Re: Gnus with Exim

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

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

> David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com> writes:
>
>> I'm just putting smart_route first at the moment.  I figure dnslookup
>> might work somewhere that my regular servers are unreachable.
>
> Sure, that's fine, so long as you don't mind "maintaining" the similar
> settings in more than one router.
>
>> Cool, I was thinking something like that might be possible
>
> I'm pretty sure the Debian people pushed or at least suggested this
> option to the exim maintainers; I had never noticed it until about a
> month ago.
>
>> Actually that's what I have running right now.  I was having bad
>> smtp response this morning so I decided to bite the bullet and set
>> everything up as best I could before hearing from you.
>
> Is the two-host route list working properly?

I don't know; I've never had to fall back, and I haven't gone outside
my ISP.  I guess I could switch the order and see what happens.  Or go
down the hill to a cafe.

>> [BTW, how do you make those nice callouts?]
>
> It's boxquote.el¹. I used the functions `boxquote-region' and
> `boxquote-title' where appropriate.

Ah, nice.

>> I was thinking that the ideal would be 
>>
>> ,----
>> | smart_route:
>> |   driver = manualroute
>> |   domains = ! +local_domains
>> |   transport = remote_smtp
>> |   .include /etc/exim_smarthost_route_list
>> `----
>>
>> with
>>
>> ,----[ /etc/exim_smarthost_route_list ]
>> | route_list = * smtp.rcn.com:smtp.boost-consulting.com
>> `----
>>
>> or
>>
>> ,----[ /etc/exim_smarthost_route_list ]
>> | route_list = * smtp.boost-consulting.com:smtp.rcn.com
>> `----
>>
>> depending on which server had succeeded the last time.  But I don't
>> know how to do that.  Parsing the log file?  That's a frightening
>> thought.
>
> Yow. I don't know how to do that either. You'd need some kind of hook
> function that ran upon success or failure when sending. Cursory
> reading of the exim manual suggests that perhaps with some chaining of
> transports one could write something to a file based on whether some
> other transport succeeded or failed, but for now it's beyond me. I
> think that's one to take to a dedicated exim mailing list.

Good idea.

> By the way, not this helps much, but the order of the hosts mentioned
> in the route_list can be randomized.²

I know.  But like you said, doesn't help much.

>> Fortunately I don't have that problem.
>
> Well, we'll leave that solution in the archives for some other unlucky
> person.
>
>
> Footnotes: 
> ¹ http://www.davep.org/emacs/boxquote.el
> ² http://www.exim.org/exim-html-4.50/doc/html/spec_20.html#SECT20.6

Do you have a footnote.el, too?
<does `M-x load-library footnote'>
Oh my gosh, you do!

What other tricks am I missing?  Too many to tell, I'm sure.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com