*ROTFL*.
http://www.exim.org/mail-archives/exim-users/Week-of-Mon-20070205/msg00113.html
i'm going to collect these:
From: exim-users-bounces@exim.org
To: lkcl@lkcl.net
X-BeenThere: exim-users@exim.org
X-List-Administrivia: yes
Subject: You have been unsubscribed from the Exim-users
mailing list
here's the message that i received which prompted this:
X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: graeme
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.7 (2006-10-05) on
dedi28
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00
autolearn=ham
version=3.1.7
Subject: Re: [exim] local_user section with check_local_user
removed (as advised
X-SA-Exim-Version: 4.2 (built Thu, 03 Mar 2005 10:44:12 +0100)
X-SA-Exim-Scanned: Yes (on lkcl.net)
OK, gloves off.
On 01/02/2007 16:06, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>i will endeavour to track down the scope of this problem
a bit
>further, because i have just tried this:
>
>HELO localhost
>MAIL FROM:<>
>RCPT TO:llllllllllllltotallyfakeaddress@localhost
>
>and _that_ was accepted (!)
In that case, YOUR copy of Exim is not checking against YOUR
copy of
Cyrus - or anyhting else, in fact - to see if the local_part
is valid.
>it's the fact that the mail gets accepted - without
even being
>checked against the cyrus mailbox, and THEN it gets
attempted
>to be delivered by LMTP, that bothers me. is that...
just...
>too much to ask?
No. But then you haven't given us your ACL details, you
haven't
described the files your Cyrus installation is using, you...
well,
obviously you haven't done much apart from follow, blindly,
recommendations you found somewhere (in HOWTOs, but are they
official
ones?) and they *don't do what you want them to*
>and this issue smells veeerrry slightly, to me, like
a bug or
>limitation in exim4 itself, with a limitation in the config
file
>format (of not being able to specify empty users, for sure).
Incorrect. It is a misconfiguration in YOUR Exim config.
[snip]
and, this was my reply, after several days, and some quite
intense debugging one night that had to involve examining
the exim 4.64 source code _and_ taking the risk of compiling
and installing a modified version on a live server:
....
heya folks,
i've been thinking carefully about how to reply to this
message, composing a reply over several days.
here's how i expected this conversation, over several
emails and days,
to go:
me:
"hello, i'm an experienced free software
developer and
i consider
myself to be a reasonably experienced linux admin and
i've found
a problem that is beyond my level of experience and it
might be
a bug and i need help in working it out"
you (exim developers):
"greetings, and thank you for contacting us:
we're a bit
busy but
we'll try to get to the bottom of this as well you're
probably not
correct but we could also be wrong, so we'll see.
firstly, just
to check: have you tried [description cut] and could
you also
send your configuration or put it online somewhere.
btw, with
the greatest of respect: as an experienced free
software developer
you should know already to do these things to save us
time, slapped
wrist to you. in the mean-time, your issue smells like
this one
which we already discussed to death [timescales cut]
and here are
some references [urls to archives or even better to
wiki pages
supplied] and it would help enormously if you could
read and review
those as it will save us a hell of a lot of time which
we don't
have a lot of".
me:
"oops, sorry, yes i really should know by now:
i'll try
to make
life easier for you and save time. here's the config
[url cut].
yes i tried X / no i didn't try Y [delete as
appropriate]. thank you
for the references, i read them and yes it's the same
issue / no
i don't believe it is the same, and this and this and
this is why
[delete as appropriate]".
we go round this loop a few times, resolving what
the issue
is, or at
least trying to resolve it, and each of us gets to learn
something,
and, ultimately, hopefully, the quality of the code and/or
documentation
that comes out of it gets improved, and everyone is happy
that they learned
something.
AT NO FUCKING TIME are the words "ok, gloves off"
anticipated to be
heard in those discussions, the ones in my head.
graeme - as an experienced developer, you should know
better.
if someone describes to you something that quite
obviously
demonstrates
that they haven't got a clue [like i did when i didn't know
what <>
was], but they appear to be quite articulate and also quite
intelligent,
then next time why don't you consider telling them "look,
dude, you're
completely in the wrong ball-park, and you're likely to
take up quite
a lot of our time if we explain it to you in detail.
please trust me
when i say that your issue is probably this this or this,
and please
investigate it by trying that, that or that, and come back
to us and
let us know".
telling me that my issue is a problem with someone
else's
default
configuration is FUCK ALL use to man nor beast.
now.
i did some code-walking in exim 4.64 and to me it would
appear that
there is a problem with 550 codes being ignored by the code
that uses
src/transport/lmtp.c - but (and i know why and i agree with
the design)
i haven't yet found the point where the exec()s call out
from, as it's
a bit complicated to follow (and the code comments are
extremely useful
and well-written but it's _still_ a bit hard to follow as it's
unfamiliar code to me).
here's the thing: i've already made my decision not to
pursue this.
instead, i'm just going to put in a little bit of exim
config and leave
it at that. if that exim config makes messages from <>
bounce with a
reject message saying 'sorry, <> messages not accepted,
please send
manually to postmaster@lkcl.net' then so be it. it solves
my immediate
problem.
so, your 'ok gloves off' stupid outburst has _lost_ you
someone who
could have helped you solve a problem. helped you to help
others. which
is the whole point of writing free software.
_don't_ do that again. not to anybody. no matter
_what_
you may have
heard about them.
now, here's the thing. this is _another_ example of
developers who can't deal with intelligent but inexperienced
users of their software, who _want_ to help, _want_ to get
things resolved.
and yes, i know that i'm a complete pain, and i go
totally
off on the wrong tangent making the wrong conclusions and
treading on toes along the way - but who doesn't???
here's the bit about this that makes me particularly
sad: i
love exim, and it's a great mailer, and i consider it to be
a hell of a lot easier to work with than the alternatives:
with exim, i can achieve more (extremely complex things) in
a very short amount of time.
the goal of the
developers (all free software developers) should be to think
of ways to accelerate the development of free software to
reach and help the maximum number of people that they can.
this is a _classic_ example of how not to go about doing
exactly that. the developer, in this case, graeme, was
extremely sarcastic, extremely nasty, extremely unhelful,
rude, curt and generally demonstrated, without saying so
(which would actually have been much better) that he really
didn't want to waste his time even communicating with me.
and yes, i know i'm a pain. but somebody has to be
a pain.
otherwise there's no way to know when the pain stops, is there?