-$Cambridge: exim/doc/doc-txt/NewStuff,v 1.36 2005/04/27 10:06:00 ph10 Exp $
+$Cambridge: exim/doc/doc-txt/NewStuff,v 1.40 2005/05/10 10:19:11 ph10 Exp $
New Features in Exim
--------------------
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
------------
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
------------