Re: [exim] Server Upgrade

On 14/04/2019 02:40, Jasen Betts via Exim-users wrote:
> On 2019-04-13, Rainer Dorsch via Exim-users <exim-users@???> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I want to upgrade my server from Debian Jessie to Debian Stretch. I am afraid
>> that at some time during the upgrade process, there is an invalid exim
>> configuration and messages get rejected. In order to avoid that I was thinking
>> of either redirecting via DNS to a server which does not listen to port 25 to
>> enforce the sender to try again. Or redirect via DNS to a server which buffers
>> all incoming messages until the Stretch setup is tested (not sure which server
>> software does this though...).
>>
>> Can anybody recommend one of the approaches or even propose something
>> better...?
> Use iptables rules to block the public allowing only your tests to
> reach exim.
>
> If you have not editied any Debian conffiles the upgrade should proceed
> smoothly with only a brief outage, no spurious rejects.
>
> during the upgrade process a bad config is much more likely to prevent
> exim from running than to cause spurious rejects.
>
> I use Debian's split config wich allows me to separate my config
> tweaks from the Debian provided conf files, this vastly reduces the
> amount of editing needed during upgrades.


I prefer a simple life so dumped Ubuntu and Debian due to systemd
entanglement and switched to Devuan 'Ascii' but have now upgraded to
Devuan 'Beowulf' in order to get OpenSSL 1.1.1, TLSv1.3 etc.

Installed build-essential, libsrs-alt and a load of development headers,
pulled Exim 4.92 and compiled from source. Everything compiles clean
under GCC8 and works as expected.

I use a singe, monolithic, configuration file /etc/exim/exim.conf.

I'm just about to make it live on three email relays over the bank holiday.

Life is simple and everything 'just works'(tm) and it ought to ... YMMV ;-)


Mike