a special
7007 machine specified in the file \(/MAIL_TAP_HOST)\, if it exists.''
7008
7009C047: A sample configuration for calling Spamassassin directly from Exim.
7010
7011C049: ``I've been seeing a whole bunch of IPs that send me spam or virus mail
7012 and HELOing as one of my own IPs, or as HELO one.of.my.own.domains (or
7013 maybe HELO \primary_hostname\).''
7014
7015C050: A configuration that uses the DNS to implement virtual domains.
7016
7017C051: ``I've been working quite hard to come up with a config that reasonably
7018 matches the qmail-ldap setup, without the warts.''
7019
7020F001: ``I thought that the rest of the list may be interested in reviewing our
7021 filter as a starting point for their own system message filter.''
7022
7023F002: ``... program which refused mail from unknown addresses until they mailed
7024 me promising not to spam me ... since I'd already thought through how
7025 to do it in Exim, and knew it'd be slightly easier than falling out of
7026 bed, I went ahead and did it.''
7027
7028F003: ``Here's four checks installed in our system wide filter that knock out
7029 a lot of otherwise hard to detect rubbish.''
7030
7031F004: ``This is an Exim filter snippet to change locally-generated ::Message-Id::
7032 and ::Resent-Message-Id:: headers to world-unique values.''
7033
7034L001: A \^^local_scan()^^\ function for Exim that calls \^uvscan^\.
7035
7036S001: A Perl script for patching the name of the configuration file in an
7037 Exim binary.
7038
7039S002: ``When I moved from smail to exim I built a program that took individual
7040 config pieces, stripped all the comments, and built a config file.''
7041
7042*** End of Exim FAQ ***