[Exim] Having exim look for multiple configuration files

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Author: Marc Haber
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] Having exim look for multiple configuration files
Hi,

I would like to know if I am the only one finding the following
useful. In my environment, it would be handy to have exim search for
two configuration files and to use the first it finds. This could be
implemented by having
CONFIGURE_FILE=/etc/exim4/exim4.conf:/var/lib/exim4/exim4.conf
in Local/Makefile. exim would then use /etc/exim4/exim4.conf, if this
file is found, and use /var/lib/exim4/exim4.conf if the /etc file is
not found.

If I understand correctly, this can be done by a small patch against
readconf.c.

Philip, would you be willing to put this on your wishlist? Would you
want to implement this yourself, or would you prefer a patch (from me,
not being a very talented C programmer)?

The reason for this request is a packaging issue for building Debian
packages for exim4. Debian has a nice program, debconf, which allows
to ask the user during package installation for configuration options.
If we want to be able to change the answers to these questions later,
we need to generate the exim config file during package installation.
An automatically generated config file should not be in /etc as
mandated by the FHS, it should be in /var.

We also want people with more exim knowledge to be able to use their
own configuration file. Currently, we have a script that copies a
exim.conf.template from /etc to /var and does some modifications.
There is a possibility to have that script take the exim.conf.template
unaltered to /var if the user has written her completely own exim
configuration. I consider this very ugly, and would prefer to have
exim only look for the /var config file if none is found in /etc. This
could be accomplished by implementing the change to CONFIGURE_FILE in
Local/Makefile, which won't break existing setups.

What do you think?

Greetings
Marc

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