Bug#394438: exim4: allow SMTP from remote when configuring for smarthost

[A Mennucc]

hi again

On Sat, Oct 21, 2006 at 12:41:28PM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:

> The packages also asks "IP-addresses to listen on for incoming SMTP
> connections:" at debconf priority medium. - This question is
> definitely asked at the correct priority, as it has a reasonable
> default value.

AFAICR, this question was not asked during my test install. 

So I googled around, and found 
 http://people.debian.org/~fjp/talks/debconf6/paper/ :
it seems that the installer sets the default debconf priority to "high" . 
Indeed, in my newly installed system I have
# debconf-show debconf
  debconf/priority: high

So, it really seems that that question is not asked during standard install.

> even if exim only listens on 127.0.0.1 it will except mail by SMTP,
(I suppose  s/except/accept/ )
> (SMTP from the local machine), so the question is formally correct.

The question "IP-addresses to listen on for incoming SMTP  connections:"
is formally correct, but is not asked during install, and
its default is not what people do expect from a SMTP server
that is configured to
 "mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail"

IMHO, when the person installing Debian chooses 
 "mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail"
s/he most probably is sending email anywhere on the Internet,
and is expecting replies from anywhere on the Internet.

But  "IP-addresses to listen on for incoming SMTP  connections:" 
will be silently set to "127.0.0.1" . 

This is not what people do expect.

My suggestion is: if the user chooses to configure Exim4
to only do local delivery, then set the default of
 "IP-addresses to listen on for incoming SMTP  connections:"
to 127.0.0.1 ; in all other cases, set it to accept 
all connections.

a.

-- 
Andrea Mennucc