Why was exim selcted as the default MTA?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>]

  Jor-el> 	The designer of exim has explicitly stated that exim was
  Jor-el> designed with 24x7 connectivity to the internet assumed. Because of
  Jor-el> that assumption, people who use exim on dialup machines, or
  Jor-el> machines having some other intermittent connection, have to
  Jor-el> workaround some problems. 

I disagree. I have used exim for a long time very happily on my ppp dial-in
home box [1]. As I came from smail, I have to agree with the often-heard
"exim is is smail well done". 

  Jor-el> 	Let me give an example of the problem I am facing. I run a
  Jor-el> private network, with an unregistered domain name. I dialup to my
  Jor-el> ISP and use his smtp and pop server for mail. If I want to queue up
  Jor-el> my mail on my local smtp server which will do a 'smarthost' relay
  Jor-el> to the ISP smtp server, I must rewrite my envelope sender header,
  Jor-el> or my ISP will not accept mail from me.

Sure? Always worked for me, with at least four different ISPs over the last
five years.

Ie, all the ISP checks for is that you come from "his" net, whatever the
name. See here:

	Received: from sonny.econ.queensu.ca ([24.112.242.11])
          by mail.rdc1.on.home.com (InterMail v4.01.01.00 201-229-111)
          with ESMTP
          id <19990612150721.IVSD2200.mail.rdc1.on.home.com@sonny.econ.queensu.ca>
          for <edd@debian.org>; Sat, 12 Jun 1999 08:07:21 -0700

The box claims to be sonny.econ.queensu.ca. That doesn't exist. The
.econ.queensu.ca domain exists, and is a domain I was on about four years
ago. I simply stuck with it ...

  Jor-el> 	Rewriting the header is not the problem.

Precisely. Exim even makes it super-easy. As you seem to have read the docs,
where is the problem?

Both my wife and I rewrite the From: part of our mail headers with our
respective MUAs, mostly because that's how I figured it out four-five years
ago. I could also use exim's header rewrite, and did once just to see that it 
worked.

Hope this helps,  Dirk



[1] We switched to cable week ago, though. No changes to the MTA, though.

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