[Exim] User experience: Exim 3.38 to Exim 4.22 under Debian

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Author: Enkidu
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] User experience: Exim 3.38 to Exim 4.22 under Debian
I've just moved from Exim 3.38 to Exim 4.22 under Debian. 3.38 was
installed from "testing" and 4.22 was installed from "unstable". I
didn't take any precautions like backups etc because this is a home
setup. (I look after a sendmail setup at work, but that's another
story!)

I was partly encouraged to do so by someone who said that, under
Debian, the upgrade is smooth and painless. Well, it was, mostly.

Here's some of what I discovered:

1) The exim4 package installs easily, and the exim (3.38) package
uninstalls at the same time.

2) Exim runs from inetd. Exim4 runs from /etc/init.d. *Much* nicer!

3) The exim conffile lives in /etc/exim/exim.conf. The exim4 conffile
lives in /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated. It is, as the name
suggests autogenerated.

4) A new directory is created called /etc/exim4. This contains the
conffiles to generate the above config. You make changes here.

5) Once you have made changes to the files in /etc/exim4 you run the
script update-exim4.conf which generates a replacement
config.autogenerated.

6) In my experience you need to *carefully* check the generated
configs. eg, it did not generate a system filter file reference in the
config.autogenerated. I didn't bother too much, since this is a home
setup.

7) All of this may be in the docs. I've read some of them, obviously,
but didn't come across an actual upgrade guide.

8) I've still got some minor things to tweak to get back to where I
was before with exim (3.38). But overall, it's no drama.

Cheers,

Cliff
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