[exim] Re: Bug#270735: exim4: Self-denial of mail service

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Author: Peter Savitch
Date:  
To: Greg Kochanski
CC: exim-users
Subject: [exim] Re: Bug#270735: exim4: Self-denial of mail service
Greg,

IMHO this is pointless.

While load average means almost nothing, it is at least wide-spread
feature and somebody likes it. As for me, I don't. Year ago I maintained
an Exim installation that utilized things people discussed here last
days very intensive (like VM control, conditional queueing, OOM, etc.).
I can tell that it is very OS-specific, installation-specific,
task-specific, and, of course, admin-specific. Well, it's *-specific.

If you do like such functionality, you'll find all the necessary Exim
capabilities: reading files, sockets and the like will aid your custom
logic with the system state. Exim's conditional things like queueing in
ACLs gives about 70% to 90% of the required control.

As for me, I've spent about 10 hours to code my own, very private, very
OS-specific Exim lookup, just because our system used custom Linux
2.2-based kernel. In my case, all possible OS-dependent autoconf bite
the dust, that is, just sucks ;-) My patch did everything I want, and I
did not show my custom lookup to anyone, especially in this list, just
because such functionality is useless.

If you an OS writer, you can code your lookup, and inject it directly
into Exim's body (much like exiscan do). Some additional things (like
custom ACL configuration and so on) should be done and your new shiny
brilliant RPM is ready. Your custom lookup returns values describing
system state, and your custom Exim configuration uses them in a way your
OS distribution like. Make some KDE/Gnome GUI, salt and sugar for the
taste.

As for me again, I consider things like queue_only_load and so on as
*deprecated* in favor of conditional, very fine-tunable ACL control.
Furthermore, I don't even like Exim's code that make use of that
options. Well, I don't like and I just don't use it (and I don't ask
Philip to remove them, just because removing them could bite somebody's
butt some day).

Exim is very conservative (like a true British), and I don't expect any
automake/autoconf there. And I guess nobody expect.

Well, sorry, it's just my private point of view.

Take care.

-----Original Message-----
From: exim-users-bounces@??? [mailto:exim-users-bounces@exim.org]
On Behalf Of Greg Kochanski
Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 3:37 PM
To: Andreas Metzler
Cc: exim-users@???; 270735@???
Subject: [exim] Re: Bug#270735: exim4: Self-denial of mail service


[snip]

One might have to write an OS-dependent
function; that kind of thing is often done
with automake and autoconf.