Re: Gnus with Exim

[David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com>]

"Steven E. Harris" <seh@panix.com> writes:

> David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com> writes:
>
>> The former is all my ISP will allow me :(
>
> Plenty of ISPs block all traffic on port 25, except to the designated
> ISP SMTP server.
>
> [...]
>
>> I'm not seeing that.
>
> Take a look at /var/log/exim/exim_{main,panic,reject}.log and make
> sure that it's not complaining about permissions on exim.conf. If it's
> not complaining, then don't worry about it.

It's not.

>> For example, there was something about the value of CYGWIN and a
>> value of "ntsec"?
>
> Yes, I do have an environment variable "CYGWIN", set up in Windows so
> it's there before any Cygwin programs run, with a current value of
> "ntsec tty".

Done.  Although exim-config sets it to 

  ntsec notraverse

for the exim daemon by default.  That seems to work.

> You can read all about the ntsec[1] in the Cygwin documentation. It
> makes my head swim. I just know that running Cygwin in this mode
> improves its integration with the Windows security system, and that
> some programs like exim behave more to expectations when run with
> ntsec enabled.

Thanks.

>> Maybe the routers and transports?
>
> I'm attaching a copy of my current exim.conf that I've modified for
> what I expect you'll need. Note the comments marked "[dave]".
>
> I'll run through some of them here, in order.
>
> o primary_hostname
>   I set this one up through Windows[2], so I prefer to have exim just
>   pick up the same one that Windows uses.

Done that way, thanks.

> o smart_route router
>   This is the "smarthost" hook that takes all non-local mail and sends
>   it out ever the "remote_smtp" transport.

I think this was the key thing I was missing.  Interestingly, it's
completely missing from the deafult exim.conf that you get with Cygwin
and from what exim-config sets up.

>   Note that the route_list must mention your ISP's SMTP server, which
>   I looked up and found to be smtp.rcn.com. This server is mentioned
>   several times later, so replace all occurrences if my guess in
>   incorrect.

Perfect guess, thanks.

> o userforward router
>   I added a few settings here to enable exim's mail filtering
>   facility[3] and maildir delivery.

I don't see how either of these can help me.  I'm basically only using
Exim to send mail, and to send it outside my LAN.

> o procmail router
>   This router enables local delivery through procmail if a
>   ~/.procmailrc file exists. If you don't have procmail installed, you
>   can comment out this router. The note about local_part pertains to
>   limiting the files that follow to the user specified in the local
>   part of the destination address.[4] It didn't work on Cygwin as of
>   the last time I fiddled with it, but ${home} does get set correctly,
>   so the router works more or less as intended.

I use procmail as part of the spam filtering setup on my IMAP server,
so I'm familiar with it, but again I don't see how it can be much use
to me on my personal (client) machine.

> o remote_smtp transport
>   This is an important setting. Here we specify (optionally) that all
>   communication with your ISP's mail server should use TLS. 

2005-06-05 21:45:33 IHN3JX-0003DC-0F a TLS session is required for smtp.mail.rcn.net [207.172.4.99], but the server did not offer TLS support
2005-06-05 21:45:33 IHN3JX-0003DC-0F == dave@boost-consulting.com R=smart_route T=remote_smtp defer (-38): a TLS session is required for smtp.mail.rcn.net [207.172.4.99], but the server did not offer TLS support

'fraid not.

>   The
>   headers_rewrite and return_path options allow you to define mappings
>   between local user names and externally-visible email addresses in
>   the file /etc/email-addresses. That file may already be there. If
>   it's not, you can create it with content like:
>
> ,----
> | dave: dave@boost-consulting.com
> `----
>
>   Any outgoing messages that originate from user "dave" on your
>   computer will appear to outsiders to have originated from
>   dave@boost-consulting.com. You can also just set these addresses in
>   your mail client, but this rewriting is useful if you also support
>   local exchange of messages. It separates local identity from
>   external identity.

If you mean "local exchange" on this one computer, then no, it's not
important to me.

> There are obviously some extraneous settings here, but I figured I'd
> include them in case you later decide to get more ambitious with exim
> (filtering, local user messages).
>
> Try dropping this file into place, adjusting the smtp.rcn.com host and
> your ISP user name and password, possibly adding entries to
> /etc/email-addresses, and try sending some messages. Keep an eye on
> /var/log/exim/exim_main.log and try "exim -bp" after sending to see if
> the messages are stuck.
>
> Let us know how you fare.

It's working!  This is fantastic, thank you!


A few more questions

1. I allowed exim-config to start it as a service:

      Do you want to install the exim daemon as a service? (yes/no) yes
      Enter the period of the queue runner, in minutes: [15] 1
      Enter the value of CYGWIN for the daemon: [ntsec notraverse]

      Do you want to start the exim daemon as a service now? (yes/no) yes
      OK. The mail daemon is now accepting mail.

   I figured that's what I needed to do in order to get the
   asynchronous sending behavior I'm after (remember that my SMTP
   server is not responsive enough for me).  Is that right, or is
   there a way to do this that only causes exim to run
   (asynchronously) when it's time to actually send something?

2. Of course, my ISP not only insists that I use their SMTP server
   when I'm at home, but their server refuses to respond when I'm
   away.  So I have to use smtp.boost-consulting.com.  I don't want to
   edit my exim-config and restart the daemon in those cases if
   possible.  Any ideas?

3. My IMAP server is not super fast either.  It's running Exim too,
   coincidentally.  Ideally I'd like to set up a mirror of my IMAP
   server on a local Linux machine so I can search messages more
   quickly and have redundant message storage.  Do you happen to know
   of a means to that end?  I imagine this isn't something people want
   to do every day.

Thanks again for all your help.
-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com