-$Cambridge: exim/doc/doc-txt/NewStuff,v 1.40 2005/05/10 10:19:11 ph10 Exp $
+$Cambridge: exim/doc/doc-txt/NewStuff,v 1.122 2006/11/13 12:07:46 ph10 Exp $
New Features in Exim
--------------------
-This file contains descriptions of new features that have been added to Exim,
-but have not yet made it into the main manual (which is most conveniently
-updated when there is a relatively large batch of changes). The doc/ChangeLog
-file contains a listing of all changes, including bug fixes.
-
-
-Exim version 4.52
------------------
-
-TF/01 Support for checking Client SMTP Authorization has been added. CSA is a
- system which allows a site to advertise which machines are and are not
- permitted to send email. This is done by placing special SRV records in
- the DNS, which are looked up using the client's HELO domain. At this
- time CSA is still an Internet-Draft.
-
- Client SMTP Authorization checks are performed by the ACL condition
- verify=csa. This will fail if the client is not authorized. If there is
- a DNS problem, or if no valid CSA SRV record is found, or if the client
- is authorized, the condition succeeds. These three cases can be
- distinguished using the expansion variable $csa_status, which can take
- one of the values "fail", "defer", "unknown", or "ok". The condition
- does not itself defer because that would be likely to cause problems
- for legitimate email.
-
- The error messages produced by the CSA code include slightly more
- detail. If $csa_status is "defer" this may be because of problems
- looking up the CSA SRV record, or problems looking up the CSA target
- address record. There are four reasons for $csa_status being "fail":
- the client's host name is explicitly not authorized; the client's IP
- address does not match any of the CSA target IP addresses; the client's
- host name is authorized but it has no valid target IP addresses (e.g.
- the target's addresses are IPv6 and the client is using IPv4); or the
- client's host name has no CSA SRV record but a parent domain has
- asserted that all subdomains must be explicitly authorized.
-
- The verify=csa condition can take an argument which is the domain to
- use for the DNS query. The default is verify=csa/$sender_helo_name.
-
- This implementation includes an extension to CSA. If the query domain
- is an address literal such as [192.0.2.95], or if it is a bare IP
- address, Exim will search for CSA SRV records in the reverse DNS as if
- the HELO domain was e.g. 95.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. Therefore it is
- meaningful to say, for example, verify=csa/$sender_host_address - in
- fact, this is the check that Exim performs if the client does not say
- HELO. This extension can be turned off by setting the main
- configuration option dns_csa_use_reverse = false.
-
- If a CSA SRV record is not found for the domain itself, then a search
- is performed through its parent domains for a record which might be
- making assertions about subdomains. The maximum depth of this search is
- limited using the main configuration option dns_csa_search_limit, which
- takes the value 5 by default. Exim does not look for CSA SRV records in
- a top level domain, so the default settings handle HELO domains as long
- as seven (hostname.five.four.three.two.one.com) which encompasses the
- vast majority of legitimate HELO domains.
-
- The dnsdb lookup also has support for CSA. Although dnsdb already
- supports SRV lookups, this is not sufficient because of the extra
- parent domain search behaviour of CSA, and (as with PTR lookups)
- dnsdb also turns IP addresses into lookups in the reverse DNS space.
- The result of ${lookup dnsdb {csa=$sender_helo_name} } has two
- space-separated fields: an authorization code and a target host name.
- The authorization code can be "Y" for yes, "N" for no, "X" for explicit
- authorization required but absent, or "?" for unknown.
-
-
-Version 4.51
+This file contains descriptions of new features that have been added to Exim.
+Before a formal release, there may be quite a lot of detail so that people can
+test from the snapshots or the CVS before the documentation is updated. Once
+the documentation is updated, this file is reduced to a short list.
+
+
+Version 4.64
+------------
+
+ 1. ACL variables can now be given arbitrary names, as long as they start with
+ "acl_c" or "acl_m" (for connection variables and message variables), are at
+ least six characters long, with the sixth character being either a digit or
+ an underscore. The rest of the name can contain alphanumeric characters and
+ underscores. This is a compatible change because the old set of variables
+ such as acl_m12 are a subset of the allowed names. There may now be any
+ number of ACL variables. For example:
+
+ set acl_c13 = value for original ACL variable
+ set acl_c13b = whatever
+ set acl_m_foo = something
+
+ What happens if a syntactically valid but undefined ACL variable is
+ referenced depends on the setting of the strict_acl_vars option. If it is
+ false (the default), an empty string is substituted; if it is true, an
+ error is generated. This affects all ACL variables, including the "old"
+ ones such as acl_c4. (Previously there wasn't the concept of an undefined
+ ACL variable.)
