On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Nicolas Dorfsman wrote:
> But, I can't understand why don't you include plain/login
> AUTH and tls configs in the standard config file....
The original idea of the default configuration was that it was suitable
for "end-of-line" hosts that just received mail from the Internet for
their own local mailboxes, and sent mail over the Internet. This was
the world I was used to - back in 1995. There was no AUTH or TLS
support (can't remember if the RFCs actually existed back then). Also,
the people who I expected to take up Exim were experienced Unix
sysadmins.
I haven't really done much to the default configuration since the
beginning.
Nowadays, it seems that a lot of less experienced people are picking
Exim up and trying to use it in server situations where they want to
have AUTH (and sometimes TLS) support.
I don't want to make the default configuration huge and complicated,
because that will make it daunting in the simple case. The idea is that
it will, unmodified, handle an "end-of-line" host. There is no way I
can include AUTH or TLS, because I don't know how the sysadmin wants to
perform the authentication, or where the certificates, etc. are. The
only thing that could be done would be to put commented-out suggestions
in the file.
I'd rather not do this, because it clutters up the file. There are
sample configurations, and there are examples in the manual and in the
book. Of course, these can always be improved, and I'll try to do so
over time.
Maybe I should put in a single line saying "This is where you stick in
the authentication configuration if you are running a server that needs
to support AUTH. See chapter xxx for information about what to put
here."
Philip
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
