Bug#1080434: exim4-base: exim4 starts before home directories are mounted

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2024-09-03 Peter Chubb via Pkg-exim4-maintainers <pkg-exim4-maintainers at alioth-lists.debian.net> wrote:
> Package: exim4-base
> Version: 4.98-1
> Severity: normal

> Dear Maintainer,

> After a recent apt update and reboot, exim4 started and grabbed a
> reference to /home before autofs started making home directories
> available.  This meant it could not deliver email.

> Autofs map for /home looks like:
> * nfs-server:/export/home/&

> exim4 needs to look for ~/.forward when delivering email; (and we often end up
> delivering into ~/Mail/inbox for each user)

> I think exim4's systemd unit file needs something like
> After= ... remote-fs.target autofs.service
> RequireMountsFor=/home/someuser

> to make sure that home directories are available by the time it starts (but
> systemd is a bit of a mystery to me)
[...]

Hello,

Adding remote-fs.target (and nss-user-lookup.target) might be a good idea.

Listing autofs.target does not look right to me. There are multiple
automounters and autofs.target is just one of them. I could add
RequiresMountsFor=/home but not RequireMountsFor=/home/someuser because
we do not have someuser that is present on all Debian systems.

>From my POV this looks like somthing I cannot /generically/ carter for
in the exim service file but needs to be set locally by the admin.

cu Andreas
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