On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 10:10:48AM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote: > On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 11:39:01AM -0400, Haines Brown wrote: > > I infer that exim is not being given the envelop address of the > > sender. > > Quoting /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template: > > # By default, exim forces a Sender: header containing the local > # account name at the local host name in all locally submitted messages > # that don't have the local account name at the local host name in the > # From: header, deletes any Sender: header present in the submitted > # message and forces the envelope sender of all locally submitted > # messages to the local account name at the local host name. > # The following settings allow local users to specify their own envelope > sender > # in a locally submitted message. Sender: headers existing in a locally > # submitted message are not removed, and no automatic Sender: headers > # are added. These settings are fine for most hosts. > # If you run exim on a classical multi-user systems where all users > # have local mailboxes that can be reached via SMTP from the Internet > # with the local FQDN as the domain part of the address, you might want > # to disable the following three lines for traceability reasons. > .ifndef MAIN_FORCE_SENDER > local_from_check = false > local_sender_retain = true > untrusted_set_sender = * > .endif > > 👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland > ✎ j...@debian.org > 🔗 https://jmtd.net
Johathan, many thanks for pointing out the content of exim configuration template. The exim config files are so intimidating that unless there is a reason to so so an amateur like myself tries to avoid them. What I get out of this is that my MUA (mutt) might generate a message that lacks a local account name (I assume it is defined by the content of /etc/mailname, whicn in my case happens to be lenin.histomat.net). I infer this is the value that appaars in the Sender: line of the message header consructed by mutt. The above text describes what exim does if that Sender: line in the header happens to be empt or missing. If I understand correctly, exim deletes the empty Sender: line and instead uses the value of /etc/mailname to be the envelop sender. Is this so? The text goes on to say that if the three lines it specifies at the end are present, it allows the user to specify whatever he/she likes to appear as the envelop's sender. This raises questions. First, the implication seems to be that an empty Sender: line means that mutt is falling down on the job and for some reason this past week ceasad to provide a value for the Sender: line in the header of the some mail it sent to exim. So is the obvious thing to do is fix mutt? Since I've been using the same mutt configuration for years, its not a configuration problem but samage to mutt. Looks like a reinstall and slow reconstruction of its confirturation. I already ran mutt without any configuration and it didn't seem to help. I sumitted by domain name to an online mail tesing site and get "Unverified address: postoffice.omnis.com said: 521 5.5.1 Protocol error." Omnis told me the problem was the Sender: line was empty in some messages.  Another question. The implication is that if the three lines are present in the exim configuration it whould allow the user to specify the envelop sender. Is this merley a statement of fact or is the template file used to construct the exim configuration? If the latter, then I should be able to write my own envelope sender line. I can't imagine why I would want to do that, but if I did, how does one go about doing it? In the exim4 configuraiton routine one defines the define default system mail name. Is this value the name used for the envelope sender? Sometimes I have merely put in the host name and some times appended the domain name to it. Seems to work in either case. When the problem being discussed came up I changed from the former to the latter when I reconfigured exim. It did not help. In exim configuration I hide outgoing local mail name and provide the domain name without prepending host name. I assume this is irrevant and is merley a cosmetic isaue. Is that so?