+
+ The implementation has been done in such a way that spool files containing
+ ACL variable settings written by previous releases of Exim are compatible
+ and can be read by the new release. If only the original numeric names are
+ used, spool files written by the new release can be read by earlier
+ releases.
+
+ 2. There is a new ACL modifier called log_reject_target. It makes it possible
+ to specify which logs are used for messages about ACL rejections. Its
+ argument is a list of words which can be "main", "reject", or "panic". The
+ default is "main:reject". The list may be empty, in which case a rejection
+ is not logged at all. For example, this ACL fragment writes no logging
+ information when access is denied:
+
+ deny <some conditions>
+ log_reject_target =
+
+ The modifier can be used in SMTP and non-SMTP ACLs. It applies to both
+ permanent and temporary rejections.
+
+ 3. There is a new authenticator called "dovecot". This is an interface to the
+ authentication facility of the Dovecot POP/IMAP server, which can support a
+ number of authentication methods. If you are using Dovecot to authenticate
+ POP/IMAP clients, it might be helpful to use the same mechanisms for SMTP
+ authentication. This is a server authenticator only. The only option is
+ server_socket, which must specify the socket which is the interface to
+ Dovecot authentication. The public_name option must specify an
+ authentication mechanism that Dovecot is configured to support. You can
+ have several authenticators for different mechanisms. For example:
+
+ dovecot_plain:
+ driver = dovecot
+ public_name = PLAIN
+ server_name = /var/run/dovecot/auth-client
+ server_setid = $auth1
+
+ dovecot_ntlm:
+ driver = dovecot
+ public_name = NTLM
+ server_name = /var/run/dovecot/auth-client
+ server_setid = $auth1
+
+ If the SMTP connection is encrypted, or if $sender_host_address is equal to
+ $interface_address (that is, the connection is local), the "secured" option
+ is passed in the Dovecot authentication command. If, for a TLS connection,
+ a client certificate has been verified, the "valid-client-cert" option is
+ passed.
+
+ 4. The variable $message_headers_raw provides a concatenation of all the
+ messages's headers without any decoding. This is in contrast to
+ $message_headers, which does RFC2047 decoding on the header contents.
+
+ 5. In a DNS black list, when the facility for restricting the matching IP
+ values is used, the text from the TXT record that is set in $dnslist_text
+ may not reflect the true reason for rejection. This happens when lists are
+ merged and the IP address in the A record is used to distinguish them;
+ unfortunately there is only one TXT record. One way round this is not to
+ use merged lists, but that can be inefficient because it requires multiple
+ DNS lookups where one would do in the vast majority of cases when the host
+ of interest is not on any of the lists.
+
+ A less inefficient way of solving this problem has now been implemented. If
+ two domain names, comma-separated, are given, the second is used first to
+ do an initial check, making use of any IP value restrictions that are set.
+ If there is a match, the first domain is used, without any IP value
+ restrictions, to get the TXT record. As a byproduct of this, there is also
+ a check that the IP being tested is indeed on the first list. The first
+ domain is the one that is put in $dnslist_domain. For example:
+
+ reject message = rejected because $sender_ip_address is blacklisted \
+ at $dnslist_domain\n$dnslist_text
+ dnslists = sbl.spamhaus.org,sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org=127.0.0.2 : \
+ dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net,dnsbl.sorbs.net=127.0.0.10
+
+ For the first blacklist item, this starts by doing a lookup in
+ sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org and testing for a 127.0.0.2 return. If there is a
+ match, it then looks in sbl.spamhaus.org, without checking the return
+ value, and as long as something is found, it looks for the corresponding
+ TXT record. If there is no match in sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org, nothing more is
+ done. The second blacklist item is processed similarly.
+
+ If you are interested in more than one merged list, the same list must be
+ given several times, but because the results of the DNS lookups are cached,
+ the DNS calls themselves are not repeated. For example:
+
+ reject dnslists = http.dnsbl.sorbs.net,dnsbl.sorbs.net=127.0.0.2 : \
+ socks.dnsbl.sorbs.net,dnsbl.sorbs.net=127.0.0.3 : \
+ misc.dnsbl.sorbs.net,dnsbl.sorbs.net=127.0.0.4 : \
+ dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net,dnsbl.sorbs.net=127.0.0.10
+
+ In this case there is a lookup in dnsbl.sorbs.net, and if none of the IP
+ values matches (or if no record is found), this is the only lookup that is
+ done. Only if there is a match is one of the more specific lists consulted.
