Re: [EXIM] Testing incoming...

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Author: Sherwood Botsford
Date:  
To: Philip Hazel
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [EXIM] Testing incoming...
On Wed, 21 Jan 1998, Philip Hazel wrote:

= On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Sherwood Botsford wrote:
= 
= > There are various ways that exim can reject mail.  Currently
= > it logs terse words such as (host accept) or (reject).
= 
= That's to try to keep the size of the logs down.
= 
= >  Sometimes
= > I've gotten too clever, and I can't figure out which line
= > in the configuration or in the databses is actually doing the
= > rejecting.  Is there a way to tell it, "What line rejected this"
= > or alternately, a quick way to run a rejected address through
= > exim with a flag to have it tell me in detail why it was rejected?
= 
= Nice idea noted. Could involve some considerable surgery, however, 
= because some of the code is along the lines of
= 
=   if (  (function_a() || function_b()) && !function_c()  )
=     reject the message 


= so disentangling exactly what the condition was would require keeping
= track of what the different functions (which typically search lists)
= returned.
=
= Nevertheless, I'll see what I can do when I get to this.

Hmm.
    A command line flag from exim that said "What would you do with 
<address>" and modifying the function code so that if this flag was set,
it would log a message as a side effect.


    Problem is that every one of these checks that you add slows down
exim.  And with the spam problem being what it is, making exim fast 
becomes more significant.


    Perhaps the long term solution is to split exim into two programs.
One is a production program that is used for routine.  The other is exim-diag
with all the debug/testing/administation code in it.  Both are installed
by default.  exim calls exim-diag if it doesn't understand a flag.
    Most of this, I think could be handled with a single ifdef option
for the includes.
    This also makes the production code smaller, and easier to check 
for security.


= 
= -- 
= Philip Hazel                   University Computing Service,
= ph10@???             New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
= P.Hazel@???          England.  Phone: +44 1223 334714
= 
= 


Sherwood Botsford     | email avatar@???
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System Administrator    | Tel: 403 492 5728 
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