[Gllug] Exim and virtual domains

[Bruce Richardson]

On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 10:20:09AM +0100, Martyn wrote:
> On Thu, 16 May 2002 09:55:31 +0100 Paul Brazier wrote:
> 
> > Can someone give me some pointers to setting up "virtual domains" in
> > Exim? Is this what exim calls "directors"? The documentation looks >
> > very comprehensive but assumes you know all the jargon etc.
> 
> This is very easy.  Firstly, you're quite right about the directors. 

Well, no.  Every process you configure to deliver local mail is a
director.  You can configure a director to implement virtual domains
(for which Exim has no built in support) or to deliver mail to a Cyrus
mail store or whatever.  Any mail that is determined to be local is run
past the directors in the order they are defined until one claims it.

Unlike Postfix, Exim has no built-in support for virtual domains - you
have to build them yourself in the config file (Paul's example is an
adaption of the built-in alias support).  This means more initial
work but the big advantage is that you can design them to work exactly
the way you want.  You could define a virtual domain director that only
rewrote mail that came from a particular source, to pick a trivial
example.

This is a recurring theme with Exim - the config file doesn't just
define a few settings but actually defines the structure of the mail
system.  That does mean, though, that Exim doesn't do anything at all
until you've defined that structure, unlike Postfix, for example, which
has a largely set structure and will work using default values even if
you delete main.conf.  But then in Postfix virtual domains work one way
only and at a fixed point in the delivery process.

That pedantic point made, there's nothing wrong with Paul's example of a
virtual table implementation.  The thing to remember is that it's not
set in stone (doesn't have to be labelled virtusertable, for a start).

-- 
Bruce

Those who cast the votes decide nothing.  Those who count the
votes decide everything. -- Joseph Stalin
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