[Pkg-exim4-users] local mail addressed to root

[Magnus Holmgren]

On Friday 03 November 2006 22:04, Larry Fletcher took the opportunity to say:
> I started using Debian about 7 years ago and I have always logged in
> as root.  

You will probably hear this from many, but why are you foregoing the extra 
security a real operating system gives you when you do your everyday work as 
an unprivileged user? Always logging in as root is like running Windows 95. 
Microsoft just recently made a decent effort encouraging users to create a 
normal user account on installation. The Debian installer urges you to create 
an unprivileged account and has probably always done so.

> This worked fine until I had to upgrade to Exim4.  To be 
> able receive local mail I had to create another user and direct the
> root mail to it, then create /etc/procmailrc using a symlink from
> ~/.procmailrc.  This worked fine until I decided to remove the
> Smartlist package.  Now local mail is is still delivered, but
> /etc/procmailrc is not checked.  Smartlist never used the exim config,
> so I don't why removing it causes a problem.

Exim 4 never delivers mail as root. That's a compilation setting, so you can't 
change it without recompiling. But you can give the other user write 
permission to root's mailbox and have Exim or procmail deliver it there. But 
I wouldn't recommend it.

Why /etc/procmailrc isn't read any more is a bit of a mystery and can't be 
determined without more information, I think. But I know that smartlist is 
procmail-based. Have you customised your Exim configuration? What else can 
you say about /etc/procmailrc and ~/.procmailrc?

> [...]
>
> I am using Debian stable and can't compile from source.

Why not? If it's because of lack of knowledge, that problem can be solved. But 
again, I wouldn't recommend it (meaning, I do recommend learning things, but 
I don't recommend always running as root).

-- 
Magnus Holmgren        holmgren at lysator.liu.se
                       (No Cc of list mail needed, thanks)
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