mailq

a Mail Transfer Agent

SYNOPSIS

exim4 [options] arguments ... mailq [options] arguments ... rsmtp [options] arguments ... rmail [options] arguments ... runq [options] arguments ... newaliases [options] arguments ...

Exim is a mail transfer agent (MTA) developed at the University of Cam‐ bridge. It is a large program with very many facilities. For a full specification, see the reference manual. This man page contains only a description of the command line options. It has been automatically gen‐ erated from the reference manual source, hopefully without too much mangling. Like other MTAs, Exim replaces Sendmail, and is normally called by user agents (MUAs) using the path /usr/sbin/sendmail when they submit mes‐ sages for delivery (some operating systems use /usr/lib/sendmail). This path is normally set up as a symbolic link to the Exim binary. It may also be used by boot scripts to start the Exim daemon. Many of Exim's command line options are compatible with Sendmail so that it can act as a drop-in replacement.

DEFAULT ACTION

If no options are present that require a specific action (such as starting the daemon or a queue runner, testing an address, receiving a message in a specific format, or listing the queue), and there are no arguments on the command line, Exim outputs a brief message about it‐ self and exits. However, if there is at least one command line argument, -bm (accept a local message on the standard input, with the arguments specifying the recipients) is assumed. Thus, for example, if Exim is installed in /usr/sbin, you can send a message from the command line like this: /usr/sbin/exim4 -i CTRL-D The -i option prevents a line containing just a dot from terminating the message. Only an end-of-file (generated by typing CTRL-D if the in‐ put is from a terminal) does so.

SETTING OPTIONS BY PROGRAM NAME

If an Exim binary is called using one of the names listed in this sec‐ tion (typically via a symbolic link), certain options are assumed. mailq Behave as if the option -bp were present before any other op‐ tions. The -bp option requests a listing of the contents of the mail queue on the standard output. rsmtp Behaves as if the option -bS were present before any other op‐ tions, for compatibility with Smail. The -bS option is used for reading in a number of messages in batched SMTP format. rmail Behave as if the -i and -oee options were present before any other options, for compatibility with Smail. The name rmail is used as an interface by some UUCP systems. The -i option speci‐ fies that a dot on a line by itself does not terminate a non-SMTP message; -oee requests that errors detected in non-SMTP messages be reported by emailing the sender. runq Behave as if the option -q were present before any other op‐ tions, for compatibility with Smail. The -q option causes a sin‐ gle queue runner process to be started. It processes the queue once, then exits. newaliases Behave as if the option -bi were present before any other op‐ tions, for compatibility with Sendmail. This option is used for rebuilding Sendmail's alias file. Exim does not have the concept of a single alias file, but can be configured to run a specified command if called with the -bi option.

