Bug#833296: exim4-config: dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config: misleading message

[Marc Haber]

Hi,

thanks for your bug report. Superb research, well done.

On Tue, Aug 02, 2016 at 05:33:28PM +0200, Mauro Salvini wrote:
> I have exim4 configured as "mail sent by smarthost; received via smtp
> or fetchmail".
> 
> I recently added FQDN to my hostname, so according to Debian reference
> I edited /etc/hosts like this:
> 
> 127.0.0.1 localhost
> 127.0.1.1 myhostname.mydomain.local myhostname


> So it says that myhost.mydomain.local will be added to local domains.
> Bun actually local hostname is in local domains list as @, and @ is
> expanded with uname(), that collects only myhostname part, so exim4
> does not recognize myhost.mydomain.local (which is used to fully
> qualify local/incomplete addresses) as local delivery.

@ expands to primary_hostname. Are you manualy setting this in your
configuration?

If uname() returns a single-component name, Exim calls gethostbyname()
(or getipnodebyname() where available) in an attempt to acquire a
fully qualified host name.

Can you check what your gethostbyname/getipnodebyname returns?

I guess that there is something not right with your /etc/hosts which
misguides gethostbyname. I have never fully understood what to do with
/etc/hosts if one does not have a static IP address, and since all my
hosts do have static IP addresses, I have neve had a problem like that.

For starters, I'd try to add an entry with your full host name for
the IP address your network interface actually has.

Greetings
Marc

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