Re: [Exim] 4.24 .include weirdness

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Jeffrey Wheat
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] 4.24 .include weirdness
On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Jeffrey Wheat wrote:

> I've just built exim 4.24 on a FreeBSD 5.0 server
> and decided to convert the config file to use the
> .include feature as to avoid redoing it each time
> I upgrade.


You do realize, I hope, that this means Exim will have to open and read
n files instead of 1 each time a new Exim delivery process is started,
which can be very often on a busy system. It maybe that in your
enviroment this is not noticeable, but...

[Aside 1: Smail used multiple config files; for Exim I went for one file
instead, partly for the performance reason, but partly because I want to
be able to see the whole thing at once in my editor. Seems like not
everyone feels this way. :-]

[Aside 2: For absolute maximum performance in this area, I would write a
script to build the "live" config from one or more source files,
stripping out all the comments. But I suspect the performance gain would
not be very much. Exim is, after all, limited by disk accesses rather
than cpu.]

> I have noticed something weird about it however. If I do this:


I will investigate the weirdness in due course. Thanks for the report.

--
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book:    http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book