OPTIONS

-- This is a pseudo-option whose only purpose is to terminate the options and therefore to cause subsequent command line items to be treated as arguments rather than options, even if they begin with hyphens. --help This option causes Exim to output a few sentences stating what it is. The same output is generated if the Exim binary is called with no options and no arguments. --version This option is an alias for -bV and causes version informa‐ tion to be displayed. -Ac -Am These options are used by Sendmail for selecting configu‐ ration files and are ignored by Exim. -B This is a Sendmail option for selecting 7 or 8 bit process‐ ing. Exim is 8-bit clean; it ignores this option. -bd This option runs Exim as a daemon, awaiting incoming SMTP connections. Usually the -bd option is combined with the -q option, to specify that the daemon should also ini‐ tiate periodic queue runs. The -bd option can be used only by an admin user. If either of the -d (debugging) or -v (verifying) options are set, the daemon does not disconnect from the controlling terminal. When running this way, it can be stopped by pressing ctrl-C. By default, Exim listens for incoming connections to the standard SMTP port on all the host's running interfaces. How‐ ever, it is possible to listen on other ports, on multiple ports, and only on specific interfaces. When a listening daemon is started without the use of -oX (that is, without overriding the normal configuration), it writes its process id to a file called /var/run/exim4/exim.pid. This location can be overridden by setting PID_FILE_PATH in Local/Makefile. The file is written while Exim is still running as root. When -oX is used on the command line to start a listening daemon, the process id is not written to the normal pid file path. However, -oP can be used to specify a path on the com‐ mand line if a pid file is required. The SIGHUP signal can be used to cause the daemon to re-exe‐ cute itself. This should be done whenever Exim's configura‐ tion file, or any file that is incorporated into it by means of the .include facility, is changed, and also whenever a new version of Exim is installed. It is not necessary to do this when other files that are referenced from the configuration (for example, alias files) are changed, because these are reread each time they are used. -bdf This option has the same effect as -bd except that it never disconnects from the controlling terminal, even when no de‐ bugging is specified. -be Run Exim in expansion testing mode. Exim discards its root privilege, to prevent ordinary users from using this mode to read otherwise inaccessible files. If no arguments are given, Exim runs interactively, prompting for lines of data. Other‐ wise, it processes each argument in turn. If Exim was built with USE_READLINE=yes in Local/Makefile, it tries to load the libreadline library dynamically whenever the -be option is used without command line arguments. If successful, it uses the readline() function, which provides extensive line-editing facilities, for reading the test data. A line history is supported. Long expansion expressions can be split over several lines by using backslash continuations. As in Exim's runtime configu‐ ration, white space at the start of continuation lines is ig‐ nored. Each argument or data line is passed through the string expansion mechanism, and the result is output. Vari‐ able values from the configuration file (for example, $qual‐ ify_domain) are available, but no message-specific values (such as $message_exim_id) are set, because no message is be‐ ing processed (but see -bem and -Mset). Note: If you use this mechanism to test lookups, and you change the data files or databases you are using, you must exit and restart Exim before trying the same lookup again. Otherwise, because each Exim process caches the results of lookups, you will just get the same result as before. Macro processing is done on lines before string-expansion: new macros can be defined and macros will be expanded. Be‐ cause macros in the config file are often used for secrets, those are only available to admin users. -bem This option operates like -be except that it must be followed by the name of a file. For example: exim4 -bem /tmp/testmessage The file is read as a message (as if receiving a locally-sub‐ mitted non-SMTP message) before any of the test expansions are done. Thus, message-specific variables such as $mes‐ sage_size and $header_from: are available. However, no Re‐ ceived: 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 recipi‐ ents cannot be given on the command line, because further ar‐ guments are taken as strings to expand (just like -be). -bF This option is the same as -bf except that it assumes that the filter being tested is a system filter. The additional commands that are available only in system filters are recog‐ nized. -bf This option runs Exim in user filter testing mode; the file is the filter file to be tested, and a test message must be supplied on the standard input. If there are no message-de‐ pendent tests in the filter, an empty file can be supplied. If you want to test a system filter file, use -bF instead of -bf. You can use both -bF and -bf on the same command, in or‐ der to test a system filter and a user filter in the same run. For example: exim4 -bF /system/filter -bf /user/filter This sets the domain of the recipient address when a filter file is being tested by means of the -bf option. The default is the value of $qualify_domain. -bfl This sets the local part of the recipient address when a fil‐ ter file is being tested by means of the -bf option. The de‐ fault is the username of the process that calls Exim. A local part should be specified with any prefix or suffix stripped, because that is how it appears to the filter when a message is actually being delivered. -bfp This sets the prefix of the local part of the recipient ad‐ dress when a filter file is being tested by means of the -bf option. The default is an empty prefix. -bfs This sets the suffix of the local part of the recipient ad‐ dress when a filter file is being tested by means of the -bf option. The default is an empty suffix. -bh This option runs a fake SMTP session as if from the given IP address, using the standard input and output. The IP address may include a port number at the end, after a full stop. For example: exim4 -bh 10.9.8.7.1234 exim4 -bh fe80::a00:20ff:fe86:a061.5678 When an IPv6 address is given, it is converted into canonical form. In the case of the second example above, the value of $sender_host_address after conversion to the canonical form is fe80:0000:0000:0a00:20ff:fe86:a061.5678. Comments as to what is going on are written to the standard error file. These include lines beginning with "LOG" for any‐ thing that would have been logged. This facility is provided for testing configuration options for incoming messages, to make sure they implement the required policy. For example, you can test your relay controls using -bh. Warning 1: You can test features of the configuration that rely on ident (RFC 1413) information by using the -oMt op‐ tion. However, Exim cannot actually perform an ident callout when testing using -bh because there is no incoming SMTP con‐ nection. Warning 2: Address verification callouts are also skipped when testing using -bh. If you want these callouts to occur, use -bhc instead. Messages supplied during the testing session are discarded, and nothing is written to any of the real log files. There may be pauses when DNS (and other) lookups are taking place, and of course these may time out. The -oMi option can be used to specify a specific IP interface and port if this is impor‐ tant, and -oMaa and -oMai can be used to set parameters as if the SMTP session were authenticated. The exim_checkaccess utility is a "packaged" version of -bh whose output just states whether a given recipient address from a given host is acceptable or not. Features such as authentication and encryption, where the client input is not plain text, cannot easily be tested with -bh. Instead, you should use a specialized SMTP test program such as swaks. -bhc This option operates in the same way as -bh, except that ad‐ dress verification callouts are performed if required. This includes consulting and updating the callout cache database. -bi Sendmail interprets the -bi option as a request to rebuild its alias file. Exim does not have the concept of a single alias file, and so it cannot mimic this behaviour. However, calls to /usr/lib/sendmail with the -bi option tend to appear in various scripts such as NIS make files, so the option must be recognized. If -bi is encountered, the command specified by the bi_com‐ mand configuration option is run, under the uid and gid of the caller of Exim. If the -oA option is used, its value is passed to the command as an argument. The command set by bi_command may not contain arguments. The command can use the exim_dbmbuild utility, or some other means, to rebuild alias files if this is required. If the bi_command option is not set, calling Exim with -bi is a no-op. -bI:help We shall provide various options starting -bI: for querying Exim for information. The output of many of these will be intended for machine consumption. This one is not. The -bI:help option asks Exim for a synopsis of supported options beginning -bI:. Use of any of these options shall cause Exim to exit after producing the requested output. -bI:dscp