"Jason Shultz" <jshultz@???> writes:
> I'm currently running the stable distribution of debian "woody". I
> know a lot of you have migrated on to exim 4.2. since it's listed as
> unstable in the packagages database I was wondering what I should be
> doing.
You're apparently mistaking the 'unstable' label of debian package (or
to be more exact the debian distribution branch it sits in) for the
stability of Exim itself. The latter is stable enough to be called
stable, I believe ;>
> Should I sit back with what debian has as the stable version of
> exim?
As it was mentioned - if It's enough for you - yes. What you get
is fast bugfixes, especially those concerning security issues and
certainty that the package itself is well tested and that it
interoperates well with the rest of the distribution (that's more
or less what 'stable' in debian terms means).
> Should I upgrade to 3.36 (which is currently in the testing stage)
Don't believe so.
> or go full tilt and go for 4.2? What are the benefits of moving
> forward?
That won't be that easy, the debian package is linked against some
libraries, that aren't available in woody/stable (i. e. gnutls).
You could consider backporting the package to woody, i.e. recompilin
it from debian sources in woody environment and with OpenSSL instead
of GnuTLS. That's what I'm doing, it requires some work though as
you don't have upgrades or security fixes and you have care for them
yourself.
> What are the benefits of moving forward?
First of all 3.x is so old that only few people will remember how to
do certain things with it, I guess ;) Secondly, certain things are only
possible with Exim 4 - like virus scanning or spam classification on
message reception, just to name those that made me decide that I want
to upgrade.
> Is it going to be a complicated mess to upgrade?
It's not trivial. Debian package provides a multiple-file configuration
scheme that is said to be clean and help configuration. I prefer the old,
plain, single-file config though.
If you think of testing how the backported packages work, take a look at
ftp://ftp.rotfl.eu.org/pub/debian-custom/ and the exim4*.deb files there.
Just remember - the warranty is limited to: "they work for me" :)
Regards,
--
(-) Łukasz Grochal lukie [at] berdyczow.org
(PGP key / SSL cert at: )
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