waiting for it by the time it recovers, and sending them in a single SMTP
connection is clearly beneficial. Whenever a delivery to a remote host is
deferred,
-.cindex "hints database"
+.cindex "hints database" "deferred deliveries"
Exim makes a note in its hints database, and whenever a successful
SMTP delivery has happened, it looks to see if any other messages are waiting
for the same host. If any are found, they are sent over the same SMTP
Exim's configuration file is divided into a number of different parts. General
option settings must always appear at the start of the file. The other parts
are all optional, and may appear in any order. Each part other than the first
-is introduced by the word &"begin"& followed by the name of the part. The
-optional parts are:
+is introduced by the word &"begin"& followed by at least one literal
+space, and the name of the part. The optional parts are:
.ilist
&'ACL'&: Access control lists for controlling incoming SMTP mail (see chapter
The form if &"retry_VAL"& where VAL is an integer.
The default count is set by the main configuration option &%dns_retry%&.
+.new
+.cindex cacheing "of dns lookup"
+.cindex TTL "of dns lookup"
+.cindex DNS TTL
+Dnsdb lookup results are cached within a single process (and its children).
+The cache entry lifetime is limited to the smallest time-to-live (TTL)
+value of the set of returned DNS records.
+.wen
+
.section "Pseudo dnsdb record types" "SECID66"
.cindex "MX record" "in &(dnsdb)& lookup"
.code
${listextract{-3}{<, x,42,99,& Mailer,,/bin/bash}{result: $value}}
.endd
-yields &"result: 99"&.
+yields &"result: 42"&.
If {<&'string3'&>} is omitted, an empty string is used for string3.
If {<&'string2'&>} is also omitted, the value that was
to ensure that any additional groups associated with the uid are set up.
+.new
+.option max_parallel transports integer&!! unset
+.cindex limit "transport parallelism"
+.cindex transport "parallel processes"
+.cindex transport "concurrency limit"
+.cindex "delivery" "parallelism for transport"
+If this option is set and expands to an integer greater than zero
+it limits the number of concurrent runs of the transport.
+The control does not apply to shadow transports.
+
+.cindex "hints database" "transport concurrency control"
+Exim implements this control by means of a hints database in which a record is
+incremented whenever a transport process is beaing created. The record
+is decremented and possibly removed when the process terminates.
+Obviously there is scope for
+records to get left lying around if there is a system or program crash. To
+guard against this, Exim ignores any records that are more than six hours old.
+
+If you use this option, you should also arrange to delete the
+relevant hints database whenever your system reboots. The names of the files
+start with &_misc_& and they are kept in the &_spool/db_& directory. There
+may be one or two files, depending on the type of DBM in use. The same files
+are used for ETRN and smtp transport serialization.
+.wen
+
+
.option message_size_limit transports string&!! 0
.cindex "limit" "message size per transport"
.cindex "size" "of message, limit"
delivery, the two pipe transports may be run concurrently. You must ensure that
any pipe commands you set up are robust against this happening. If the commands
write to a file, the &%exim_lock%& utility might be of use.
+.new
+Alternatively the &%max_parallel%& option could be used with a value
+of "1" to enforce serialization.
+.wen
may be one or two files, depending on the type of DBM in use. The same files
are used for ETRN serialization.
+.new
+See also the &%max_parallel%& generic transport option.
+.wen
+
.option size_addition smtp integer 1024
.cindex "SMTP" "SIZE"
warn message = X-Warn: sending host is on dialups list
dnslists = dialups.mail-abuse.org
.endd
-DNS list lookups are cached by Exim for the duration of the SMTP session,
+.cindex cacheing "of dns lookup"
+.cindex DNS TTL
+DNS list lookups are cached by Exim for the duration of the SMTP session
+.new
+(but limited by the DNS return TTL value),
+.wen
so a lookup based on the IP address is done at most once for any incoming
-connection. Exim does not share information between multiple incoming
+connection (assuming long-enough TTL).
+Exim does not share information between multiple incoming
connections (but your local name server cache should be active).
.next
Serializing delivery to a specific host (when &%serialize_hosts%& is set in an
&(smtp)& transport)
+.next
+Limiting the concurrency of specific transports (when &%max_parallel%& is set
+in a transport)
.endlist