This option causes Exim to emit an alphabetically sorted list of all recognised DSCP names. -bI:sieve This option causes Exim to emit an alphabetically sorted list of all supported Sieve protocol extensions on stdout, one per line. This is anticipated to be useful for ManageSieve (RFC 5804) implementations, in providing that protocol's SIEVE ca‐ pability response line. As the precise list may depend upon compile-time build options, which this option will adapt to, this is the only way to guarantee a correct response. -bm This option runs an Exim receiving process that accepts an incoming, locally-generated message on the standard input. The recipients are given as the command arguments (except when -t is also present - see below). Each argument can be a comma-separated list of RFC 2822 addresses. This is the de‐ fault option for selecting the overall action of an Exim call; it is assumed if no other conflicting option is present. If any addresses in the message are unqualified (have no do‐ main), they are qualified by the values of the qualify_domain or qualify_recipient options, as appropriate. The -bnq option (see below) provides a way of suppressing this for special cases. Policy checks on the contents of local messages can be en‐ forced by means of the non-SMTP ACL. The return code is zero if the message is successfully ac‐ cepted. Otherwise, the action is controlled by the -oex op‐ tion setting - see below. The format of the message must be as defined in RFC 2822, ex‐ cept that, for compatibility with Sendmail and Smail, a line in one of the forms From sender Fri Jan 5 12:55 GMT 1997 From sender Fri, 5 Jan 97 12:55:01 (with the weekday optional, and possibly with additional text after the date) is permitted to appear at the start of the message. There appears to be no authoritative specification of the format of this line. Exim recognizes it by matching against the regular expression defined by the uucp_from_pat‐ tern option, which can be changed if necessary. The specified sender is treated as if it were given as the argument to the -f option, but if a -f option is also present, its argument is used in preference to the address taken from the message. The caller of Exim must be a trusted user for the sender of a message to be set in this way. -bmalware This debugging option causes Exim to scan the given file or directory (depending on the used scanner interface), using the malware scanning framework. The option of av_scanner in‐ fluences this option, so if av_scanner's value is dependent upon an expansion then the expansion should have defaults which apply to this invocation. ACLs are not invoked, so if av_scanner references an ACL variable then that variable will never be populated and -bmalware will fail. Exim will have changed working directory before resolving the filename, so using fully qualified pathnames is advisable. Exim will be running as the Exim user when it tries to open the file, rather than as the invoking user. This option re‐ quires admin privileges. The -bmalware option will not be extended to be more gener‐ ally useful, there are better tools for file-scanning. This option exists to help administrators verify their Exim and AV scanner configuration. -bnq By default, Exim automatically qualifies unqualified ad‐ dresses (those without domains) that appear in messages that are submitted locally (that is, not over TCP/IP). This quali‐ fication applies both to addresses in envelopes, and ad‐ dresses in header lines. Sender addresses are qualified using qualify_domain, and recipient addresses using qualify_recipi‐ ent (which defaults to the value of qualify_domain). Sometimes, qualification is not wanted. For example, if -bS (batch SMTP) is being used to re-submit messages that origi‐ nally came from remote hosts after content scanning, you probably do not want to qualify unqualified addresses in header lines. (Such lines will be present only if you have not enabled a header syntax check in the appropriate ACL.) The -bnq option suppresses all qualification of unqualified addresses in messages that originate on the local host. When this is used, unqualified addresses in the envelope provoke errors (causing message rejection) and unqualified addresses in header lines are left alone. -bP If this option is given with no arguments, it causes the val‐ ues of all Exim's main configuration options to be written to the standard output. The values of one or more specific op‐ tions can be requested by giving their names as arguments, for example: exim4 -bP qualify_domain hold_domains However, any option setting that is preceded by the word "hide" in the configuration file is not shown in full, except to an admin user. For other users, the output is as in this example: mysql_servers = If config is given as an argument, the config is output, as it was parsed, any include file resolved, any comment re‐ moved. If config_file is given as an argument, the name of the run‐ time configuration file is output. (configure_file works too, for backward compatibility.) If a list of configuration files was supplied, the value that is output here is the name of the file that was actually used. If the -n flag is given, then for most modes of -bP operation the name will not be output. If log_file_path or pid_file_path are given, the names of the directories where log files and daemon pid files are written are output, respectively. If these values are unset, log files are written in a sub-directory of the spool directory called log, and the pid file is written directly into the spool directory. If -bP is followed by a name preceded by +, for example, exim4 -bP +local_domains it searches for a matching named list of any type (domain, host, address, or local part) and outputs what it finds. If one of the words router, transport, or authenticator is given, followed by the name of an appropriate driver in‐ stance, the option settings for that driver are output. For example: exim4 -bP transport local_delivery The generic driver options are output first, followed by the driver's private options. A list of the names of drivers of a particular type can be obtained by using one of the words router_list, transport_list, or authenticator_list, and a complete list of all drivers with their option settings can be obtained by using routers, transports, or authenticators. If environment is given as an argument, the set of environ‐ ment variables is output, line by line. Using the -n flag suppresses the value of the variables. If invoked by an admin user, then macro, macro_list and macros are available, similarly to the drivers. Because macros are sometimes used for storing passwords, this option is restricted. The output format is one item per line. For the "-bP macro " form, if no such macro is found the exit status will be nonzero. -bp This option requests a listing of the contents of the mail queue on the standard output. If the -bp option is followed by a list of message ids, just those messages are listed. By default, this option can be used only by an admin user. How‐ ever, the queue_list_requires_admin option can be set false to allow any user to see the queue. Each message in the queue is displayed as in the following example: 25m 2.9K 0t5C6f-0000c8-00 red.king@looking-glass.fict.example The first line contains the length of time the message has been in the queue (in this case 25 minutes), the size of the message (2.9K), the unique local identifier for the message, and the message sender, as contained in the envelope. For bounce messages, the sender address is empty, and appears as "<>". If the message was submitted locally by an untrusted user who overrode the default sender address, the user's lo‐ gin name is shown in parentheses before the sender address. If the message is frozen (attempts to deliver it are sus‐ pended) then the text "*** frozen ***" is displayed at the end of this line. The recipients of the message (taken from the envelope, not the headers) are displayed on subsequent lines. Those ad‐ dresses to which the message has already been delivered are marked with the letter D. If an original address gets ex‐ panded into several addresses via an alias or forward file, the original is displayed with a D only when deliveries for all of its child addresses are complete. -bpa This option operates like -bp, but in addition it shows de‐ livered addresses that were generated from the original top level address(es) in each message by alias or forwarding op‐ erations. These addresses are flagged with "+D" instead of just "D". -bpc This option counts the number of messages in the queue, and writes the total to the standard output. It is restricted to admin users, unless queue_list_requires_admin is set false. -bpr This option operates like -bp, but the output is not sorted into chronological order of message arrival. This can speed it up when there are lots of messages in the queue, and is particularly useful if the output is going to be post-pro‐ cessed in a way that doesn't need the sorting. -bpra This option is a combination of -bpr and -bpa. -bpru This option is a combination of -bpr and -bpu. -bpu This option operates like -bp but shows only undelivered top-level addresses for each message displayed. Addresses generated by aliasing or forwarding are not shown, unless the message was deferred after processing by a router with the one_time option set. -brt This option is for testing retry rules, and it must