UPDATE-EXIM4.CONF(8) System Manager's Manual UPDATE-EXIM4.CONF(8)
NAME
update-exim4.conf - Generate exim4 configuration files.
SYNOPSIS
update-exim4.conf [-v|--verbose] [-h|--help] [--keepcomments] [--re-
movecomments] [-o|--output file]
OPTIONS
--check
Generate temporary configuration file, check its validity and
exit with either success (exitcode 0) or an error (exitcode 1).
On success the temporary file is deleted, otherwise the file is
left for further debugging.
-d|--confdir directory
Read input from directory instead of /etc/exim4.
-h|--help
Show short help message and exit
--keepcomments
Do not remove comment lines from the output file.
-o|--output file
Write output to file instead of /var/lib/exim4/config.autogener-
ated.
--removecomments
Remove comment lines from the output file. [Default]
-v|--verbose
Enable verbose mode
DESCRIPTION
The script update-exim4.conf generates the main configuration files
/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated for Exim v4 by merging the data in
the template file /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template or the ones in the
/etc/exim4/conf.d directory tree respectively and /etc/exim4/up-
date-exim4.conf.conf to the output file /var/lib/exim4/config.autogen-
erated.
If dc_use_split_config in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf specifies a
split configuration, update-exim4.conf processes the /etc/exim4/conf.d
subdirectories in the order main, acl, router, transport, retry, re-
write and auth. Within each directory it takes files in lexical sort
order by file name. It concatenates all these files and makes the deb-
conf replacement described below.
If you are not using split configuration update-exim4.conf concatenates
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.localmacros (if this file exists) and
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template (in this order) and makes the debconf
replacement described below.
In either case, before outputting the result to /var/lib/exim4/con-
fig.autogenerated, update-exim4.conf generates a number of exim config-
uration macros from the contents of dc_something from /etc/exim4/up-
date-exim4.conf.conf and inserts them into the configuration right af-
ter the definition of the exim configuration macro UPEX4CmacrosUPEX4C
(which is only used as placeholder for this case). The macro defini-
tions are bracketed with .ifdef clauses to allow the local admin to
override the values with earlier definitions. update-exim4.conf makes
no other changes to the configuration. This makes it very simple to
make small changes to the configuration and still have the benefits of
debconf.
On the other hand if you don't want to manage exim4.conf with debconf
install your own handcrafted version as /etc/exim4/exim4.conf. Exim
will use this file if it exists and ignore the autogenerated one. Ad-
ditionally you might want to set dc_eximconfig_configtype=none in
/etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf to stop debconf from asking you ques-
tions about exim4.
update-exim4.conf exits silently and does nothing if
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf exists and -o was not used to direct the output
to a different file than /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.
update-exim4.conf will only use files in the conf.d directory that have
a filename which consists only of letters, numbers, underscores and hy-
phens ([:alnum:]_-), similar to run-parts(8). Additionally, up-
date-exim4.conf will use /etc/exim4/conf.d/foo/bar.rul instead of
/etc/exim4/conf.d/foo/bar if the .rul file exists. This is meant to be
helpful for easy interaction with packages extending Exim.
If the new configuration will be written to /var/lib/exim4/config.auto-
generated, update-exim4.conf will check the validity of the freshly
generated configuration. If the new file is detected as invalid, up-
date-exim4.conf leaves the old /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated un-
touched and exits with an error.
However, there are still possible invalidities that can only be de-
tected at run time. This most notably applies to errors in expressions
that are expanded at run time.
If the new configuration will be written to some other file, no valid-
ity checking occurs and that file will always be overwritten.
EXAMPLES
You want to be able to check exim's queue as normal user: Generate a
new file, e.g. /etc/exim4/conf.d/main/40_local_mailq, containing only
the line queue_list_requires_admin = false
NOTES
update-exim4.conf changes the file permissions of the output file to
the value of the environment variable CFILEMODE. If CFILEMODE is nei-
ther set in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf nor in the environment it
defaults to 0644. Change this to 0640 if you are keeping sensitive in-
formation (LDAP credentials et. al.) in there.
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
All lists given in configuration variables are semicolon-separated. In
the past, they used to be colon separated. This was changed to semi-
colon separation to make specification of IPv6 addresses easier. Back-
wards compatibility is preserved, so that old configurations using
colons as separators do still work. Colons are deprecated and might
stop working in a later release. If you need to specify a single IPv6
address in a field that is defined as a list of host names or IP ad-
dresses, please prefix "<;" to explicitly specify the list separator as
a semicolon. Otherwise, the code cannot tell an IP address from a
colon-separated list of strange host names.
