On Wednesday, June 12, 2013 16:04:06, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > On 12-06-13 16:59, Marc Haber wrote: > > On Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:38:28 +0100, Jonathan Dowland <j...@debian.org> > > > > wrote: > >> On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 08:00:17AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > >>> To this exim expert, configuring exim is done as follows: > >>> > >>> zcat /usr/share/doc/exim4/examples/example.conf.gz > > >>> /etc/exim4/exim4.conf > > [...] > > > I violently object to people recommending this to novices. > > Yes, me too. It only works for me because I know exim pretty well, and > then the single-file approach is more transparent than any approach > involving generated files. > > However, it's a large file containing many details which are > uninteresting to users who want a simple system. In that case, an > abstraction layer is a good thing.
Yes. > That being said, personally I *do* recommend that people with less > common needs read the excellent exim documentation and start off the > example.conf file; if your needs are uncommon, making the investment to > learn how exim works pays off a lot more than trying to twist an > abstraction layer into doing things it wasn't meant to do. And once you > do know how it works, any abstraction layer (IMO) just gets in the way. I think that's true. One snag I ran into concerning the abstraction layer concerned customizing the "split file" configuration via conf.d/ files. Upon upgrades dpkg recongizes the changes in configuration files and prompts the user; choosing not to replace the file with the maintain'er sversion drops a new .dpkg-dist file next to the modified one, which is expected. However what's _not_ expected is to use both the customized configuration file as well as the .dpkg-dist one. :-/ Unfortunately in my experience, that's what happens. And in this condition Exim may fail to start, or might start and then reject mail with a temporary failure. I therefore consider the "split configuration" to be dangerous. I had another look at this: it appears that in /usr/sbin/update-exim4.conf, the cat_parts() function doesn't avoid files containing ".dpkg-", but this funtionality might be able to be added to the run_parts() function that cat_parts() uses. On servers I'm still using the abstraction via the "single config" method, but I've repeatedly been tempted to use a straight exim4.conf file. [I probably should.] -- Chris -- Chris Knadle chris.kna...@coredump.us GPG Key: 4096R/0x1E759A726A9FDD74 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201306122350.29844.chris.kna...@coredump.us