be fol‐ lowed by up to three arguments. It causes Exim to look for a retry rule that matches the values and to write it to the standard output. For example: exim4 -brt bach.comp.mus.example Retry rule: *.comp.mus.example F,2h,15m; F,4d,30m; The first argument, which is required, can be a complete ad‐ dress in the form local_part@domain, or it can be just a do‐ main name. If the second argument contains a dot, it is in‐ terpreted as an optional second domain name; if no retry rule is found for the first argument, the second is tried. This ties in with Exim's behaviour when looking for retry rules for remote hosts - if no rule is found that matches the host, one that matches the mail domain is sought. Finally, an argu‐ ment that is the name of a specific delivery error, as used in setting up retry rules, can be given. For example: exim4 -brt haydn.comp.mus.example quota_3d Retry rule: *@haydn.comp.mus.example quota_3d F,1h,15m -brw This option is for testing address rewriting rules, and it must be followed by a single argument, consisting of either a local part without a domain, or a complete address with a fully qualified domain. Exim outputs how this address would be rewritten for each possible place it might appear. -bS This option is used for batched SMTP input, which is an al‐ ternative interface for non-interactive local message submis‐ sion. A number of messages can be submitted in a single run. However, despite its name, this is not really SMTP input. Exim reads each message's envelope from SMTP commands on the standard input, but generates no responses. If the caller is trusted, or untrusted_set_sender is set, the senders in the SMTP MAIL commands are believed; otherwise the sender is al‐ ways the caller of Exim. The message itself is read from the standard input, in SMTP format (leading dots doubled), terminated by a line contain‐ ing just a single dot. An error is provoked if the terminat‐ ing dot is missing. A further message may then follow. As for other local message submissions, the contents of in‐ coming batch SMTP messages can be checked using the non-SMTP ACL. Unqualified addresses are automatically qualified using qualify_domain and qualify_recipient, as appropriate, unless the -bnq option is used. Some other SMTP commands are recognized in the input. HELO and EHLO act as RSET; VRFY, EXPN, ETRN, and HELP act as NOOP; QUIT quits, ignoring the rest of the standard input. If any error is encountered, reports are written to the stan‐ dard output and error streams, and Exim gives up immediately. The return code is 0 if no error was detected; it is 1 if one or more messages were accepted before the error was detected; otherwise it is 2. -bs This option causes Exim to accept one or more messages by reading SMTP commands on the standard input, and producing SMTP replies on the standard output. SMTP policy controls, as defined in ACLs are applied. Some user agents use this in‐ terface as a way of passing locally-generated messages to the MTA. In this usage, if the caller of Exim is trusted, or un‐ trusted_set_sender is set, the senders of messages are taken from the SMTP MAIL commands. Otherwise the content of these commands is ignored and the sender is set up as the calling user. Unqualified addresses are automatically qualified using qualify_domain and qualify_recipient, as appropriate, unless the -bnq option is used. The -bs option is also used to run Exim from inetd, as an al‐ ternative to using a listening daemon. Exim can distinguish the two cases by checking whether the standard input is a TCP/IP socket. When Exim is called from inetd, the source of the mail is assumed to be remote, and the comments above con‐ cerning senders and qualification do not apply. In this situ‐ ation, Exim behaves in exactly the same way as it does when receiving a message via the listening daemon. -bt This option runs Exim in address testing mode, in which each argument is taken as a recipient address to be tested for de‐ liverability. The results are written to the standard output. If a test fails, and the caller is not an admin user, no de‐ tails of the failure are output, because these might contain sensitive information such as usernames and passwords for database lookups. If no arguments are given, Exim runs in an interactive man‐ ner, prompting with a right angle bracket for addresses to be tested. Unlike the -be test option, you cannot arrange for Exim to use the readline() function, because it is running as root and there are security issues. Each address is handled as if it were the recipient address of a message (compare the -bv option). It is passed to the routers and the result is written to the standard output. However, any router that has no_address_test set is bypassed. This can make -bt easier to use for genuine routing tests if your first router passes everything to a scanner program. The return code is 2 if any address failed outright; it is 1 if no address failed outright but at least one could not be resolved for some reason. Return code 0 is given only when all addresses succeed. Note: When actually delivering a message, Exim removes dupli‐ cate recipient addresses after routing is complete, so that only one delivery takes place. This does not happen when testing with -bt; the full results of routing are always shown. Warning: -bt can only do relatively simple testing. If any of the routers in the configuration makes any tests on the sender address of a message, you can use the -f option to set an appropriate sender when running -bt tests. Without it, the sender is assumed to be the calling user at the default qual‐ ifying domain. However, if you have set up (for example) routers whose behaviour depends on the contents of an incom‐ ing message, you cannot test those conditions using -bt. The -N option provides a possible way of doing such tests. -bV This option causes Exim to write the current version number, compilation number, and compilation date of the exim4 binary to the standard output. It also lists the DBM library that is being used, the optional modules (such as specific lookup types), the drivers that are included in the binary, and the name of the runtime configuration file that is in use. As part of its operation, -bV causes Exim to read and syntax check its configuration file. However, this is a static check only. It cannot check values that are to be expanded. For ex‐ ample, although a misspelt ACL verb is detected, an error in the verb's arguments is not. You cannot rely on -bV alone to discover (for example) all the typos in the configuration; some realistic testing is needed. The -bh and -N options pro‐ vide more dynamic testing facilities. -bv This option runs Exim in address verification mode, in which each argument is taken as a recipient address to be verified by the routers. (This does not involve any verification call‐ outs). During normal operation, verification happens mostly as a consequence processing a verify condition in an ACL. If you want to test an entire ACL, possibly including callouts, see the -bh and -bhc options. If verification fails, and the caller is not an admin user, no details of the failure are output, because these might contain sensitive information such as usernames and passwords for database lookups. If no arguments are given, Exim runs in an interactive man‐ ner, prompting with a right angle bracket for addresses to be verified. Unlike the -be test option, you cannot arrange for Exim to use the readline() function, because it is running as exim4 and there are security issues. Verification differs from address testing (the -bt option) in that routers that have no_verify set are skipped, and if the address is accepted by a router that has fail_verify set, verification fails. The address is verified as a recipient if -bv is used; to test verification for a sender address, -bvs should be used. If the -v option is not set, the output consists of a single line for each address, stating whether it was verified or not, and giving a reason in the latter case. Without -v, gen‐ erating more than one address by redirection causes verifica‐ tion to end successfully, without considering the generated addresses. However, if just one address is generated, pro‐ cessing continues, and the generated address must verify suc‐ cessfully for the overall verification to succeed. When -v is set, more details are given of how the address has been handled, and in the case of address redirection, all the generated addresses are also considered. Verification may succeed for some and fail for others. The return code is 2 if any address failed outright; it is 1 if no address failed outright but at least one could not be resolved for some reason. Return code 0 is given only when all addresses succeed. If any of the routers in the configuration makes any tests on the sender address of a message, you should use the -f option to set an appropriate sender when running -bv tests. Without it, the sender is assumed to be the calling user at the de‐ fault qualifying domain. -bvs This option acts like -bv, but verifies the address as a sender rather than a recipient address. This affects any rewriting and qualification that might happen. -bw This option runs Exim as a daemon, awaiting incoming SMTP connections, similarly to the -bd option. All port specifi‐ cations on the command-line and in the configuration file are ignored. Queue-running may not be specified. In this mode, Exim