[Pkg-exim4-users] Questions about configuring

Marc Haber mh+pkg-exim4-users@zugschlus.de
Sat, 18 Jun 2005 14:43:54 +0200


Hi,

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 02:11:46PM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 09:56:40PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 01, 2005 at 01:28:34PM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2005-05-29 at 08:10 +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote: 
> ...
> > > The new README seems to
> > > indicate everything can go under main, and the update-exim4.conf manpage
> > > indicates main is read first.  Since the general logic is by
> > > alphabetical order, and acl precedes main, I'm a little concerned
> > > changes to acl need to go in acl/00_local.

The README file clearly states that the local configuration file can
be dropped "anywhere in /etc/exim4/conf.d/main", with a name of
"000_localmacros" explicitly suggested.

> > Well, we assume that people intending to mess with exim's
> > configuration beyond the pre-fabricated stuff that we offer have
> > acquired some basic familiarity with exim configuration beforehand. I
> > don't think that this should be a misassumption.
> 
> The issue for me was understanding the behavior of update-exim4.conf,
> not exim's configuration syntax.  Also, I was imagining a scenario in
> which the administrator just wants to tweak the variable definitions,
> and might not be much of an exim expert.

Andreas has clarified the man page according to your wishes.

> > If we go to documentation _that_ detailed (this text is almost more
> > exact than the actual code), we also need to say something about
> > foo.rul taking precendence over foo. Andreas, since you made that
> > change, can you please...
> 
> Hmm, you mean the contents of a file named foo.rul will appear before
> the contents of file foo?  That is surprising.

Not surprising, documented.

|       update-exim4.conf will only use files in the conf.d directory that have
|       a filename which consists only of  letters,  numbers, underscores  and
|       hyphens   ([:alnum:]_-),   similar   to   run-parts(8). Additionally,
|       update-exim4.conf will  use  /etc/exim4/conf.d/foo/bar.rul instead  of
|       /etc/exim4/conf.d/foo/bar  if the .rul file exists. This is meant to be
|       helpful for easy interaction with packages extending Exim.


> > > Although I know it would require more work, you might consider
> > > discussing the split and unsplit configurations separately in
> > > README.Debian (and perhaps some of the man pages).  I think that
> > > would make it easier to follow.
> > 
> > It would, however, duplicate a lot of the explanations, making it
> > harder to keep them in sync.
> 
> Are you talking about duplication across files or within a single
> file? 

Within the package. It is a sysiphus work to guess which files people
will read and which not, and with every change, the chance of people
actually reading all docs gets lower.

> Assuming it's the latter, an intermediate solution might be to
> use formatting and labelling to distinguish the two cases a  bit more
> clearly than the docs do now.

Patches appreciated.

> > > Finally, the comment in exim4.conf.template could be clearer.  It now reads
> > > ######################################################################
> > > # Depending on where you find this file, this might be a template or
> > > # an actual configuration file. Documentation about the Debian exim4
> > > # configuration scheme can be found in
> > > # /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.gz.
> > > #
> > > # Strings like DEBCONFsomethingDEBCONF are replaced by installation
> > > # dependent values by update-exim4.conf, the script which builds the
> > > # actual configuration from the templates.
> > > 
> > > I'm still not sure what the template/actual configuration file distinction means.
> > 
> > It means that people kept copying /etc/exim4.conf.template to
> > /etc/exim.conf without reading and/or thinking and swiftly proceeded
> > to yell at us for shipping a syntactically invalid configuration template.
> 
> Oh.  That's not an easy thing to make clear.  How about
> 
> Warning: the comments in this file assume it is being used as a
> template by update-exim4.conf, but some administrators may copy it
> manually into /etc/exim.conf [do you mean /etc/exim4/exim.conf?].
> Some of the comments do not apply in that case.
> ?
> 
> Unfortunately, that's much longer.

conf.d/main/01_exim4-config_listmacrosdefs now says:
|######################################################################
|# /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template is only used with the non-split
|#   configuration scheme.
|# /etc/exim4/conf.d/main/01_exim4-config_listmacrosdefs is only used
|#   with the split configuration scheme.
|# If you find this comment anywhere else, somebody copied it there.
|# Documentation about the Debian exim4 configuration scheme can be
|# found in /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.gz.

Greetings
Marc

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