Provided by: exim4-config_4.97-4ubuntu4.3_all 
NAME
update-exim4.conf - Generate exim4 configuration files.
SYNOPSIS
update-exim4.conf [-v|--verbose] [-h|--help] [--keepcomments] [--removecomments] [-o|--output file]
OPTIONS
--check
Generate temporary configuration file, check its validity and exit with either success (exitcode
0) or an error (exitcode 1). On success the temporary file is deleted, otherwise the file is left
for further debugging.
-d|--confdir directory
Read input from directory instead of /etc/exim4.
-h|--help
Show short help message and exit
--keepcomments
Do not remove comment lines from the output file.
-o|--output file
Write output to file instead of /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.
--removecomments
Remove comment lines from the output file. [Default]
-v|--verbose
Enable verbose mode
DESCRIPTION
The script update-exim4.conf generates the main configuration files /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
for Exim v4 by merging the data in the template file /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template or the ones in the
/etc/exim4/conf.d directory tree respectively and /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf to the output file
/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.
If dc_use_split_config in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf specifies a split configuration,
update-exim4.conf processes the /etc/exim4/conf.d subdirectories in the order main, acl, router,
transport, retry, rewrite and auth. Within each directory it takes files in lexical sort order by file
name. It concatenates all these files and makes the debconf replacement described below.
If you are not using split configuration update-exim4.conf concatenates /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.localmacros
(if this file exists) and /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template (in this order) and makes the debconf
replacement described below.
In either case, before outputting the result to /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated, update-exim4.conf
generates a number of exim configuration macros from the contents of dc_something from
/etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf and inserts them into the configuration right after the definition of
the exim configuration macro UPEX4CmacrosUPEX4C (which is only used as placeholder for this case). The
macro definitions are bracketed with .ifdef clauses to allow the local admin to override the values with
earlier definitions. update-exim4.conf makes no other changes to the configuration. This makes it very
simple to make small changes to the configuration and still have the benefits of debconf.
On the other hand if you don't want to manage exim4.conf with debconf install your own handcrafted
version as /etc/exim4/exim4.conf. Exim will use this file if it exists and ignore the autogenerated one.
Additionally you might want to set dc_eximconfig_configtype=none in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf to
stop debconf from asking you questions about exim4.
update-exim4.conf exits silently and does nothing if /etc/exim4/exim4.conf exists and -o was not used to
direct the output to a different file than /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.
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.
If the new configuration will be written to /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated, update-exim4.conf will
check the validity of the freshly generated configuration. If the new file is detected as invalid,
update-exim4.conf leaves the old /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated untouched and exits with an error.
However, there are still possible invalidities that can only be detected at run time. This most notably
applies to errors in expressions that are expanded at run time.
If the new configuration will be written to some other file, no validity checking occurs and that file
will always be overwritten.
EXAMPLES
You want to be able to check exim's queue as normal user: Generate a new file, e.g.
/etc/exim4/conf.d/main/40_local_mailq, containing only the line queue_list_requires_admin = false
NOTES
update-exim4.conf changes the file permissions of the output file to the value of the environment
variable CFILEMODE. If CFILEMODE is neither set in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf nor in the
environment it defaults to 0644. Change this to 0640 if you are keeping sensitive information (LDAP
credentials et. al.) in there.
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
All lists given in configuration variables are semicolon-separated. In the past, they used to be colon
separated. This was changed to semicolon separation to make specification of IPv6 addresses easier.
Backwards compatibility is preserved, so that old configurations using colons as separators do still
work. Colons are deprecated and might stop working in a later release. If you need to specify a single
IPv6 address in a field that is defined as a list of host names or IP addresses, please prefix "<;" to
explicitly specify the list separator as a semicolon. Otherwise, the code cannot tell an IP address from
a colon-separated list of strange host names.
Using lookups like "dsearch;something" in update-exim4.conf.conf has never been supported and does no
longer work! If you need this, please convert to directly setting the appropriate macros.
update-exim4.conf evaluates these patterns in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf:
CFILEMODE
The octal file mode of the generated file.
dc_eximconfig_configtype
The main configuration type. Sets macro DC_eximconfig_configtype. The macro usually contains a
shorthand for one of the choices for the “General type of mail configuration” debconf question
(See README.Debian).
dc_eximconfig_configtype <-> debconf configtype mapping:
“internet”
internet site; mail is sent and received directly using SMTP
“smarthost”
mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail
“satellite”
mail sent by smarthost; no local mail
“local”
local delivery only; not on a network
“none” no configuration at this time
dc_hide_mailname
Boolean option that controls whether the local mailname in the headers of outgoing mail should be
hidden. (Only effective for “smarthost” and “satellite”. Sets macro HIDE_MAILNAME.
