Re: [Exim] EXIM_USER value in Makefile during building

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Author: Tim Jackson
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] EXIM_USER value in Makefile during building
On Tue, 29 Apr 2003 12:15:14 +0100 Wei wrote:

> Now I have understood that EXIM_USER is olny used to specify the
> privilege that the Exim daemon would run with. I think I'm just lack of
> some basic understanding of how the daemons work in Linux. I guess every
> daemon is run by a specific user so that the privilege management of
> each daemon would come down to managing the privileges of these users.


More or less, yes. If you are going to be doing anything much with Linux
(or any other Unix-type system), you would probably find it well worth
your money to invest in a beginners Linux book, which will introduce some
of the basic concepts like users, permissions etc. These things can be
confusing when new, yet (quite reasonably; it would be silly to duplicate
it all the time) most documentation will assume a basic working knowledge
of these things.

> Having just transfered from the Windows world,
> I guess I have a lot of weird questions.


Not "weird", just the usual. We have all been there once and had to figure
it out. Many of us (like me) still learn new things every day. Actually,
if you're talking about things like users and permissions, the basic
concepts aren't necessarily *completely* alien to those used under
versions of Windoze that have the (proper) concept of users; they have
some similarities.

Since you're using Mandrake, which is an RPM-based system, you may be able
to use one of the RPMs pre-built for Exim, or at worst compile your own
from a source RPM. You may find this easier to get started with. Try the
RPMs/SRPMs on ftp.exim.org, or alternatively you might want to look at my
version on http://www.timj.co.uk/linux/ . I don't know if anyone's tried
them on Mandrake, but I don't see there should be any major problems.


Tim