On Wed, 18 Oct 2006, Hill Ruyter wrote:
> When I run the invoke-rc.d exim4 stop
> I check with ps -ef and there is still an exim process running
> [115 14932 1 0 Oct17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/exim4 -bd -q30m]
>
> (is this a daemon ?)
That could either be a daemon, or a process forked by the daemon to
receive an incoming message. Try using the "exiwhat" utility to see what
the process really it. (Run "exiwhat" as root.)
> I am still able to send e-mail using my outlook client from a remote machine
> in fact this very e-mail has been sent using outlook express immediately
> after doing a stop ...
That suggests that the daemon has not been stopped. As has been pointed
out, the "start/stop" script you used is not part of Exim itself. I do
not supply such a thing in the distribution, as it is very dependent on
the OS that you are using.
The "generic" way to stop an Exim daemon is:
(1) Find the daemon's process id (pid). This should be in a file called
exim-daemon.pid in Exim's spool directory. If you don't know where the
spool directory is, run "exim -bP spool_directory".
(2) Use "kill" to stop the daemon. This will often work:
kill `cat /var/spool/exim/exim-daemon.pid`
> If I make a change to my configuration file do I need to stop and start the
> process for the change to take effect ?
No, but you need to send a HUP signal to the daemon:
kill -hup `cat /var/spool/exim/exim-daemon.pid`
will often work. This does not stop the process, but it re-initializes
itself and re-reads the new configuration.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service
Get the Exim 4 book: http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book