dc_mailname_in_oh
Internal use only Boolean option that is set by the maintainer scripts after adding the contents
of /etc/mailname to the dc_other_hostnames list. This is a transition helper since it wouldn't
otherwise be possible to see whether that domain name has been removed from dc_other_hostnames on
purpose. This is not used by update-exim4.conf, and no macro is set.
ue4c_keepcomments
Boolean option that controls whether update-exim4.conf strips the comments from the target
configuration file (default) or leaves them in. This can be overridden by the command line options
--keepcomments and --removecomments. The value is not written to an exim macro.
dc_localdelivery
name of the default transport for local mail delivery. Defaults to mail_spool if unset, use
maildir_home for delivery to ~/Maildir/. Sets macro LOCAL_DELIVERY.
dc_local_interfaces
List of IP addresses the Exim daemon should listen on. If this is left empty, Exim listens on all
interfaces. Sets macro MAIN_LOCAL_INTERFACES only if there is a non-empty value.
dc_minimaldns
Boolean option to activate some option to minimize DNS lookups, if set to “true” a macro
DC_minimaldns is defined. If true, the macro DC_minimaldns is set to 1, and the macro
MAIN_HARDCODE_PRIMARY_HOSTNAME is set to the appropriately post-processes output of hostname
--fqdn.
dc_other_hostnames
is used to build the local_domains list, together with “localhost”. This is the list of domains
for which this machine should consider itself the final destination. The local_domains list ends
up in the macro MAIN_LOCAL_DOMAINS.
dc_readhost
For “smarthost” and “satellite” it is possible to hide the local mailname in the headers of
outgoing mail and replace it with this value instead, using rewriting. For “satellite” only, this
value is also the host to send local mail to. Sets macro DCreadhost.
dc_relay_domains
is a list of domains for which we accept mail from anywhere on the Internet but which are not
delivered locally, e.g. because this machine serves as secondary MX for these domains. Sets
MAIN_RELAY_TO_DOMAINS.
dc_relay_nets
A list of machines for which we serve as smarthost. Please note that 127.0.0.1 and ::1 are always
permitted to relay since /usr/lib/sendmail is available anyway and relay control doesn't make
sense here. Sets macro MAIN_RELAY_NETS.
dc_smarthost
List of hosts to which all outgoing mail is passed to and that takes care of delivering it. Each
of the hosts is tried, in the order specified (See exim specification, chapter 20.5). All
deliveries go out to TCP port 25 unless a different port is specified after the host name,
separated from the host name by two colons. Colons in IPv6 addresses need to be doubled. If a port
number follows, IP addresses may be enclosed in brackets, which might be the only possibility to
specify delivery to an IPv6 address and a different port. Examples:
host.domain.example deliver to host looked up on DNS, tcp/25
host.domain.example::587 deliver to host looked up on DNS, tcp/587
192.168.2.4 deliver to IPv4 host, tcp/25
192.168.2.4::587 deliver to IPv4 host, tcp/587
[192.168.2.4]::587 deliver to IPv4 host, tcp/587
2001::0db8::f::4::::2 deliver to IPv6 host, tcp/25
[2001::0db8::f::4::::2]::587 deliver to IPv6 host, tcp/587
This is used as value of the DCsmarthost macro.
dc_use_split_config
Boolean option that controls whether update-exim4.conf uses /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template
(“false”) or the multiple files below /etc/exim4/conf.d (“true”) as input. This does not set any
macros.
The macro MAIN_PACKAGE_VERSION is set to Debian's Version number of
the package being installed for convenient inclusion in the configuration.
RECOMMENDED USAGE
If you are running exim as daemon (as it is in the default setup of the Debian packages) you should not
invoke update-exim4.conf directly when exim is running. For SMTP receiving or queue running, exim forks,
and the new processes would use the new configuration file, while the original main exim daemon would
still use the old configuration file. You should use invoke-rc.d exim4 restart instead.
BUGS
This manual page needs a major re-work. If somebody knows better groff than us and has more experience in
writing manual pages, any patches would be greatly appreciated.
FILES
/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
Exim's main configuration file
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf
Optional manually managed Exim main configuration file. Takes precedence over debconf managed one
if it exists.
/etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
Configuration file being written by exim4-config maintainer scripts, which may be hand-edited, and
is read as input by update-exim4.conf.
SEE ALSO
exim(8), exim4-config_files(5), /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/ and for general notes and details about
interaction with debconf /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.gz
AUTHOR
Andreas Metzler <ametzler at debian.org>
Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages@zugschlus.de>
EXIM4 Jun 25, 2005 UPDATE-EXIM4.CONF(8)