[Exim] conceptual auth problem

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Author: Tamas TEVESZ
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] conceptual auth problem
hi,

i think i'm having a conceptual misunderstanding with asmtp.

when exim acts only as a client - fine, when only as a server - fine,
when both a client and a server where it has to authenticate itself to
one and only one other server (say a smarthost) - fine.

but what if i have several smarthosts (say as fallback smarthosts),
which all require me to authenticate myself, but i have different
account names and passwords on them (let alone what if they
require different kinds of authentication) ?

the problem is i can't even illustrate properly what am i missing.
the way i think it would make more sense is that the authenticators
section should only include the configuration for exim as the auth
server, and the client part should go someplace else, maybe directly
into the transport. if it were so, i could easily do something like:

remote_smtp:
  driver = smtp
  authenticate_hosts = smarthost1 ^ username1 ^ password1 : \
    smarthost2 ^ username2 ^ password2


(never mind the actual syntax, i'm just trying illustrate my point).

so, if smtp connects to smarthost1, it would use username1/username2,
same goes for smarthost2/username2/password2... you get the idea.

i realize this as it is still leaves the method open, but first i'd
like to ask for some help to express my problem :) (you know it feels
kind of weird when you don't understand what don't you understand,
and can't ask it because you don't understand it...).

i think what i'd like to see here is an expandable authenticate_hosts
(or maybe an authenticate_hosts_file ?), with falling back to no
authentication when no matching hosts are found ?

anyone with a hand ? it's ok to tell me to buzz off, but please
include some explanation then :)

i feel like dumbest...

thanks a lot,

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