Bug#387078: exim4-config: local_host_whitelist man page entries a bit confusing

Ross Boylan RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org
Tue Sep 12 06:15:19 UTC 2006


Package: exim4-config
Version: 4.63-3
Severity: minor

The man page describing local_host_whitelist could be a little clearer.

First, there is no subhead in the DESCRIPTION section for
local_host_whitelist.

Second, the fact that this file was only mentioned under
local_host_blacklist, along with the text "For convenience, as an
additional method to whitelist addresses from being blocked,  an
explicit  whitelist  is  read  in  from
/etc/exim4/local_host_whitelist. Entries in the whitelist override
corresponding blacklist entries. " supported the 2nd of 2
interpretations:
1) if the sending host is on the whitelist, the message will be
accepted.
2) if the sending host is on the blacklist and the whitelist, it will
not be blocked because of the whitelist, but it might be blocked for
other reasons.

I think, after looking at the code, that 1) is what is happening.  At
the moment, it happens to be what I want (in particular, someone is
sending me mail from a machine without proper DNS entries).

So I think it would be good to give local_host_whitelist a separate
entry, and to clarify if interpreation 1, 2, or something else is
correct.


-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.63 #1 built 23-Aug-2006 17:28:20
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2006
Berkeley DB: Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 4.3.29: (September  6, 2005)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 PAM Perl GnuTLS move_frozen_messages Content_Scanning Old_Demime
Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz dnsdb dsearch ldap ldapdn ldapm mysql nis nis0 passwd pgsql
Authenticators: cram_md5 cyrus_sasl plaintext spa
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral iplookup manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore/mbx autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (990, 'stable'), (50, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27advncdfs
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages exim4-config depends on:
ii  adduser                       3.97       Add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]         1.5.3      Debian configuration management sy

exim4-config recommends no packages.

-- debconf information excluded




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