On Wed, 18 Oct 2006, Hill Ruyter wrote:

> When I run the invoke-rc.d exim4 stop
> I check with ps -ef and there is still an exim process running
> [115      14932     1  0 Oct17 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/exim4 -bd -q30m]
> 
> (is this a daemon ?)

That could either be a daemon, or a process forked by the daemon to 
receive an incoming message. Try using the "exiwhat" utility to see what 
the process really it. (Run "exiwhat" as root.)

> I am still able to send e-mail using my outlook client from a remote machine
> in fact this very e-mail has been sent using outlook express immediately 
> after doing a stop ...

That suggests that the daemon has not been stopped. As has been pointed 
out, the "start/stop" script you used is not part of Exim itself. I do 
not supply such a thing in the distribution, as it is very dependent on 
the OS that you are using.

The "generic" way to stop an Exim daemon is:

(1) Find the daemon's process id (pid). This should be in a file called 
exim-daemon.pid in Exim's spool directory. If you don't know where the 
spool directory is, run "exim -bP spool_directory".

(2) Use "kill" to stop the daemon. This will often work:

  kill `cat /var/spool/exim/exim-daemon.pid`

> If I make a change to my configuration file do I need to stop and start the 
> process for the change to take effect ?

No, but you need to send a HUP signal to the daemon:

  kill -hup `cat /var/spool/exim/exim-daemon.pid`
  
will often work. This does not stop the process, but it re-initializes 
itself and re-reads the new configuration. 

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service
Get the Exim 4 book:    http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book

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