Re: [Exim] problem changing UID

Top Page
Delete this message
Reply to this message
Author: Michael Collin Nielsen
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] problem changing UID
On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Philip Hazel wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Michael Collin Nielsen wrote:
>
> > I've tried that, and it all looks dandy to me, except for the errormessage
> > about exim not beeing able to create spoolfile:
>
> I know what is going on. Pity I've just frozen the docs for 4.10...
>
> > The errormessage arrives as exim tries to create the vacation message,
>
> That's the clue.
>
> Basically, you can't use -C (even when started by root) to run an
> instance of Exim that is going to try to send an autoreply message from
> a non-root, non-exim process.
>
> When Exim is called with -C, it passes on -C to any instances of itself
> that it calls (so that the whole sequence uses the same config file).
> If it's running as exim when it does this, all is well. However, if it
> happens as a consequence of a non-privileged user running an autoreply,
> the called Exim gives up its root privilege. Then it can't write the
> spool.
>
> Because of the architecture of Exim (using re-execs to regain
> privilege), there isn't any way round this in general.
>
> However, in your case, you could change things round, and use -C for
> when you start the -bd daemon, and not use -C for the -q daemon.
>
> Or try to figure out some way of configuring exim so that you don't
> actually need to use -C at all. What are the differences between your
> two configuration files?


Ok, that explains what's going on. The only (important) difference
between the two configurationfiles is the spool_directory. That has to be
different as mail is moved from the incomming spool to the outgoing spool
by MailScanner.

If I used a -D<macro>=<value> would that trigger the same problem ?

Regards
-Michael

--
   Michael Collin Nielsen  mailto:michael@hum.auc.dk
   M.Sc.E.E.               http://www.hum.auc.dk/~michael
   Sysadm in Faculty of Humanities, Aalborg University