Hi, exim-users!
I'm trying to run exim4, as supplied with Debian 3.1 "Sarge", on my home
box. I'd tell you exim4's version number if I could, but running "exim4
--version" doesn't give the version number, and "exim4 --help" isn't
helpful.
I need to configure exim4 to send mail from my MUA to a smarthost at
mail.example.com port 8025.
I've tried mainly typing "dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config", and trying
various things at the "Enter the name of the machine to which outgoing
mail will be sent" prompt. I've tried "mail.example.com:8025",
"mail.example.com::8025", "123.45.67.89:8025", "[123.45.67.89]:8025", and
several other varieties along the same lines. None has worked.
Incidentally, it isn't helpful being told, on typing "exim4 -q -v", that
"hey, the timeout for message <X> hasn't expired, so I'm going to ignore
your request". If I didn't want to attempt the delivery, I wouldn't have
typed the command. [And yes, I know now there is "exim4 -d -M <message
number>", but the 2 hours it took me to find out about this doesn't feel
like time well spent.]
Incidentally 2, I've spent upwards of 30 hours (much of it twiddling
my thumbs waiting for multi-minute timeouts to expire) trying to figure
out how to configure exim4. I haven't succeeded.
I've done a quick search of this mailing list's achive and found my
question asked about 2 years ago and answered by Philip Hazel in
Subject: Literal Domains in exim 4 /local_domains_include_host_literals
Date: Monday 21 June 2004
From: Philp Hazel
To: Tony Finch
However, the form of the answer wasn't helpful to me as a user. How do I
specify the smarthost port 8025, please?
Let me stress I'm not interested in learning about Exim4, any more than a
typical car driver wants to learn how to adjust the ignition timing. Give
me a recipe, please. Or tell me it's not possible, and I need a better
MTA. Or say nothing. But PLEASE don't tell me "you can create an SRV
record" or anything like that. I'm a user, I don't want to be stimulated,
or relaxed or have my horizons broadened. I just want to get my mail
swutting-well delivered (apologies to the late Douglas Adams).
If I appear sarcastic or cynical, please forgive me. It's because Exim4
is such a colossal time sink. The quality of its user-level documentation
is epitomised by what you get by typing "exim4 --help" at the command
line. If anybody wants to take me up on this point, please start, by way
of example, by recreating the process a newbie has to go through to locate
the configuration file. Normally you'd look for /etc/exim4.conf. On
finding a veritable fragmented forrest of files there, you then type "man
exim" or "man exim4" and look for the FILES section. No joy. After that,
you're on your own, trying to decide if silly-walk.conf.conf.conf could be
it, or whether that's something time-warped out of Monty Python. Then, in
desperation, you open the 1.3 Megabyte text file "spec.txt" to be told
that "Exim's run time configuration file is named by the CONFIGURE_FILE
setting in Local/Makefile". Wow! Wonderful. ;-(
Again - I'm a user, and I just want to configure the thing to deliver my
mail. There are a mere 6 or 7 items I need to enter into a configuration
file; this should take 10 - 20 minutes hacking a config file with Emacs,
or 5 minutes going through a menu process. Surely?
--
Alan Mackenzie (Ittersbach, Germany)
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