+
+ 6. All authenticators now have a server_condition option. Previously, only
+ plaintext had this, and this has not changed: it must be set to the
+ authenticator as a server. For the others, if server_condition is set, it
+ is expanded if authentication is successful, and treated exactly as it is
+ in plaintext. This can serve as a means of adding authorization to an
+ authenticator.
+
+ 7. There is a new command-line option called -Mset. It is useful only in
+ conjunction with -be (that is, when testing string expansions). It must be
+ followed by a message id; Exim loads the given message from its spool
+ before doing the expansions, thus setting message-specific variables such
+ as $message_size and the header variables. The $recipients variable is
+ available. This feature is provided to make it easier to test expansions
+ that make use of these variables. However, Exim must be called by an admin
+ user when -Mset is used.
+
+ 8. Another similar new command-line option is called -bem. It operates like
+ -be except that it must be followed by the name of a file. For example:
+
+ exim -bem /tmp/testmessage
+
+ The file is read as a message (as if receiving a locally-submitted non-SMTP
+ message) before any of the test expansions are done. Thus, message-specific
+ variables such as $message_size and $h_from: are available. However, no
+ Received: header is added to the message. If the -t option is set,
+ recipients are read from the headers in the normal way, and are shown in
+ the $recipients variable. Note that recipients cannot be given on the
+ command line, because further arguments are taken as strings to expand
+ (just like -be).
+
+ 9. When an address is delayed because of a 4xx response to a RCPT command, it
+ is now the combination of sender and recipient that is delayed in
+ subsequent queue runs until its retry time is reached. You can revert to
+ the previous behavious, that is, delay the recipient independent of the
+ sender, by setting address_retry_include_sender=false in the smtp
+ transport. However, this can lead to problems with servers that regularly
+ issue 4xx responses to RCPT commands.
+
+10. Unary negation and the bitwise logical operators and, or, xor, not, and
+ shift, have been added to the eval: and eval10: expansion items. These
+ items may now contain arithmetic operators (plus, minus, times, divide,
+ remainder, negate), bitwise operators (and, or, xor, not, shift), and
+ parentheses. All operations are carried out using signed integer
+ arithmetic. Operator priorities are as in C, namely:
+
+ (highest) not, negate
+ times, divide, remainder
+ plus, minus
+ shift-left, shift-right
+ and
+ xor
+ (lowest) or
+
+ Binary operators with the same priority are evaluated from left to right.
+ For example:
+
+ ${eval:1+1} yields 2
+ ${eval:1+2*3} yields 7
+ ${eval:(1+2)*3} yields 9
+ ${eval:2+42%5} yields 4
+ ${eval:0xc&5} yields 4
+ ${eval:0xc|5} yields 13
+ ${eval:0xc^5} yields 9
+ ${eval:0xc>>1} yields 6
+ ${eval:0xc<<1} yields 24
+ ${eval:~255&0x1234} yields 4608
+ ${eval:-(~255&0x1234)} yields -4608
+
+11. The variables $interface_address and $interface_port have been renamed
+ as $received_ip_address and $received_port, to make it clear that they
+ relate to message reception rather than delivery. (The old names remain
+ available for compatibility.)
+
+
+Version 4.63
+------------
+
+1. There is a new Boolean option called filter_prepend_home for the redirect
+ router.
+
+2. There is a new acl, set by acl_not_smtp_start, which is run right at the
+ start of receiving a non-SMTP message, before any of the message has been
+ read.
+
+3. When an SMTP error message is specified in a "message" modifier in an ACL,
+ or in a :fail: or :defer: message in a redirect router, Exim now checks the
+ start of the message for an SMTP error code.
+
+4. There is a new parameter for LDAP lookups called "referrals", which takes
+ one of the settings "follow" (the default) or "nofollow".
+
+5. Version 20070721.2 of exipick now included, offering these new options:
+ --reverse
+ After all other sorting options have bee processed, reverse order
+ before displaying messages (-R is synonym).
+ --random
+ Randomize order of matching messages before displaying.
+ --size
+ Instead of displaying the matching messages, display the sum
+ of their sizes.
+ --sort <variable>[,<variable>...]
+ Before displaying matching messages, sort the messages according to
+ each messages value for each variable.
+ --not
+ Negate the value for every test (returns inverse output from the
+ same criteria without --not).
+
+
+Version 4.62
------------
-PH/01 The format in which GnuTLS parameters are written to the gnutls-param
- file in the spool directory has been changed. This change has been made
- to alleviate problems that some people had with the generation of the
- parameters by Exim when /dev/random was exhausted. In this situation,
- Exim would hang until /dev/random acquired some more entropy.