Using lookups like "dsearch;something" in update-exim4.conf.conf has
never been supported and does no longer work! If you need this, please
convert to directly setting the appropriate macros.
update-exim4.conf evaluates these patterns in /etc/exim4/up-
date-exim4.conf.conf:
CFILEMODE
The octal file mode of the generated file.
dc_eximconfig_configtype
The main configuration type. Sets macro DC_eximconfig_config-
type. The macro usually contains a shorthand for one of the
choices for the "General type of mail configuration" debconf
question (See README.Debian).
dc_eximconfig_configtype <-> debconf configtype mapping:
"internet"
internet site; mail is sent and received directly using
SMTP
"smarthost"
mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail
"satellite"
mail sent by smarthost; no local mail
"local"
local delivery only; not on a network
"none" no configuration at this time
dc_hide_mailname
Boolean option that controls whether the local mailname in the
headers of outgoing mail should be hidden. (Only effective for
"smarthost" and "satellite". Sets macro HIDE_MAILNAME.
dc_mailname_in_oh
Internal use only Boolean option that is set by the maintainer
scripts after adding the contents of /etc/mailname to the
dc_other_hostnames list. This is a transition helper since it
wouldn't otherwise be possible to see whether that domain name
has been removed from dc_other_hostnames on purpose. This is not
used by update-exim4.conf, and no macro is set.
ue4c_keepcomments
Boolean option that controls whether update-exim4.conf strips
the comments from the target configuration file (default) or
leaves them in. This can be overridden by the command line op-
tions --keepcomments and --removecomments. The value is not
written to an exim macro.
dc_localdelivery
name of the default transport for local mail delivery. Defaults
to mail_spool if unset, use maildir_home for delivery to
~/Maildir/. Sets macro LOCAL_DELIVERY.
dc_local_interfaces
List of IP addresses the Exim daemon should listen on. If this
is left empty, Exim listens on all interfaces. Sets macro
MAIN_LOCAL_INTERFACES only if there is a non-empty value.
dc_minimaldns
Boolean option to activate some option to minimize DNS lookups,
if set to "true" a macro DC_minimaldns is defined. If true, the
macro DC_minimaldns is set to 1, and the macro MAIN_HARD-
CODE_PRIMARY_HOSTNAME is set to the appropriately post-processes
output of hostname --fqdn.
dc_other_hostnames
is used to build the local_domains list, together with "local-
host". This is the list of domains for which this machine
should consider itself the final destination. The local_domains
list ends up in the macro MAIN_LOCAL_DOMAINS.
dc_readhost
For "smarthost" and "satellite" it is possible to hide the local
mailname in the headers of outgoing mail and replace it with
this value instead, using rewriting. For "satellite" only, this
value is also the host to send local mail to. Sets macro DCread-
host.
dc_relay_domains
is a list of domains for which we accept mail from anywhere on
the Internet but which are not delivered locally, e.g. because
this machine serves as secondary MX for these domains. Sets
MAIN_RELAY_TO_DOMAINS.
dc_relay_nets
A list of machines for which we serve as smarthost. Please note
that 127.0.0.1 and ::1 are always permitted to relay since
/usr/lib/sendmail is available anyway and relay control doesn't
make sense here. Sets macro MAIN_RELAY_NETS.
dc_smarthost
List of hosts to which all outgoing mail is passed to and that
takes care of delivering it. Each of the hosts is tried, in the
order specified (See exim specification, chapter 20.5). All de-
liveries go out to TCP port 25 unless a different port is speci-
fied after the host name, separated from the host name by two
colons. Colons in IPv6 addresses need to be doubled. If a port
number follows, IP addresses may be enclosed in brackets, which
might be the only possibility to specify delivery to an IPv6 ad-
dress and a different port. Examples:
host.domain.example deliver to host looked up on DNS, tcp/25
host.domain.example::587 deliver to host looked up on DNS,
tcp/587
192.168.2.4 deliver to IPv4 host, tcp/25
192.168.2.4::587 deliver to IPv4 host, tcp/587
[192.168.2.4]::587 deliver to IPv4 host, tcp/587
2001::0db8::f::4::::2 deliver to IPv6 host, tcp/25
[2001::0db8::f::4::::2]::587 deliver to IPv6 host, tcp/587
This is used as value of the DCsmarthost macro.
dc_use_split_config
Boolean option that controls whether update-exim4.conf uses
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template ("false") or the multiple files
below /etc/exim4/conf.d ("true") as input. This does not set any
macros.
The macro MAIN_PACKAGE_VERSION is set to Debian's Version number of
the package being installed for convenient inclusion in the con-
figuration.
RECOMMENDED USAGE
If you are running exim as daemon (as it is in the default setup of the
Debian packages) you should not invoke update-exim4.conf directly when
exim is running. For SMTP receiving or queue running, exim forks, and
the new processes would use the new configuration file, while the orig-
inal main exim daemon would still use the old configuration file. You
should use invoke-rc.d exim4 restart instead.
BUGS
This manual page needs a major re-work. If somebody knows better groff
than us and has more experience in writing manual pages, any patches
would be greatly appreciated.
FILES
/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
Exim's main configuration file
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf
Optional manually managed Exim main configuration file. Takes
precedence over debconf managed one if it exists.
/etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
Configuration file being written by exim4-config maintainer
scripts, which may be hand-edited, and is read as input by up-
date-exim4.conf.
SEE ALSO
exim(8), exim4-config_files(5), /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/ and for gen-
eral notes and details about interaction with debconf
/usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.gz
AUTHOR
Andreas Metzler <ametzler at debian.org>
Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages@zugschlus.de>
EXIM4 Jun 25, 2005 UPDATE-EXIM4.CONF(8)