Debian exim4 init script will not start exim after update

[Simon Day]

Hi all,

I just updated exim over the weekend - here is what is now installed 
(sorry not sure what the previous versions were

||/ Name                                  
Version                               Description
+++-=====================================-=====================================-==========================================================================================
ii  exim4                                 
4.69-2                                meta-package to ease Exim MTA (v4) 
installation
ii  exim4-base                            
4.69-2+b1                             support files for all Exim MTA 
(v4) packages
ii  exim4-config                          
4.69-2                                configuration for the Exim MTA (v4)
ii  exim4-daemon-heavy                    
4.69-2+b1                             Exim MTA (v4) daemon with extended 
features, including exiscan-acl


The default /etc/init.d/exim4 script now will not start exim.

The error message displayed is: exim: incompatible command-line options 
or arguments

After investigation it seems the cause is the 3rd line of the 
start_daemon call (commented out below)

      start_daemon -p "$PIDFILE" \
        "$DAEMON" -bd "-q${QFLAGS}${QUEUEINTERVAL}" \
        #"${COMMONOPTIONS}" "${QUEUERUNNEROPTIONS}" "${SMTPLISTENEROPTIONS}"


Because (in my setup) COMMONOPTIONS, QUEUERUNNINGOPTIONS and 
SMTPLISTENROPTIONS are empty it means that exim4 is called by 
/sbin/start_stop_daemon with args which are empty

Exim says that these are incompatible options

To recreate on the command line run:

exim4 -bd -q30m ''

I suspect the bug itself is that the args passed to start_daemon need to 
be sanitised so empty args are not passed. (this is certainly a work around)

However it may be that this is an upstream bug in either 
/lib/lsb/init-functions for not sanitising them there or possible in 
exim itself for not discarding the empty arguments.

I've worked around this myself by commending out the empty args - but 
thought I should let you know

Regards,

Simon Day