Re: [Exim] Planning for Exim 4 - Revised Document

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Autor: Philip Hazel
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A: Vadim Vygonets
CC: exim-users
Assumpte: Re: [Exim] Planning for Exim 4 - Revised Document
On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Vadim Vygonets wrote:

> I'd like to volunteer for writing something, maybe the config
> file converter script, maybe some of the code.


It will be a while before the config is certain (because it may change
as I work on things), but I will remember that offer.

> | When Exim gives up root privilege temporarily by calling
> | seteuid(exim), it is vulnerable to manipulation by other processes
> | running as exim. (In discussion, I was told that this behaviour
> | does not in fact happen in all operating systems.
>
> Do you know which ones are vulnerable?


All I know is that Solaris is not.

> It's hard to understand whether "sender" and "recipient" are
> domains, local parts, or whole addresses, as they're used in all
> three senses in the examples.


Aha! They are addresses, but the values given with them are "address
lists" as already used in Exim. Address lists can contain a variety of
pattern types, some of which are just domains. Obviously, the final
documentation must make this very clear.

> I never understood why you chose 'end' as a "border line", and
> not 'begin', or 'new_section', or whatever.


It just happened. Maybe I think about ends more than beginnings. There
used to be a tradition in Cambridge that we had a party when we turned
off an old, well-loved computer, and not when we turned on a nasty,
unfriendly new one. But with the demise of the last mainframe, that
tradition has now ceased.

I just wanted some unique line as a separator. (Smail 3 has separate
configuration files, and I got fed up with having to edit several files
at once to keep them in step.)

> Or maybe "@[]" (no quotes)?


I like that.

> I would also like to propose an expantion directive
> ${address:...}, which would work like ${local_part:...} and
> ${domain:...}, so to extract an address from, say, a header,
> instead of saying:
>    ${local_part:$h_X-Hdr:}@${domain:$h_X=Hdr:}
> it would be possible to say:
>    ${address:$h_X-Hdr:}
> (and the same for filters).


Er, but a header might contain more than one address. In a filter,
you've got the foranyaddress feature to cope with that.

> What about ATRN? Is it implemented on server side?


The Wish List contains

Exim can't support ATRN directly, but it could be made to call a script,
along the lines of ETRN.

I'm not abandoning the Wish List. I will add the client point.

> You started to write Exim before IPv6 addresses entered your
> mind. Therefore the Double Colon. Maybe it's time to replace
> colons in config file with some other character, such as
> semicolon?


Well, for lists where it matters, you can now change the separator to
taste. For very many lists it doesn't matter, so I'm inclined to leave
colon, because it is commonly used as a list separator.

> And, Philip, let me thank you again for Exim. It's cool.


You're welcome. Thanks for your support.

Philip

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.