[sclug] debian mailscanner & exim

[Dafydd Harries]

On Thu, May 29, 2003 at 09:00:13AM +0100, Chris Aitken wrote:
> I have that same file in /etc/init.d/ but on further digging it would appear
> that that file is not used (atleast according to Hants Lug Feb 2003
> archive), and that it is started every 15 minuts from a cron job
> (/etc/cron.d/exim). There is also the cron.daily exim file that cleans logs
> etc.
> 
> It was also said in the same lug post, that exim starts up upon receiving
> mail on port 25.

This depends. You can run Exim either as a standalone mail server, in
which case it will be running all the time, or from inetd, in which case
it will get run on demand (i.e. when there is an incoming connection on
the SMTP port). The /etc/init.d/exim script will do nothing if exim is
listed in the inetd configuration file (since it makes no sense to start
Exim if it's going to run on demand).

There are also cron jobs which run Exim in specific ways periodically.

I think there is a debconf option as to which is used. You can get
debconf to re-ask you questions using the dpkg-reconfigure tool:

$ dpkg-reconfigure exim

dpkg-reconfigure will ask all questions (even ones which are below your
default priority) unless you tell it otherwise. You need privileges to
run it.

Hope this helps clear things up for you.

-- 
Dafydd