On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Tony Finch wrote:
> There are two times when you need to know the spool directory: when
> writing the message as it is received, which Exim starts to do after the
> message header has arrived; and when reading the message to attempt
> delivery.
That is only if you are thinking about a message. The spool directory
contains stuff other than the queue. For instance, the callout hints.
Those are needed at ACL time.
But I'll suppose we are talking about knowing which *sub* directory of the
spool directory to use ("input" or something else).
> There are two sub-cases for deliveries: immediate deliveries and queue
> runner deliveries. In the former case you want to propagate the original
> setting of spool_directory through to the delivery processes; in the
> latter case you probably want to set the spool directory when starting the
> queue runner and propagate it to the delivery processes from there.
>
> Is that plausible?
It's plausible, but I think thought would have to be applied to the
other cases, such as manual prodding of a message. If you want to
"deliver 1Crkvw-00017U-5M" say, are you going to require the sysadmin to
have to find out where that particular message is stored? Personally, I
don't think I'd like to release a system of that type. However, I guess
in the case where we are just talking about varying "input", Exim could
search all of them, as it does for split_spool_directory.
Bottom line: Before doing anything along these lines, I would need to
think a lot more, read the code a lot more, make some proposals, and
think through their consequences.
I will put something on the WishList so that it isn't forgotten.
--
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
