Mailing List Archive: exim: users

Exim cfg file changes & daemon restart

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dev at leding

Feb 7, 2012, 10:36 AM

Post #1 of 4 (335 views)
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Exim cfg file changes & daemon restart

Exim users - couple more questions here…

1) Does any cfg file change require a daemon restart?

2) Can Exim be restarted in a graceful fashion such that daemon downtime and lack of message processing is minimized?

Thanks in advance...
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wbh at conducive

Feb 7, 2012, 11:04 AM

Post #2 of 4 (332 views)
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Re: Exim cfg file changes & daemon restart [In reply to]

Antonio Leding wrote:
> Exim users - couple more questions hereâ€¦
>
> 1) Does any cfg file change require a daemon restart?
Yes.

One way to minimize the need is to call frequently-changed things in
with an lsearch or similar lookup against a flat-file, any of many kinds
of 'DB' - even SQL. Also useful w/r privilege separation.

>
> 2) Can Exim be restarted in a graceful fashion such that daemon
> downtime and lack of message processing is minimized?
>
>
> Thanks in advance...

That's basically 'standard' with the rcd.d scripts on *BSD, MUST be
similar on Linux etc.

No harm AFAIK even if one issues a sterner level of termination, as the
listener stops, but each child process already handling a message
'usually' completes wot work is on its plate.

Bill
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éŸ“å®¶æ¨™

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jgh at wizmail

Feb 7, 2012, 11:13 AM

Post #3 of 4 (341 views)
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Re: Exim cfg file changes & daemon restart [In reply to]

On 2012-02-07 18:36, Antonio Leding wrote:
> 1) Does any cfg file change require a daemon restart?

Effectively, yes. Note however that files and databases
accessed by lookup do not.

> 2) Can Exim be restarted in a graceful fashion such that daemon downtime and lack of message processing is minimized?

Send the daemon process a SIGHUP. Documented in
http://www.exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch05.html
section 3, the "-bd" option.
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Jeremy

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hs at schlittermann

Feb 7, 2012, 1:00 PM

Post #4 of 4 (329 views)
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Re: Exim cfg file changes & daemon restart [In reply to]

Antonio Leding <dev [at] leding> (Di 07 Feb 2012 19:36:34 CET):
> Exim users - couple more questions hereâ€¦
> 1) Does any cfg file change require a daemon restart?

Yes. But this does not mean that no Exim process will pick up your
changes until the next restart.

Exim uses fork(2) and exec(2) to start instances of itself. These
instances are fresh processes, reading the config file again.
(This happens whenever Exim needs to elevate it's access rights,
normally necessary for local delivery.)

> 2) Can Exim be restarted in a graceful fashion such that daemon downtime and lack of message processing is minimized?

You will not loose any message. A reload should not kill any running
instance.

If you need to change continously your config file, you should consider
doing parts of the configuration via database/file lookups. These
lookups are performed whenever necessary.

--
Heiko

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