[Pkg-exim4-users] Exim4 with local network as well as smarthost (longish post)

[ael]

Jeroen van Aart wrote:
> ael wrote:
>> It is not hard, but it is a ridiculous waste of energy: this is a 
>> *small* domestic network. I did say explicitly above that this sort of 
>> solution was not appropriate here.
> 
> That sort of solution is appropriate almost anywhere. And at least in a 
> small domestic network. You can easily find energy efficient systems, 
> such as micro or pico ITX, or even laptops, which would serve well to be 
> an always on mailserver. 

Yes, I know about hardware and what is available. I have also done 
electronic design. But again. it is just silly to have to put a special 
system together just to cater for rare internal emails. But equally 
silly that a linux network can't easily accomplice such a simple task 
without special effort.

I don't know whether it was something in the way that I phrased the 
original email (I was trying to be concise) that is causing people to be 
so defensive. I was not trying to criticise: just explaining that I 
couldn't seem satisfy what appeared to be simple requirement which I 
would expect to be quite common in small domestic situations. And asking 
for comments on my particular solution which, of course, tried to retain 
the debconf functionality.

I wasn't expecting the answer "change the requirement" !

I know very well that this sort of case was far from Philip Hazel's 
concerns when he designed exim at Cantab, so it is not surprising that
problems can arise for tiny networks.

One of the things I love about linux is that it is so flexible that it 
caters for almost any conceivable system from tiny heritage systems to 
full blown supercomputers. We just seem to be lacking a bit of 
flexibility at the low end with exim4 as it is today. Perhaps.

I haven't examined the exim source, but I can guess that rewriting the 
envelope is done at RCPT time and that it would involve major 
reorganization to allow selective rewriting later.  I am far too much of 
a novice at the subtleties of email to think of modifying exim4 just 
now, nor do I have the time unfortunately.

ael