+1. The ${readsocket expansion item now supports Internet domain sockets as well
+ as Unix domain sockets. If the first argument begins "inet:", it must be of
+ the form "inet:host:port". The port is mandatory; it may be a number or the
+ name of a TCP port in /etc/services. The host may be a name, or it may be an
+ IP address. An ip address may optionally be enclosed in square brackets.
+ This is best for IPv6 addresses. For example:
- The new code exports and imports the DH and RSA parameters in PEM
- format. This means that the parameters can be generated externally using
- the certtool command that is part of GnuTLS.
+ ${readsocket{inet:[::1]:1234}{<request data>}...
- To replace the parameters with new ones, instead of deleting the file
- and letting Exim re-create it, you can generate new parameters using
- certtool and, when this has been done, replace Exim's cache file by
- renaming. The relevant commands are something like this:
+ Only a single host name may be given, but if looking it up yield more than
+ one IP address, they are each tried in turn until a connection is made. Once
+ a connection has been made, the behaviour is as for ${readsocket with a Unix
+ domain socket.
+
+2. If a redirect router sets up file or pipe deliveries for more than one
+ incoming address, and the relevant transport has batch_max set greater than
+ one, a batch delivery now occurs.
+
+3. The appendfile transport has a new option called maildirfolder_create_regex.
+ Its value is a regular expression. For a maildir delivery, this is matched
+ against the maildir directory; if it matches, Exim ensures that a
+ maildirfolder file is created alongside the new, cur, and tmp directories.
+
+
+Version 4.61
+------------
- # rm -f new.params
- # touch new.params
- # chown exim:exim new.params
- # chmod 0400 new.params
- # certtool --generate-privkey --bits 512 >new.params
- # echo "" >>new.params
- # certtool --generate-dh-params --bits 1024 >> new.params
- # mv new.params params
+The documentation is up-to-date for the 4.61 release. Major new features since
+the 4.60 release are:
- If Exim never has to generate the parameters itself, the possibility of
- stalling is removed.
+. An option called disable_ipv6, to disable the use of IPv6 completely.
-PH/02 A new expansion item for dynamically loading and calling a locally-
- written C function is now provided, if Exim is compiled with
+. An increase in the number of ACL variables to 20 of each type.
- EXPAND_DLFUNC=yes
+. A change to use $auth1, $auth2, and $auth3 in authenticators instead of $1,
+ $2, $3, (though those are still set) because the numeric variables get used
+ for other things in complicated expansions.
- set in Local/Makefile. The facility is not included by default (a
- suitable error is given if you try to use it when it is not there.)
+. The default for rfc1413_query_timeout has been changed from 30s to 5s.
- If you enable EXPAND_DLFUNC, you should also be aware of the new redirect
- router option forbid_filter_dlfunc. If you have unprivileged users on
- your system who are permitted to create filter files, you might want to
- set forbid_filter_dlfunc=true in the appropriate router, to stop them
- using ${dlfunc to run code within Exim.
+. It is possible to use setclassresources() on some BSD OS to control the
+ resources used in pipe deliveries.
- You load and call an external function like this:
-
- ${dlfunc{/some/file}{function}{arg1}{arg2}...}
-
- Once loaded, Exim remembers the dynamically loaded object so that it
- doesn't reload the same object file in the same Exim process (but of
- course Exim does start new processes frequently).
-
- There may be from zero to eight arguments to the function. When compiling
- a local function that is to be called in this way, local_scan.h should be
- included. The Exim variables and functions that are defined by that API
- are also available for dynamically loaded functions. The function itself
- must have the following type:
-
- int dlfunction(uschar **yield, int argc, uschar *argv[])
-
- Where "uschar" is a typedef for "unsigned char" in local_scan.h. The
- function should return one of the following values:
-
- OK Success. The string that is placed in "yield" is put into
- the expanded string that is being built.
-
- FAIL A non-forced expansion failure occurs, with the error
- message taken from "yield", if it is set.
-
- FAIL_FORCED A forced expansion failure occurs, with the error message
- taken from "yield" if it is set.
-
- ERROR Same as FAIL, except that a panic log entry is written.
-
- When compiling a function that is to be used in this way with gcc,
- you need to add -shared to the gcc command. Also, in the Exim build-time
- configuration, you must add -export-dynamic to EXTRALIBS.
-
-TF/01 $received_time is a new expansion variable containing the time and date
- as a number of seconds since the start of the Unix epoch when the
- current message was received.
