Exim

exim is a mail transfer agent (MTA) originally developed by Philip Hazel at the University of Cambridge. It is widely adopted by Debian and related distros, but is targeted for all Unix-like systems. It has its own web page.

By default, Ubuntu 11.04 comes with exim4 as the default MTA for fresh installs.

Ubuntu Tips

• There are several versions. I got the "simple" version, but that is not the only choice:
  • exim4 -- metapackage
  • exim4-base -- needed by all versions, and contains basic documentation.
  • exim4-daemon-light -- simple version
  • exim4-config -- configuration in /etc/exim4/conf.d, man pages and more.

Configuration

• WARNING: the Debian web page (see External Links below) should be used in preference over the exim4 stuff, because they accord better with the Debian patches and file locations.
• Warning: it may not work out of the box, so you should read the docs. There are
  • Files /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.gz and /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.html provided by package exim4-base.
  • If you install exim4-doc-html (optional), more complete web docs on your machine will be at file:///usr/share/doc/exim4-doc-html/html/index.html.
  • There is similar info documentation in the package exim4-doc-info.

Simple approach

One success story, on a 10.04 fresh install:

/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config         ;and answer all questions; the documentation goes over each question in order and in detail.

/usr/sbin/update-exim4.conf --keepcomments      ; the argument is optional, but it may be best to keep the comments until you are very familiar with the package.

/etc/init.d/exim4 restart                       ; your mail should now be up and running.  I hope your firewall and greylist daemon are in place already.

See also

• greylistd - a greylisting daemon for exim4 (on Ubuntu at least).

Provided By

• exim.org
• Patches by Debian

External Links

• Debian wiki entry for exim4 -- this is a permalink that redirects you to the current location debian documentation for exim.

License

GPL

This article is a stub and needs to be finished. Plunge forward and help it grow! It would be nice to have contributions related to non-Ubuntu distros.