Bug#481597: dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config does not recognize changed hostname

[Marc Haber]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 04:23:50AM +1000, Andrew Vaughan wrote:
> On Thursday 12 June 2008 21:00, Marc Haber wrote:
> > Oh, interesting. Thanks for spotting this, fixed in svn (it is
> > actually only an error message that is not sent to /dev/null before
> > properly handling that case).
> >
> I don't mind the error message.  Afaict it only appears if the local 
> hostname is not resolvable.  (And you have suggested that that should be 
> considered a configuration error).  
> 
> What concerns me is that exim4-config attempts to get the fqdn, but accepts 
> an empty string and then happily continues as though nothing is wrong.  

What else should it do?

> > > I guess that the FQDN at startup can legitimately be different from the
> > > FQDN at debconf question 3, otherwise you wouldn't be asking question
> > > 3.
> >
> > The debconf questions do not have numbers (and it depends on your
> > answers to previous questions wether they are asked or not, so the
> > numbers are in fact meaningless). Which question wording do
> > you mean?
> >
> 	The "mail name" is the domain name used to "qualify" mail addresses 
> 	without a domain name.   
>         This name will also be used by other programs. It should be the
> 	single, full domain name (FQDN).                                       
> 	For example, if a mail address on the local host is 
> 	foo at domain.example, then the correct value for this option would 
> 	be domain.example....
> 
> Thanks for your work in Debian.

Yes, that's important for a host that regularly changes its external
IP address, for example if it directly connects via PPPoE. You
wouldn't want to send out mails as root at p1234567.dip.t-online.de.

Greetings
Marc

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