expects to be passed a socket as fd 0 (stdin) which is listening for connections. This permits the system to start up and have inetd (or equivalent) listen on the SMTP ports, starting an Exim daemon for each port only when the first connection is received. If the option is given as -bw then the time is a time‐ out, after which the daemon will exit, which should cause in‐ etd to listen once more. -C This option causes Exim to find the runtime configuration file from the given list instead of from the list specified by the CONFIGURE_FILE compile-time setting. Usually, the list will consist of just a single filename, but it can be a colon-separated list of names. In this case, the first file that exists is used. Failure to open an existing file stops Exim from proceeding any further along the list, and an error is generated. When this option is used by a caller other than root, and the list is different from the compiled-in list, Exim gives up its root privilege immediately, and runs with the real and effective uid and gid set to those of the caller. However, if a TRUSTED_CONFIG_LIST file is defined in Local/Makefile, that file contains a list of full pathnames, one per line, for configuration files which are trusted. Root privilege is retained for any configuration file so listed, as long as the caller is the Exim user (or the user specified in the CONFIG‐ URE_OWNER option, if any), and as long as the configuration file is not writeable by inappropriate users or groups. Leaving TRUSTED_CONFIG_LIST unset precludes the possibility of testing a configuration using -C right through message re‐ ception and delivery, even if the caller is root. The recep‐ tion works, but by that time, Exim is running as the Exim user, so when it re-executes to regain privilege for the de‐ livery, the use of -C causes privilege to be lost. However, root can test reception and delivery using two separate com‐ mands (one to put a message in the queue, using -odq, and an‐ other to do the delivery, using -M). If ALT_CONFIG_PREFIX is defined in Local/Makefile, it speci‐ fies a prefix string with which any file named in a -C com‐ mand line option must start. In addition, the filename must not contain the sequence /../. However, if the value of the -C option is identical to the value of CONFIGURE_FILE in Lo‐ cal/Makefile, Exim ignores -C and proceeds as usual. There is no default setting for ALT_CONFIG_PREFIX; when it is unset, any filename can be used with -C. ALT_CONFIG_PREFIX can be used to confine alternative configu‐ ration files to a directory to which only root has access. This prevents someone who has broken into the Exim account from running a privileged Exim with an arbitrary configura‐ tion file. The -C facility is useful for ensuring that configuration files are syntactically correct, but cannot be used for test deliveries, unless the caller is privileged, or unless it is an exotic configuration that does not require privilege. No check is made on the owner or group of the files specified by this option. -D= This option can be used to override macro definitions in the configuration file. However, like -C, if it is used by an un‐ privileged caller, it causes Exim to give up its root privi‐ lege. If DISABLE_D_OPTION is defined in Local/Makefile, the use of -D is completely disabled, and its use causes an imme‐ diate error exit. If WHITELIST_D_MACROS is defined in Local/Makefile then it should be a colon-separated list of macros which are consid‐ ered safe and, if -D only supplies macros from this list, and the values are acceptable, then Exim will not give up root privilege if the caller is root, the Exim run-time user, or the CONFIGURE_OWNER, if set. This is a transition mechanism and is expected to be removed in the future. Acceptable val‐ ues for the macros satisfy the regexp: ^[A-Za-z0-9_/.-]*$ The entire option (including equals sign if present) must all be within one command line item. -D can be used to set the value of a macro to the empty string, in which case the equals sign is optional. These two commands are synonymous: exim4 -DABC ... exim4 -DABC= ... To include spaces in a macro definition item, quotes must be used. If you use quotes, spaces are permitted around the macro name and the equals sign. For example: exim4 '-D ABC = something' ... -D may be repeated up to 10 times on a command line. Only macro names up to 22 letters long can be set. -d This option causes debugging information to be written to the standard error stream. It is restricted to admin users be‐ cause debugging output may show database queries that contain password information. Also, the details of users' filter files should be protected. If a non-admin user uses -d, Exim writes an error message to the standard error stream and ex‐ its with a non-zero return code. When -d is used, -v is assumed. If -d is given on its own, a lot of standard debugging data is output. This can be re‐ duced, or increased to include some more rarely needed infor‐ mation, by directly following -d with a string made up of names preceded by plus or minus characters. These add or re‐ move sets of debugging data, respectively. For example, -d+filter adds filter debugging, whereas -d-all+filter se‐ lects only filter debugging. Note that no spaces are allowed in the debug setting. The available debugging categories are: acl ACL interpretation auth authenticators deliver general delivery logic dns DNS lookups (see also resolver) dnsbl DNS black list (aka RBL) code exec arguments for execv() calls expand detailed debugging for string expansions filter filter handling hints_lookup hints data lookups host_lookup all types of name-to-IP address handling ident ident lookup interface lists of local interfaces lists matching things in lists load system load checks local_scan can be used by local_scan() lookup general lookup code and all lookups memory memory handling noutf8 modifier: avoid UTF-8 line-drawing pid modifier: add pid to debug output lines process_info setting info for the process log queue_run queue runs receive general message reception logic resolver turn on the DNS resolver's debugging output retry retry handling rewrite address rewriting route address routing timestamp modifier: add timestamp to debug output lines tls TLS logic transport transports uid changes of uid/gid and looking up uid/gid verify address verification logic all almost all of the above (see below), and also -v The all option excludes memory when used as +all, but in‐ cludes it for -all. The reason for this is that +all is some‐ thing that people tend to use when generating debug output for Exim maintainers. If +memory is included, an awful lot of output that is very rarely of interest is generated, so it now has to be explicitly requested. However, -all does turn everything off. The resolver option produces output only if the DNS resolver was compiled with DEBUG enabled. This is not the case in some operating systems. Also, unfortunately, debugging output from the DNS resolver is written to stdout rather than stderr. The default (-d with no argument) omits expand, filter, in‐ terface, load, memory, pid, resolver, and timestamp. How‐ ever, the pid selector is forced when debugging is turned on for a daemon, which then passes it on to any re-executed Ex‐ ims. Exim also automatically adds the pid to debug lines when several remote deliveries are run in parallel. The timestamp selector causes the current time to be inserted at the start of all debug output lines. This can be useful when trying to track down delays in processing. The noutf8 selector disables the use of UTF-8 line-drawing characters to group related information. When disabled. ascii-art is used instead. Using the +all option does not set this modifier, If the debug_print option is set in any driver, it produces output whenever any debugging is selected, or if -v is used. -dd This option behaves exactly like -d except when used on a command that starts a daemon process. In that case, debugging is turned off for the subprocesses that the daemon creates. Thus, it is useful for monitoring the behaviour of the daemon without creating as much output as full debugging does. -dropcr This is an obsolete option that is now a no-op. It used to affect the way Exim handled CR and LF characters in incoming messages. -E This option specifies that an incoming message is a lo‐ cally-generated delivery failure report. It is used inter‐ nally by Exim when handling delivery failures and is not in‐ tended for external use. Its only effect is to stop Exim gen‐ erating certain messages to the postmaster, as otherwise mes‐ sage cascades could occur in some situations. As part of the same option, a message id may follow the characters -E. If it does, the log entry for the receipt of the new message con‐ tains the id, following "R=", as a cross-reference. -ex There are a number of Sendmail options starting with -oe which seem to be called by various programs without the lead‐ ing o in the option. For example, the vacation program uses -eq. Exim treats all options of the form -ex as synonymous with the corresponding -oex options. -F This option sets the sender's full name for use when a lo‐ cally-generated message is being accepted. In the absence of this option, the user's gecos entry from the password data is used. As users are generally permitted to alter their gecos entries, no security considerations are involved. White space between -F and the is optional. -f

