Categories: "Devices"
Sending mail on Debian
Another late night trying to configure that Debian exim4 thingy...
I want to send email from Thunderbird using my Debian box as an SMTP relay.
The mailserver (exim4) will refuse to relay anything to an external domain if you're not properly authenticated.
So here's what I had to do (and thank God it finally works):
- Cleaned up my
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template
as previously discussed. - Generated SSL keys for TLS to use with
/usr/share/doc/exim4-base/examples/exim-gencert
- Activated TLS by writing
MAIN_TLS_ENABLE = true
into a file called/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.localmacros
- Activated authentication based on the courier-imap daemon I was already using for IMAP: in
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template
there is a section called AUTHENTIFICATION CONFIGURATION. In there I had to uncomment the blocks namedplain_courier_authdaemon
andlogin_courier_authdaemon
. I'm not really sure why I uncommented both, but... it works. - There I found out (later) that I needed to allow exim to access the courier-imap socket or my
/var/log/exim4
wouls state this:
This can be solved by adding the right user to the rigth group:login_courier_authdaemon authenticator failed for xxx: 435 Unable to authenticate at present (set_id=yyy): failed to connect to socket /var/run/courier/authdaemon/socket: Permission denied
usermod -G daemon Debian-exim
. I'm not sure about how good/secure/clean this is, but it works. Comments welcome ;) - Regenerated the exim4 config with
update-exim4.conf
- Restarted exim with
/etc/init.d/exim4 restart
. I'm not sure this is needed, but it won't hurt...
Sometimes I wish I still had dear/hated old PLESK environment... :roll:
Bonus feature: make those sendings faster!
When you are connecting to the SMTP relay from behind a NAT firewall, there is a fairly high chance that the SMTP will try to RFC-1413 ident you but the firewall will drop the request. So the mailserver will wait for a response until it times out.
Exim4 does exactly that with a 30 second timeout. Which makes sending mails frustrating at best.
In /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template
there is a section about RFC 1413. Make sure you have this line:
rfc1413_query_timeout = 0s
(Zero seconds, means: do not bother wasting time on ident).
mail on Debian
So... I guess I thought I was smart enough to set up a Debian server all by myself... and it looks like I'm not even able to get basic email to work! :roll: Bleh...
I could set up apache, php, mysql and have everything working... but email ? What the hell is going on?
I sorta had exim4 installed automatically while apt-get installing mysql-4.1 . I also installed mutt so I could "read" any mail. But that damn thing won't save any email to /var/mail !! I think there should be a file named 'root' (at least) in there, but there is not.
All I know, is that I can use 'mail' to send email to an external machine. But I can't use mail to send a local mail to root.
I get lines like these in /var/log/exim4/mainlog:
2x0x-05-27 01:18:17 1FjlZR-0007Wy-Gx == /var/mail/mail (root@ns34611.ovh.net) <root@ns0x0x0.ovh.net> R=mail4root T=address_file defer (13): Permission denied: creating lock file hitching post /var/mail/mail.lock.ns0x0x0.ovh.net.0x0x0cb9.0000711b (euid=8 egid=8)
The exim process seems to be running under Debian-exim4 and the permission for /var/mail seems to be drwxr-sr-x root root
Now of course I can make it work by funkying around with the permissions of that folder, but that doesn't feel right... Besides I wonder what magic that 's' is trying to accomplish...
Is there a caring soul out there willing to show me the light? I'm so lost right now... :| Thanx!! ;)
Update:
I think I need to log what I did here... might get useful someday...
Two weeks of facts about the Intel Mac Mini

Okay, well, one of the reasons I've been quiet for the last two weeks is because I got myself one of those intel Mac Minis...
The bottom line is: I love that thing!
But here's a little more details... including answers I coouldn't find anywhere on the net before (so I just had to buy it to check it out by myself). (My configuration is a Duo Core with 512 MB of RAM and 100 GB of hard disk. Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. DVI to PAL adapter for TV.)
Conclusion: there are a lot of details that certainly itch the geek inside of me, but at the end of the day I always enjoy to wake up the mini and watch a couple of video podcasts it will download automagically. I admit I even use the remote for that :) (Well, I programmed my AVR remote to mimic the Apple remote ;))
Also, the whole user experience (except that thing with the mouse) is so much smoother than on Windows. The apps are pre-installed and nicely integrated with one another. And most of all: most of it "just works as expected". (Except the mouse, did I mention that before?)
Finally, on week-ends it takes no longer than 2 minutes to move the Mini to the desk and connect it to a real monitor for a little iLife experience. I gotta come back on this later.
More reviews:
AC3 codec for Intel Mac (Universal Binary)
Update: I originally found this codec.
However, I've later found a much better one!
2009 Update: The a52 codec now supports 5.1 surround passthrough, even on Mac Mini.