Bug#297841: exim4-config: Local rewrite stopped working after upgrade in sarge

[Daniel Bonniot]

>>Still, I think the following behaviour is also a common one: outside mail 
>>sent by smarthost, local mail delivered in spool; no incomming mail. This 
>>is typical with a dialup machine where users have their mailboxes outside 
>>the system (on an IMAP server for instance). Does the "mail sent by 
>>smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail" give this behaviour?
> 
> 
> Yes, it does. It _allows_ incoming mail but does not require it. And
> the SMTP daemon will only listen on 127.0.0.1 by default, i.e. the
> local loopback interface.
>           hth, cu andreas

Thanks a lot. I chose the "mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or 
fetchmail", and it indeed seems to be doing what I want.

I think there are two points to consider:

1) sarge upgrade. I'm afraid I'm only one who's going to be hit by this 
change. Basically, when your mail box is on an outside server, I does seem 
logical not to select "received by SMTP or fetchmail" but instead "no local 
mail". It looks like this cannot be fixed automatically (since for some people 
keeping the same option is desired) but there really should be some big 
warning about possibly needing to change one's setup. Do you plan to do so?

Which brings us to:

2) debconf. As said above, one can be confused by the current list of options. 
I think the "internet site" idea is quite good: give a short description of 
the type of host. Then after ";" explain more technically what will happen in 
that setup.
Would it make sense for the second line to start with "dial-up;" and the third 
line with "LAN;" ?
There might be better terms, but this should give the idea to most people (in 
particular, not to chose the 3rd if the smart host is not a local server).

Daniel