This option sets the address of the envelope sender of a lo‐ cally-generated message (also known as the return path). The option can normally be used only by a trusted user, but un‐ trusted_set_sender can be set to allow untrusted users to use it. Processes running as root or the Exim user are always trusted. Other trusted users are defined by the trusted_users or trusted_groups options. In the absence of -f, or if the caller is not trusted, the sender of a local message is set to the caller's login name at the default qualify domain. There is one exception to the restriction on the use of -f: an empty sender can be specified by any user, trusted or not, to create a message that can never provoke a bounce. An empty sender can be specified either as an empty string, or as a pair of angle brackets with nothing between them, as in these examples of shell commands: exim4 -f '<>' user@domain exim4 -f "" user@domain In addition, the use of -f is not restricted when testing a filter file with -bf or when testing or verifying addresses using the -bt or -bv options. Allowing untrusted users to change the sender address does not of itself make it possible to send anonymous mail. Exim still checks that the From: header refers to the local user, and if it does not, it adds a Sender: header, though this can be overridden by setting no_local_from_check. White space between -f and the

is optional (that is, they can be given as two arguments or one combined argu‐ ment). The sender of a locally-generated message can also be set (when permitted) by an initial "From " line in the mes‐ sage - see the description of -bm above - but if -f is also present, it overrides "From ". -G This option is equivalent to an ACL applying: control = suppress_local_fixups for every message received. Note that Sendmail will complain about such bad formatting, where Exim silently just does not fix it up. This may change in future. As this affects audit information, the caller must be a trusted user to use this option. -h This option is accepted for compatibility with Sendmail, but has no effect. (In Sendmail it overrides the "hop count" ob‐ tained by counting Received: headers.) -i This option, which has the same effect as -oi, specifies that a dot on a line by itself should not terminate an incoming, non-SMTP message. I can find no documentation for this option in Solaris 2.4 Sendmail, but the mailx command in Solaris 2.4 uses it. See also -ti. -L This option is equivalent to setting syslog_processname in the config file and setting log_file_path to syslog. Its use is restricted to administrators. The configuration file has to be read and parsed, to determine access rights, before this is set and takes effect, so early configuration file er‐ rors will not honour this flag. The tag should not be longer than 32 characters. -M ... This option requests Exim to run a delivery attempt on each message in turn. If any of the messages are frozen, they are automatically thawed before the delivery attempt. The set‐ tings of queue_domains, queue_smtp_domains, and hold_domains are ignored. Retry hints for any of the addresses are overridden - Exim tries to deliver even if the normal retry time has not yet been reached. This option requires the caller to be an admin user. However, there is an option called prod_requires_admin which can be set false to relax this restriction (and also the same requirement for the -q, -R, and -S options). The deliveries happen synchronously, that is, the original Exim process does not terminate until all the delivery at‐ tempts have finished. No output is produced unless there is a serious error. If you want to see what is happening, use the -v option as well, or inspect Exim's main log. -Mar

... This option requests Exim to add the addresses to the list of recipients of the message ("ar" for "add recipients"). The first argument must be a message id, and the remaining ones must be email addresses. However, if the message is active (in the middle of a delivery attempt), it is not altered. This option can be used only by an admin user. -MC This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim to invoke another instance of it‐ self to deliver a waiting message using an existing SMTP con‐ nection, which is passed as the standard input. This must be the final option, and the caller must be root or the Exim user in order to use it. -MCA This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC op‐ tion. It signifies that the connection to the remote host has been authenticated. -MCD This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC op‐ tion. It signifies that the remote host supports the ESMTP DSN extension. -MCG This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC op‐ tion. It signifies that an alternate queue is used, named by the following argument. -MCK This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC op‐ tion. It signifies that a remote host supports the ESMTP CHUNKING extension. -MCP This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC op‐ tion. It signifies that the server to which Exim is connected supports pipelining. -MCQ This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC option when the original delivery was started by a queue runner. It passes on the process id of the queue runner, together with the file descriptor number of an open pipe. Closure of the pipe signals the final completion of the sequence of pro‐ cesses that are passing messages through the same SMTP con‐ nection. -MCS This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC op‐ tion, and passes on the fact that the SMTP SIZE option should be used on messages delivered down the existing connection. -MCT This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC op‐ tion, and passes on the fact that the host to which Exim is connected supports TLS encryption. -MCt This option is not intended for use by external callers. It is used internally by Exim in conjunction with the -MC op‐ tion, and passes on the fact that the connection is being proxied by a parent process for handling TLS encryption. The arguments give the local address and port being proxied, and the TLS cipher. -Mc ... This option requests Exim to run a delivery attempt on each message, in turn, but unlike the -M option, it does check for retry hints, and respects any that are found. This option is not very useful to external callers. It is provided mainly for internal use by Exim when it needs to re-invoke itself in order to regain root privilege for a delivery. However, -Mc can be useful when testing, in order to run a delivery that respects retry times and other options such as hold_domains that are overridden when -M is used. Such a delivery does not count as a queue run. If you want to run a specific delivery as if in a queue run, you should use -q with a message id ar‐ gument. A distinction between queue run deliveries and other deliveries is made in one or two places. -Mes

