At 9:58 +0100 3/22/2002, Tony Earnshaw wrote:
>As far as Exim's concerned, there are many compile-time options that
>suit some and not others. And as for difficultie in configuring it, just
>follow this list. If everyone knew the docs by heart, or even knew where
>to find things, then the volume on the list would be cut by a quarter.
We're hand-building Exim, mostly so we get the "right" options compiled,
and so we can put files and directories where we want them. We have a
suite of three scripts (the second of which could/should call the third,
which still needs to be separate) which make the job quite easy. [These
are just an add-on to our suite which does most of the work of building a
new server the way we like it.] The first removes the old build directory,
untars the tarball, copies Makefile and one subsidiary Makefile into place
from our auxiliary files repository, does make and also creates needed
directories in various places [that part should be moved to the second].
The main work is adjusting the Makefile if needed...not much adjustment is
needed.
The second does make install and does various installation
adjustments--including moving sendmail aside if it was present to start
with; the third copies our suite of configuration files into place (running
a -bV -C <candidate main configuration>--setting the prior suite aside for
possible reuse).
The third script closes with exiwhat so that the admin can *decide to* HUP
the server knowing the right UID. Or decide to do something else
(like...OOPS!!!, service exim stop). [Mostly, the admin is in the loop
because I'm too lazy to script digging the UID out of exiwhat's output and
running the HUP] And the configuration file of course needs tuning for the
role of the server...the second server of a kind is much easier than the
first.
I was pushed into finally parameterizing the Exim version number in the
scripts by Philip's (wise) move to encoding the version and build count
(always 1 for us) into the executable name. I should have done it long
ago. The scripts are still being refined (I refined until about 0115 this
morning...;-( starting at 2345...not as bad as it sounds, although the task
in hand should have taken 15 minutes).
As to configuration, a good many of the questions could be avoided by a
little reading. But that's true of any product. And I'm busily reading
about Exim 4.
=========
We're moving toward becoming an RPM-using shop. But not dogmatically...we
probably solved an openLDAP crash earlier in the week by moving from the
latest RPM to a hand build incorporating patches. Too soon to be sure.
But if we can install from RPM, we do. [I tried to move that policy to my
laptop last week (RH 7.2), and wound up with a Mozilla 0.9.9 which
segfaults upon launch...oh well...no time to chase it yet.] We're at the
"could we do that with RPM instead?" stage.
Everything I read suggests that the Debian packages "work better" than RPM
on average...but we don't run Debian.
--John
--
John Baxter jwblist@??? Port Ludlow, WA, USA
