Exim: The Mail Transfer Agent
The Mail Transfer Agent
By Philip Hazel
July 2001
Pages: 632
ISBN 10: 0-596-00098-7 |
ISBN 13: 9780596000981




(Average of 2 Customer Reviews)


Description
Exim is the default mail transport agent installed on some Linux systems; it runs on many versions of Unix and is suitable for any TCP/IP network with any combination of hosts and end-user mail software. It is open source, scalable, rich in features, and--best of all--easy to configure. This official guide is written by Philip Hazel, the creator of Exim.
Full Description
Exim delivers electronic mail, both local and remote. It has all the virtues of a good postman: it's easy to talk to, reliable, efficient, and eager to accommodate even the most complex special requests. It's the default mail transport agent installed on some Linux systems, runs on many versions of Unix, and is suitable for any TCP/IP network with any combination of hosts and end-user mail software.
Exim is growing in popularity because it is open source, scalable, and rich in features such as the following:
- Compatibility with the calling interfaces and options of Sendmail (for which Exim is usually a drop-in replacement)
- Lookups in LDAP servers, MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, and NIS or NIS+ services
- Support for many kinds of address parsing, including regular expressions that are compatible with Perl 5
- Sophisticated error handling
- Innumerable tuning parameters for improving performance and handling enormous volumes of mail
Best of all, Exim is easy to configure. You never have to deal with ruleset 3 or worry that a misplaced asterisk will cause an inadvertent mail bomb.
While a basic configuration is easy to read and can be created quickly, Exim's syntax and behavior do get more subtle as you enter complicated areas like virtual hosting, filtering, and automatic replies. This book is a comprehensive survey that provides quick information for people in a hurry as well as thorough coverage of more advanced material.
Featured customer reviews

Exim Review,
December 12 2001
Submitted by Milan Gacik
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Well, we have been using postfix for long time, but I wanna to try something other in my network.
Book is fine, but I found a lot of theory but not many examples usefull for typical configuration (f.e. for home user, for firms). I must ellaborate myself, but it's a great waste of my time. Mailing list is a big help, but I recommend for futher development to focus on documentation, which is "not good enough". F.e. there is a missing search in www.exim.org for documentation. It's a work for one day for advanced web developer. I can only search in mailing list or use google instead.
But, at the end thumb up for Philip Hazel for his Exim and for all us using open source software...
Milan
Exim Review,
June 14 2001
Submitted by Raghavendra Bhat
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The Aye-Aye Monkey Book helps your mail fly ! Exim is an MTA which is getting
better by the day and this book is one must-have reference material, one of the
only two I have; from O'Reilly. The other is the book on DNS and BIND.
O'Reilly books are neat but they are not available for a *FREE* download, atleast they have to carry an HTML-ized tarball of the book to do justice on
the topic/subject; all the more important if the same is under the GNU/GPL.
The author, Philip Hazel, is a great help in the Mailing List too ! When the
list is mentioned, I just cannot hold back thanks to Yann Golanski for his
Exim papers and Suresh Ramasubramaniam for his enthusiasm in helping listers.
This book is a *smart* buy for Mail Administrators' and for students' wanting to
learn a *free* MTA which is as good, if not better; than Sendmail.
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Media reviews
"A must-buy for any EXIM administrator, or indeed, anyone who is looking at learning EXIM seriously."--Linux Format, Nov 2002
"Philip Hazel is the author of Exim, so he can write with authority about the package. I found his style to be both concise and complete. While I have not yet implemented an Exim based mail system, I felt confident that the book was a complete reference and would enable me to do so. His style seemed clear and direct to me; the book is well indexed, and the chapters and topics appear progressive and appropriate.?
--Mahlon Stacy, KLUC, Nov 2001
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