Re: [Exim] newbie email problems

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004 11:38:11 -0500 K. Shantanu wrote:

> * Tim Jackson <lists@???> [040706 09:30]:
> > 1. The Exim 'specification' (i.e. manual). Get it from the
> > website/FTP. Exim is possibly one of the best-document pieces of open
> > source software
> I skimmed through it. Does it by any chance assume that you already know
> Exim's earlier versions atleast.

Not really.

> I found it to be more of a reference manual than a tutorial.

Yes, it is. Nevertheless, with a bit of perseverence, once you get started
it's very readable. "Getting started" can often involve not much more than
reading through the default config file carefully, as it is in effect
"mini documentation" in itself.

> > 2. The Exim book. Buy it from a book shop. It's also written by Philip
> > Hazel, the author of Exim. It's not just a reprint of the manual.
> Wowoww!!! that is too high priced for people in this part of world.
> My whole year of college books were for less amount.

You're not the first to say that. I can only assume that the distribution
costs for a niche book from a small publisher must be what's putting the
cost up, since it's not much more expensive than most other technical
books over here in the UK.

> Sorry about being a bit edgy in the previous mails but I come
> from a background of qmail where MTAs are fun and easy things in life :)

I think you'll find that if you put a small initial bit of time investment
into Exim (well, version 4 anyway), you'll find it well worth it, and that
the power blows away most other alternatives. Basically, Exim 4 doesn't
have many "do_some_specific_thing" options; that's what Exim 3 (and
sendmail) had, and it turned into a bit of a mess. Instead, Exim 4 is
based on the idea of a few basic general concepts (ACLs, for policy
controls [mostly], routers, transports) and you can pretty much
write/rearrange them how you want. This makes the learning curve slightly
steeper, because there are rarely easy answers such as "add option xyz to
your config" to problems (as you have found from this thread; people
aren't being evasive, it's just that everyone's configuration is
different) but it's worth bearing in mind that:

1) the concepts are fairly simple to master. Once you get the hang of ACLs
and routers, you can easily understand the many examples/cookbooks etc.
that are out there, and easily formulate your own

2) Once you master the concepts, the power is awesome. You have very
fine-grained control over everything, from specific policy controls at
every stage of SMTP transactions, to complex routing policies

3) The "generic" nature of the config might sometimes make some simple
config requests (such as yours) slightly more complicated, but it also
often makes complicated requests simpler (or even possible).

4) the default config file is very good, and suitable for a lot of
configurations. It generally works "out of the box". Perhaps it should
have a (commented-out?) example of suffix-based routing though, since this
is a pretty common thing and only a couple of lines.


All of this is assuming Exim 4 though. Exim 3 is long-since deprecated,
for good reasons. (Nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but Exim 4 does
everything that Exim 3 does, and much much more, in a more sensible and
logical way).


Tim