This option requests Exim to change the sender address in the message to the given address, which must be a fully qualified address or "<>" ("es" for "edit sender"). There must be ex‐ actly two arguments. The first argument must be a message id, and the second one an email address. However, if the message is active (in the middle of a delivery attempt), its status is not altered. This option can be used only by an admin user. -Mf ... This option requests Exim to mark each listed message as "frozen". This prevents any delivery attempts taking place until the message is "thawed", either manually or as a result of the auto_thaw configuration option. However, if any of the messages are active (in the middle of a delivery at‐ tempt), their status is not altered. This option can be used only by an admin user. -Mg ... This option requests Exim to give up trying to deliver the listed messages, including any that are frozen. However, if any of the messages are active, their status is not altered. For non-bounce messages, a delivery error message is sent to the sender, containing the text "cancelled by administrator". Bounce messages are just discarded. This option can be used only by an admin user. -Mmad ... This option requests Exim to mark all the recipient addresses in the messages as already delivered ("mad" for "mark all de‐ livered"). However, if any message is active (in the middle of a delivery attempt), its status is not altered. This op‐ tion can be used only by an admin user. -Mmd

... This option requests Exim to mark the given addresses as al‐ ready delivered ("md" for "mark delivered"). The first argu‐ ment must be a message id, and the remaining ones must be email addresses. These are matched to recipient addresses in the message in a case-sensitive manner. If the message is ac‐ tive (in the middle of a delivery attempt), its status is not altered. This option can be used only by an admin user. -Mrm ... This option requests Exim to remove the given messages from the queue. No bounce messages are sent; each message is sim‐ ply forgotten. However, if any of the messages are active, their status is not altered. This option can be used only by an admin user or by the user who originally caused the mes‐ sage to be placed in the queue. -Mset This option is useful only in conjunction with -be (that is, when testing string expansions). Exim loads the given message from its spool before doing the test expansions, thus setting message-specific variables such as $message_size and the header variables. The $recipients variable is made available. This feature is provided to make it easier to test expansions that make use of these variables. However, this option can be used only by an admin user. See also -bem. -Mt ... This option requests Exim to "thaw" any of the listed mes‐ sages that are "frozen", so that delivery attempts can re‐ sume. However, if any of the messages are active, their sta‐ tus is not altered. This option can be used only by an admin user. -Mvb This option causes the contents of the message body (-D) spool file to be written to the standard output. This option can be used only by an admin user. -Mvc This option causes a copy of the complete message (header lines plus body) to be written to the standard output in RFC 2822 format. This option can be used only by an admin user. -Mvh This option causes the contents of the message headers (-H) spool file to be written to the standard output. This option can be used only by an admin user. -Mvl This option causes the contents of the message log spool file to be written to the standard output. This option can be used only by an admin user. -m This is apparently a synonym for -om that is accepted by Sendmail, so Exim treats it that way too. -N This is a debugging option that inhibits delivery of a mes‐ sage at the transport level. It implies -v. Exim goes through many of the motions of delivery - it just doesn't actually transport the message, but instead behaves as if it had suc‐ cessfully done so. However, it does not make any updates to the retry database, and the log entries for deliveries are flagged with "*>" rather than "=>". Because -N discards any message to which it applies, only root or the Exim user are allowed to use it with -bd, -q, -R or -M. In other words, an ordinary user can use it only when supplying an incoming message to which it will apply. Al‐ though transportation never fails when -N is set, an address may be deferred because of a configuration problem on a transport, or a routing problem. Once -N has been used for a delivery attempt, it sticks to the message, and applies to any subsequent delivery attempts that may happen for that message. -n This option is interpreted by Sendmail to mean "no aliasing". For normal modes of operation, it is ignored by Exim. When combined with -bP it makes the output more terse (suppresses option names, environment values and config pretty printing). -O This option is interpreted by Sendmail to mean set option. It is ignored by Exim. -oA This option is used by Sendmail in conjunction with -bi to specify an alternative alias filename. Exim handles -bi dif‐ ferently; see the description above. -oB This is a debugging option which limits the maximum number of messages that can be delivered down one SMTP connection, overriding the value set in any smtp transport. If is omitted, the limit is set to 1. -odb This option applies to all modes in which Exim accepts incom‐ ing messages, including the listening daemon. It requests "background" delivery of such messages, which means that the accepting process automatically starts a delivery process for each message received, but does not wait for the delivery processes to finish. When all the messages have been received, the reception process exits, leaving the delivery processes to finish in their own time. The standard output and error streams are closed at the start of each delivery process. This is the default action if none of the -od options are present. If one of the queueing options in the configuration file (queue_only or queue_only_file, for example) is in effect, -odb overrides it if queue_only_override is set true, which is the default setting. If queue_only_override is set false, -odb has no effect. -odf This option requests "foreground" (synchronous) delivery when Exim has accepted a locally-generated message. (For the dae‐ mon it is exactly the same as -odb.) A delivery process is automatically started to deliver the message, and Exim waits for it to complete before proceeding. The original Exim reception process does not finish until the delivery process for the final message has ended. The stan‐ dard error stream is left open during deliveries. However, like -odb, this option has no effect if queue_only_override is false and one of the queueing options in the configuration file is in effect. If there is a temporary delivery error during foreground de‐ livery, the message is left in the queue for later delivery, and the original reception process exits. -odi This option is synonymous with -odf. It is provided for com‐ patibility with Sendmail. -odq This option applies to all modes in which Exim accepts incom‐ ing messages, including the listening daemon. It specifies that the accepting process should not automatically start a delivery process for each message received. Messages are placed in the queue, and remain there until a subsequent queue runner process encounters them. There are several con‐ figuration options (such as queue_only) that can be used to queue incoming messages under certain conditions. This option overrides all of them and also -odqs. It always forces queue‐ ing. -odqs This option is a hybrid between -odb/-odi and -odq. However, like -odb and -odi, this option has no effect if queue_only_override is false and one of the queueing options in the configuration file is in effect. When -odqs does operate, a delivery process is started for each incoming message, in the background by default, but in the foreground if -odi is also present. The recipient ad‐ dresses are routed, and local deliveries are done in the nor‐ mal way. However, if any SMTP deliveries are required, they are not done at this time, so the message remains in the queue until a subsequent queue runner process encounters it. Because routing was done, Exim knows which messages are wait‐ ing for which hosts, and so a number of messages for the same host can be sent in a single SMTP connection. The queue_smtp_domains configuration option has the same effect for specific domains. See also the -qq option. -oee If an error is detected while a non-SMTP message is being re‐ ceived (for example, a malformed address), the error is re‐ ported to the sender in a mail message. Provided this error message is successfully sent, the Exim receiving process exits with a return code of zero. If not, the return code is 2 if the problem is that the original mes‐ sage has no recipients, or 1 for any other error. This is the default -oex option if Exim is called as rmail. -oem This is the same as -oee, except that Exim always exits with a non-zero return code, whether or not the error message was successfully sent. This is the default -oex option, unless Exim is called as rmail. -oep If an error is detected while a non-SMTP message is being re‐ ceived, the error is reported by writing a message to the standard error file (stderr). The return code is 1 for all errors. -oeq This option is supported for compatibility with Sendmail, but has the same effect as -oep. -oew This option is supported for compatibility with Sendmail, but has the same effect as -oem. -oi This option, which has the same effect as -i, specifies that a dot on a line by itself should not terminate an incoming, non-SMTP message. Otherwise, a single dot does terminate, though Exim does no special processing for other lines that start with a dot. This option is set by default if Exim is called as rmail. See also -ti. -oitrue This option is treated as synonymous with -oi. -oMa A number of options starting with -oM can be used to set val‐ ues associated with remote hosts on locally-submitted mes‐ sages (that is, messages not received over TCP/IP). These op‐ tions can be used by any caller in conjunction with the -bh, -be, -bf, -bF, -bt, or -bv testing options. In other circum‐ stances, they are ignored unless the caller is trusted. The -oMa option sets the sender host address. This may in‐ clude a port number at the end, after a full stop (period). For example: exim4 -bs -oMa 10.9.8.7.1234 An alternative syntax is to enclose the IP address in square brackets, followed by a colon and the port number: exim4 -bs -oMa [10.9.8.7]:1234 The IP address is placed in the $sender_host_address vari‐ able, and the port, if present, in $sender_host_port. If both -oMa and -bh are present on the command line, the sender host IP address is taken from whichever one is last. -oMaa See -oMa above for general remarks about the -oM options. The -oMaa option sets the value of $sender_host_authenticated (the authenticator name). This option can be used with -bh and -bs to set up an authenticated SMTP session without actu‐ ally using the SMTP AUTH command. -oMai See -oMa above for general remarks about the -oM options. The -oMai option sets the value of $authenticated_id (the id that was authenticated). This overrides the default value (the caller's login id, except with -bh, where there is no de‐ fault) for messages from local sources. -oMas