-
-PH/03 There is a new value for RADIUS_LIB_TYPE that can be set in
- Local/Makefile. It is RADIUSCLIENTNEW, and it requests that the new API,
- in use from radiusclient 0.4.0 onwards, be used. It does not appear to be
- possible to detect the different versions automatically.
-
-PH/04 There is a new option called acl_not_smtp_mime that allows you to scan
- MIME parts in non-SMTP messages. It operates in exactly the same way as
- acl_smtp_mime
-
-PH/05 It is now possible to redefine a macro within the configuration file.
- The macro must have been previously defined within the configuration (or
- an included file). A definition on the command line using the -D option
- causes all definitions and redefinitions within the file to be ignored.
- In other words, -D overrides any values that are set in the file.
- Redefinition is specified by using '==' instead of '='. For example:
-
- MAC1 = initial value
- ...
- MAC1 == updated value
-
- Redefinition does not alter the order in which the macros are applied to
- the subsequent lines of the configuration file. It is still the same
- order in which the macros were originally defined. All that changes is
- the macro's value. Redefinition makes it possible to accumulate values.
- For example:
-
- MAC1 = initial value
- ...
- MAC1 == MAC1 and something added
-
- This can be helpful in situations where the configuration file is built
- from a number of other files.
-
-PH/06 Macros may now be defined or redefined between router, transport,
- authenticator, or ACL definitions, as well as in the main part of the
- configuration. They may not, however, be changed within an individual
- driver or ACL, or in the local_scan, retry, or rewrite sections of the
- configuration.
-
-PH/07 $acl_verify_message is now set immediately after the failure of a
- verification in an ACL, and so is available in subsequent modifiers. In
- particular, the message can be preserved by coding like this:
+. A new ACL modifier called add_header, which can be used with any verb.
- warn !verify = sender
- set acl_m0 = $acl_verify_message
+. More errors are detectable in retry rules.
- Previously, $acl_verify_message was set only while expanding "message"
- and "log_message" when a very denied access.
-
-PH/08 The redirect router has two new options, sieve_useraddress and
- sieve_subaddress. These are passed to a Sieve filter to specify the :user
- and :subaddress parts of an address. Both options are unset by default.
- However, when a Sieve filter is run, if sieve_useraddress is unset, the
- entire original local part (including any prefix or suffix) is used for
- :user. An unset subaddress is treated as an empty subaddress.
-
-PH/09 Quota values can be followed by G as well as K and M.
-
-PH/10 $message_linecount is a new variable that contains the total number of
- lines in the header and body of the message. Compare $body_linecount,
- which is the count for the body only. During the DATA and
- content-scanning ACLs, $message_linecount contains the number of lines
- received. Before delivery happens (that is, before filters, routers, and
- transports run) the count is increased to include the Received: header
- line that Exim standardly adds, and also any other header lines that are
- added by ACLs. The blank line that separates the message header from the
- body is not counted. Here is an example of the use of this variable in a
- DATA ACL:
-
- deny message = Too many lines in message header
- condition = \
- ${if <{250}{${eval: $message_linecount - $body_linecount}}}
-
- In the MAIL and RCPT ACLs, the value is zero because at that stage the
- message has not yet been received.
-
-PH/11 In a ${run expansion, the variable $value (which contains the standard
- output) is now also usable in the "else" string.
-
-PH/12 In a pipe transport, although a timeout while waiting for the pipe
- process to complete was treated as a delivery failure, a timeout while
- writing the message to the pipe was logged, but erroneously treated as a
- successful delivery. Such timeouts include transport filter timeouts. For
- consistency with the overall process timeout, these timeouts are now
- treated as errors, giving rise to delivery failures by default. However,
- there is now a new Boolean option for the pipe transport called
- timeout_defer, which, if set TRUE, converts the failures into defers for
- both kinds of timeout. A transport filter timeout is now identified in
- the log output.
-
-
-Version 4.50
+There are a number of other additions too.
+
+
+Version 4.60
------------
-The documentation is up-to-date for the 4.50 release.
+The documentation is up-to-date for the 4.60 release. Major new features since
+the 4.50 release are:
+
+. Support for SQLite.
+
+. Support for IGNOREQUOTA in LMTP.
+
+. Extensions to the "submission mode" features.
+
+. Support for Client SMTP Authorization (CSA).
+
+. Support for ratelimiting hosts and users.
+
+. New expansion items to help with the BATV "prvs" scheme.
+
+. A "match_ip" condition, that matches an IP address against a list.
+
+There are many more minor changes.
****