MTAs are the programs which transport mail from one machine to the
other. The traditional MTA is Sendmail, however there are several other
choices.
As well as SMTP servers there is a POP server (qpopper) and an IMAP
server (Courier-IMAP).
Installation of Exim
Before building Exim, as the
root user you should create the group
and user exim which will run the
exim daemon:
groupadd -g 31 exim &&
useradd -d /dev/null -c "Exim Daemon" -g exim -s /bin/false -u 31 exim
Install Exim with the following
commands:
sed -e 's,^BIN_DIR.*$,BIN_DIRECTORY=/usr/sbin,' \
-e 's,^CONF.*$,CONFIGURE_FILE=/etc/exim.conf,' \
-e 's,^EXIM_USER.*$,EXIM_USER=exim,' \
-e 's,^EXIM_MONITOR,#EXIM_MONITOR,' src/EDITME > Local/Makefile &&
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Now, as the root user:
make install &&
install -v -m644 doc/exim.8 /usr/share/man/man8 &&
install -v -d -m755 /usr/share/doc/exim-4.61 &&
install -v -m644 doc/* /usr/share/doc/exim-4.61 &&
ln -sv exim /usr/sbin/sendmail
Command Explanations
sed -e ... >
Local/Makefile: Most of Exim's configuration options are compiled in
using the directives in Local/Makefile
which is created from the src/EDITME
file. This command specifies the minimum set of options.
Descriptions for the options are listed below.
BIN_DIRECTORY=/usr/sbin: This
installs all of Exim's binaries
and scripts in /usr/sbin.
CONFIGURE_FILE=/etc/exim.conf: This
installs Exim's main
configuration file in /etc.
EXIM_USER=exim: This tells
Exim that after the daemon no
longer needs root privileges, the
process hands off the daemon to the exim user.
#EXIM_MONITOR: This defers
building the Exim monitor
program, as it requires X Window
System support, by commenting out the EXIM_MONITOR line in the Makefile. If you wish to build the monitor
program, omit this sed command and issue the following
command before building the package (modify Local/eximon.conf, if necessary):
cp exim_monitor/EDITME
Local/eximon.conf.
ln -sv exim
/usr/sbin/sendmail: Creates a link to
sendmail for
applications which need it. Exim
will accept most Sendmail
command-line options.
Configuring Exim
/etc/exim.conf and /etc/aliases
Configuration
Information
A default (nothing but comments) /etc/aliases file is installed during the
package installation if this file did not exist on your system.
Create the necessary aliases and start the Exim daemon using the following commands:
cat >> /etc/aliases << "EOF"
postmaster: root
MAILER-DAEMON: root
EOF
exim -v -bi &&
/usr/sbin/exim -bd -q15m
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
To protect an existing /etc/aliases file, the command above
appends these aliases to it. This file should be checked
and duplicate aliases removed, if present.
The /usr/sbin/exim -bd
-q15m command starts the Exim daemon with a 15 minute interval in
processing the mail queue. Adjust this parameter to suit your
desires.
To automate the running of exim at startup, install the
/etc/rc.d/init.d/exim init script
included in the blfs-bootscripts-20060910
package.
make install-exim
The bootscript also starts the Exim daemon and dispatches a queue runner
process every 15 minutes. Modify the -q<time
interval> parameter in /etc/rc.d/init.d/exim, if necessary for your
installation.
Contents
Installed
Programs: exicyclog,
exigrep, exim, exim-4.43-2, exim_checkaccess, exim_dbmbuild,
exim_dumpdb, exim_fixdb, exim_lock, exim_tidydb, eximstats,
exinext, exipick, exiqgrep, exiqsumm, exiwhat, and
optionally, eximon, and eximon.bin
Installed
Libraries: None
Installed
Directories: /usr/share/doc/exim-4.61 and /var/spool/exim
Short Descriptions
|
exicyclog
|
cycles Exim log files.
|
|
exigrep
|
searches Exim log
files.
|
|
exim
|
is a symlink to the exim-4.43-2 MTA daemon.
|
|
exim-4.43-2
|
is the Exim mail
transport agent daemon.
|
|
exim_checkaccess
|
states whether a given recipient address from a given
host is acceptable or not.
|
|
exim_dbmbuild
|
creates and rebuilds Exim databases.
|
|
exim_dumpdb
|
writes the contents of Exim databases to the standard
output.
|
|
exim_fixdb
|
modifies data in Exim
databases.
|
|
exim_lock
|
locks a mailbox file.
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|
exim_tidydb
|
removes old records from Exim databases.
|
|
eximstats
|
generates mail statistics from Exim log files.
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|
exinext
|
queries remote host retry times.
|
|
exipick
|
selects messages based on various criteria.
|
|
exiqgrep
|
is a utility for selective queue listing.
|
|
exiqsumm
|
produces a summary of the messages in the mail queue.
|
|
exiwhat
|
queries running Exim
processes.
|
|
eximon
|
is a start-up shell script for eximon.bin used to set the
required environment variables before running the
program.
|
|
eximon.bin
|
is a monitor program which displays current information
in an X window, and
also contains a menu interface to Exim's command line administration
options.
|