Quoth Richard rebel on Fri, Sep 07, 2001 at 12:02:37PM +0000
> Now, aside from this lil argument thread, I did not see anyone post any
> pointers to web based admin tools for Exim right? Does anyone have a
> start at one? Maybe a webmin module? I just deployed a new mail system
> for my employers web/domain hosting customers based on Exim and would be
> interested. Eventually we'll end up writing something I am sure, but
> after the 'crash' I only have 3 people in my organization who are
> proficient beyond simple init scripts, so it'll be a while.
>
> So, if someone has a start at one, perhaps I or someone at the office can
> contribute.
While it is possible to do a simple admin tool that will set options and
the like, the real power of Exim comes from its versatility. You can
create your own routers, directors and transports to do the things that
*you* need to do. It is the creation of your own regular expressions and
databases lookups, your own blackhole, your own whatever that makes Exim
powerfull.
There is *NO* web tool that would be usefull for that. None whatsoever.
It's just not possible to code one that would allow you to do a tenth of
what ``vi /etc/exim_conf'' allows you to do. If you don't believe me,
try it. The more you'll start thinking aobut it, the more your web tool
will just look like a layer on vi.
What is usefull and you can do is a reporting system that will tell
managers states about their system. Think MRTG, but with mail info like
CPU usage, memory, disk IO, spool size, frozen messages, number of
processes, etc... Now that's usefull and pretty. Hell, you can even do
some states on the log files like Existat and present it in a nice web
form. That would be very usefull. Oh, if you choose to do that, please
do not write it in some scripting language (perl, python, sh, tcl...) as
they will hit the system too hard to get anything of value and they will
be slow as hell. C is the ideal choice there.
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