See -oMa above for general remarks about the -oM options. The -oMas option sets the authenticated sender value in $authen‐ ticated_sender. It overrides the sender address that is cre‐ ated from the caller's login id for messages from local sources, except when -bh is used, when there is no default. For both -bh and -bs, an authenticated sender that is speci‐ fied on a MAIL command overrides this value. -oMi See -oMa above for general remarks about the -oM options. The -oMi option sets the IP interface address value. A port num‐ ber may be included, using the same syntax as for -oMa. The interface address is placed in $received_ip_address and the port number, if present, in $received_port. -oMm See -oMa above for general remarks about the -oM options. The -oMm option sets the message reference, e.g. message-id, and is logged during delivery. This is useful when some kind of audit trail is required to tie messages together. The format of the message reference is checked and will abort if the format is invalid. The option will only be accepted if exim is running in trusted mode, not as any regular user. The best example of a message reference is when Exim sends a bounce message. The message reference is the message-id of the original message for which Exim is sending the bounce. -oMr See -oMa above for general remarks about the -oM options. The -oMr option sets the received protocol value that is stored in $received_protocol. However, it does not apply (and is ig‐ nored) when -bh or -bs is used. For -bh, the protocol is forced to one of the standard SMTP protocol names. For -bs, the protocol is always "local-" followed by one of those same names. For -bS (batched SMTP) however, the protocol can be set by -oMr. Repeated use of this option is not supported. -oMs See -oMa above for general remarks about the -oM options. The -oMs option sets the sender host name in $sender_host_name. When this option is present, Exim does not attempt to look up a host name from an IP address; it uses the name it is given. -oMt See -oMa above for general remarks about the -oM options. The -oMt option sets the sender ident value in $sender_ident. The default setting for local callers is the login id of the calling process, except when -bh is used, when there is no default. -om In Sendmail, this option means "me too", indicating that the sender of a message should receive a copy of the message if the sender appears in an alias expansion. Exim always does this, so the option does nothing. -oo This option is ignored. In Sendmail it specifies "old style headers", whatever that means. -oP This option is useful only in conjunction with -bd or -q with a time value. The option specifies the file to which the process id of the daemon is written. When -oX is used with -bd, or when -q with a time is used without -bd, this is the only way of causing Exim to write a pid file, because in those cases, the normal pid file is not used. -or This option sets a timeout value for incoming non-SMTP mes‐ sages. If it is not set, Exim will wait forever for the stan‐ dard input. The value can also be set by the receive_timeout option. -os This option sets a timeout value for incoming SMTP messages. The timeout applies to each SMTP command and block of data. The value can also be set by the smtp_receive_timeout option; it defaults to 5 minutes. -ov This option has exactly the same effect as -v. -oX This option is relevant only when the -bd (start listening daemon) option is also given. It controls which ports and in‐ terfaces the daemon uses. When -oX is used to start a daemon, no pid file is written unless -oP is also present to specify a pid filename. -pd This option applies when an embedded Perl interpreter is linked with Exim. It overrides the setting of the perl_at_start option, forcing the starting of the interpreter to be delayed until it is needed. -ps This option applies when an embedded Perl interpreter is linked with Exim. It overrides the setting of the perl_at_start option, forcing the starting of the interpreter to occur as soon as Exim is started. -p: For compatibility with Sendmail, this option is equivalent to -oMr -oMs It sets the incoming protocol and host name (for trusted callers). The host name and its colon can be omitted when only the protocol is to be set. Note the Exim already has two private options, -pd and -ps, that refer to embedded Perl. It is therefore impossible to set a protocol value of d or s using this option (but that does not seem a real limita‐ tion). Repeated use of this option is not supported. -q This option is normally restricted to admin users. However, there is a configuration option called prod_requires_admin which can be set false to relax this restriction (and also the same requirement for the -M, -R, and -S options). If other commandline options do not specify an action, the -q option starts one queue runner process. This scans the queue of waiting messages, and runs a delivery process for each one in turn. It waits for each delivery process to finish before starting the next one. A delivery process may not actually do any deliveries if the retry times for the addresses have not been reached. Use -qf (see below) if you want to override this. If the delivery process spawns other processes to deliver other messages down passed SMTP connections, the queue runner waits for these to finish before proceeding. When all the queued messages have been considered, the origi‐ nal queue runner process terminates. In other words, a single pass is made over the waiting mail, one message at a time. Use -q with a time (see below) if you want this to be re‐ peated periodically. Exim processes the waiting messages in an unpredictable or‐ der. It isn't very random, but it is likely to be different each time, which is all that matters. If one particular mes‐ sage screws up a remote MTA, other messages to the same MTA have a chance of getting through if they get tried first. It is possible to cause the messages to be processed in lexi‐ cal message id order, which is essentially the order in which they arrived, by setting the queue_run_in_order option, but this is not recommended for normal use. -q The -q option may be followed by one or more flag letters that change its behaviour. They are all optional, but if more than one is present, they must appear in the correct order. Each flag is described in a separate item below. -qq... An option starting with -qq requests a two-stage queue run. In the first stage, the queue is scanned as if the queue_smtp_domains option matched every domain. Addresses are routed, local deliveries happen, but no remote transports are run. The hints database that remembers which messages are waiting for specific hosts is updated, as if delivery to those hosts had been deferred. After this is complete, a second, normal queue scan happens, with routing and delivery taking place as normal. Messages that are routed to the same host should mostly be delivered down a single SMTP connection because of the hints that were set up during the first queue scan. This option may be useful for hosts that are connected to the In‐ ternet intermittently. -q[q]i... If the i flag is present, the queue runner runs delivery pro‐ cesses only for those messages that haven't previously been tried. (i stands for "initial delivery".) This can be helpful if you are putting messages in the queue using -odq and want a queue runner just to process the new messages. -q[q][i]f... If one f flag is present, a delivery attempt is forced for each non-frozen message, whereas without f only those non-frozen addresses that have passed their retry times are tried. -q[q][i]ff... If ff is present, a delivery attempt is forced for every mes‐ sage, whether frozen or not. -q[q][i][f[f]]l The l (the letter "ell") flag specifies that only local de‐ liveries are to be done. If a message requires any remote de‐ liveries, it remains in the queue for later delivery. -q[q][i][f[f]][l][G[/]]] If the G flag and a name is present, the queue runner oper‐ ates on the queue with the given name rather than the default queue. The name should not contain a / character. For a pe‐ riodic queue run (see below) append to the name a slash and a time value. If other commandline options specify an action, a -qG option will specify a queue to operate on. For example: exim4 -bp -qGquarantine mailq -qGquarantine exim4 -qGoffpeak -Rf @special.domain.example -q When scanning the queue, Exim can be made to skip over mes‐ sages whose ids are lexically less than a given value by fol‐ lowing the -q option with a starting message id. For example: exim4 -q 0t5C6f-0000c8-00 Messages that arrived earlier than 0t5C6f-0000c8-00 are not inspected. If a second message id is given, messages whose ids are lexically greater than it are also skipped. If the same id is given twice, for example, exim4 -q 0t5C6f-0000c8-00 0t5C6f-0000c8-00 just one delivery process is started, for that message. This differs from -M in that retry data is respected, and it also differs from -Mc in that it counts as a delivery from a queue run. Note that the selection mechanism does not affect the order in which the messages are scanned. There are also other ways of selecting specific sets of messages for delivery in a queue run - see -R and -S. -q When a time value is present, the -q option causes Exim to run as a daemon, starting a queue runner process at intervals specified by the given time value. This form of the -q option is commonly combined with the -bd option, in which case a single daemon process handles both functions. A common way of starting up a combined daemon at system boot time is to use a command such as /usr/sbin/exim4 -bd -q30m Such a daemon listens for incoming SMTP calls, and also starts a queue runner process every 30 minutes. When a daemon is started by -q with a time value, but without -bd, no pid file is written unless one is explicitly re‐ quested by the -oP option. -qR This option is synonymous with -R. It is provided for Send‐ mail compatibility. -qS This option is synonymous with -S. -R The may be empty, in which case the white space be‐ fore the string is optional, unless the string is f, ff, r, rf, or rff, which are the possible values for . White space is required if is not empty. This option is similar to -q with no time value, that is, it causes Exim to perform a single queue run, except that, when scanning the messages on the queue, Exim processes only those that have at least one undelivered recipient address contain‐ ing the given string, which is checked in a case-independent way. If the start with r, is interpreted as a regular expression; otherwise it is a literal string. If you want to do periodic queue runs for messages with spe‐ cific recipients, you can combine -R with -q and a time value. For example: exim4 -q25m -R @special.domain.example This example does a queue run for messages with recipients in the given domain every 25 minutes. Any additional flags that are specified with -q are applied to each queue run. Once a message is selected for delivery by this mechanism, all its addresses are processed. For the first selected mes‐ sage, Exim overrides any retry information and forces a de‐ livery attempt for each undelivered address. This means that if delivery of any address in the first message is success‐ ful, any existing retry information is deleted, and so deliv‐ ery attempts for that address in subsequently selected mes‐ sages (which are processed without forcing) will run. How‐ ever, if delivery of any address does not succeed, the retry information is updated, and in subsequently selected mes‐ sages, the failing address will be skipped. If the contain f or ff, the delivery forcing ap‐ plies to all selected messages, not just the first; frozen messages are included when ff is present. The -R option makes it straightforward to initiate delivery of all messages to a given domain after a host has been down for some time. When the SMTP command ETRN is accepted by its ACL, its default effect is to run Exim with the -R option, but it can be configured to run an arbitrary command instead. -r This is a documented (for Sendmail) obsolete alternative name for -f. -S This option acts like -R except that it checks the string against each message's sender instead of against the recipi‐ ents. If -R is also set, both conditions must be met for a message to be selected. If either of the options has f or ff in its flags, the associated action is taken. -Tqt This is an option that is exclusively for use by the Exim testing suite. It is not recognized when Exim is run nor‐ mally. It allows for the setting up of explicit "queue times" so that various warning/retry features can be tested. -t When Exim is receiving a locally-generated, non-SMTP message on its standard input, the -t option causes the recipients of the message to be obtained from the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: header lines in the message instead of from the command arguments. The addresses are extracted before any rewriting takes place and the Bcc: header line, if present, is then removed. If the command has any arguments, they specify addresses to which the message is not to be delivered. That is, the argu‐ ment addresses are removed from the recipients list obtained from the headers. This is compatible with Smail 3 and in ac‐ cordance with the documented behaviour of several versions of Sendmail, as described in man pages on a number of operating systems (e.g. Solaris 8, IRIX 6.5, HP-UX 11). However, some versions of Sendmail add argument addresses to those obtained from the headers, and the O'Reilly Sendmail book documents it that way. Exim can be made to add argument addresses instead of subtracting them by setting the option extract_ad‐ dresses_remove_arguments false. If there are any Resent- header lines in the message, Exim extracts recipients from all Resent-To:, Resent-Cc:, and Re‐ sent-Bcc: header lines instead of from To:, Cc:, and Bcc:. This is for compatibility with Sendmail and other MTAs. (Prior to release 4.20, Exim gave an error if -t was used in conjunction with Resent- header lines.) RFC 2822 talks about different sets of Resent- header lines (for when a message is resent several times). The RFC also specifies that they should be added at the front of the mes‐ sage, and separated by Received: lines. It is not at all clear how -t should operate in the present of multiple sets, nor indeed exactly what constitutes a "set". In practice, it seems that MUAs do not follow the RFC. The Resent- lines are often added at the end of the header, and if a message is re‐ sent more than once, it is common for the original set of Re‐ sent- headers to be renamed as X-Resent- when a new set is added. This removes any possible ambiguity. -ti This option is exactly equivalent to -t -i. It is provided for compatibility with Sendmail. -tls-on-connect This option is available when Exim is compiled with TLS sup‐ port. It forces all incoming SMTP connections to behave as if the incoming port is listed in the tls_on_connect_ports op‐ tion. -U Sendmail uses this option for "initial message submission", and its documentation states that in future releases, it may complain about syntactically invalid messages rather than fixing them when this flag is not set. Exim ignores this op‐ tion. -v This option causes Exim to write information to the standard error stream, describing what it is doing. In particular, it shows the log lines for receiving and delivering a message, and if an SMTP connection is made, the SMTP dialogue is shown. Some of the log lines shown may not actually be writ‐ ten to the log if the setting of log_selector discards them. Any relevant selectors are shown with each log line. If none are shown, the logging is unconditional. -x AIX uses -x for a private purpose ("mail from a local mail program has National Language Support extended characters in the body of the mail item"). It sets -x when calling the MTA from its mail command. Exim ignores this option. -X This option is interpreted by Sendmail to cause debug infor‐ mation to be sent to the named file. It is ignored by Exim. -z This option writes its argument to Exim's logfile. Use is restricted to administrators; the intent is for operational notes. Quotes should be used to maintain a multi-word item as a single argument, under most shells.

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This manual page was provided with the upstream Exim source package. It was enhanced for the Debian GNU/Linux system. EXIM4(8)