Bug#430057: exim4-config: Still interested in help documenting SMTP AUTH over SSL?

[Dave Witbrodt]

Package: exim4-config
Version: 4.69-9
Followup-For: Bug #430057


Over the weekend I fought with, and partially succeeded in, setting up
exim4 to connect to my ISP as a smarthost.  The ISP, AT&T/Yahoo, uses
SMTP AUTH over SSL on their smtp server, and exim4 (justifiably) does
not support this illegitimate protocol.

Nevertheless, this is a very large service provider, and any Debian
users who want a rational email setup (and also want to use exim4
instead of postfix) have to find a way to solve this problem.

I'm not interested in seeing any changes made to the default
configuration of exim4, nor in the debconf setup.  When I saw the
discussion in this thread between Ian and Marc, and the way it fizzled
out for lack of input on Ian's part, I was disappointed.  I had looked
first in /usr/share/doc and on the 'man' pages, but absolutely no
information at all about how to get "SMTPS" support with exim4 was to be
found in those locations.

The previous discussion in this thread ended with

    No more comments received. Tagging wontfix, as the submitter does
    not seem to care any more.

If Marc, or any other of the Exim4 Maintainers, are still willing to
participate, I would like to share what I have learned in the past
couple of days and help try to build some sort of documentation for
Debian users who would like to get smtp working with these flaky ISPs.


Thanks,
DW

PS:  If this arrives on the BTS then I have yet another victory:
getting reportbug to work via MTA for the first time with this ISP.
Yay!


-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.69 #1 built 30-Sep-2008 18:54:33
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2006
Berkeley DB: Berkeley DB 4.6.21: (September 27, 2007)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 GnuTLS move_frozen_messages
Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz dnsdb dsearch nis nis0 passwd
Authenticators: cram_md5 plaintext
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
mailname:webserver

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.28-rc6.081130.webserver.uvesafb (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages exim4-config depends on:
ii  adduser                       3.110      add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]         1.5.24     Debian configuration management sy

exim4-config recommends no packages.

exim4-config suggests no packages.

-- debconf-show failed