Python patch

Greetings,

Some time ago I wrote a patch to embed Python within Exim. The patch and 
its associated documentation can be found here:

	http://botanicus.net/dw/exim-python.php

Seeing as I will be disappearing to south east Asia for quite a long 
time at the end of this year, I am currently trying to shed the various 
bits of free software I have made available over the years.

Which brings me to my question: what sort of reception would I receive 
if I were to propose reformatting the patch and documentation to conform 
with Exim's standards, and requesting a merge?

I would like to shed this little patch in such a way as to ensure that 
any existing users still have support if they need it. For reference, I 
have only received a small number of mails regarding it over the last 
year or so.

 From a technical perspective, the patch tries to mirror/complement the 
existing Perl functionality as closely as possible. The documentation 
includes a little more advice than the Perl support provides, but that 
is the only real difference.

My personal feeling is that after a little work on my part to 
reformat/merge the code and documentation, an upstream merge would be 
fairly trivial.

Thanks,

Final Reminder: Exim Course in Cambridge

This is a final reminder that the deadline for registration for the next 
Exim course is Friday, June 17th. The course itself takes place from 
lunchtime on Tuesday July 12 to lunchtime on Friday July 15, in 
Cambridge, England. Note that this is your last chance for a while, 
because we run these courses only once a year.

For details of the course, how to register, etc, please see

http://www-tus.csx.cam.ac.uk/courses/exim/

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10 <at> cus.cam.ac.uk      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book:    http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book

--

-- 

Re: Python patch

On Wed, 1 Jun 2005, David Wilson wrote:

> Some time ago I wrote a patch to embed Python within Exim. The patch and its
> associated documentation can be found here:
> 
>	http://botanicus.net/dw/exim-python.php
> 
> 
> Seeing as I will be disappearing to south east Asia for quite a long time at
> the end of this year, I am currently trying to shed the various bits of free
> software I have made available over the years.
> 
> Which brings me to my question: what sort of reception would I receive if I
> were to propose reformatting the patch and documentation to conform with
> Exim's standards, and requesting a merge?

I would certainly look at it positively. In fact, I'm somewhat surprised 
that nobody has done that before, given that there are a lot of Python 
users out there. But perhaps not too many people actually want to embed 
scripting into an MTA. I don't think very many people use the Perl 
embedding, for instance.

> My personal feeling is that after a little work on my part to reformat/merge
> the code and documentation, an upstream merge would be fairly trivial.

Go ahead, and send me or the list the patches. I can't promise to look 
at it on any particular timescale, however,

Philip

Announce: "Exilog" - Exim central logging / reporting tool

This has been sitting on my hard drive since last year. I have now 
managed to give it some documentation and release it. I'm using it
myself and it really makes a difference sometimes. I'm looking for
some feedback on the project before I announce it somewhere else.

If there is sufficient interest, I'll also finish the queue management
support it's supposed to have. :)

Screenshots (pretty!):

http://duncanthrax.net/exilog/screenshots/

Download:

http://duncanthrax.net/exilog/

Read the docs to find out what it can do. Pasted below for your
convinience.

Exilog - Central logging and reporting tool for Exim
----------------------------------------------------
Author: Tom Kistner <tom <at> duncanthrax.net>

Introduction
------------
Exilog is a tool to centralize and visualize Exim logs
across multiple Exim servers. It is used in addition to
Exim's standard or syslog logging. It does not require
changing Exim or its logging style (In fact you don't
even need to restart your Exim(s) to install Exilog).

Re: Announce: "Exilog" - Exim central logging / reporting tool

On 6/2/05 6:57 AM, "Tom Kistner" <tom <at> duncanthrax.net> wrote:

> This has been sitting on my hard drive since last year. I have now
> managed to give it some documentation and release it. I'm using it
> myself and it really makes a difference sometimes. I'm looking for
> some feedback on the project before I announce it somewhere else.

This looks really interesting for our situation.  Support staff currently
have log access via ssh where the authorized key file sudo's them and drops
them into a python program which scans the logs for them.  This looks much
better.

> 
> If there is sufficient interest, I'll also finish the queue management
> support it's supposed to have. :)

Queue management should be able to be restricted to certain users, one way
or another.  Peeking is one thing...munging is quite another.

  --John

--

-- 

Re: Announce: "Exilog" - Exim central logging / reporting tool

On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 15:57 +0200, Tom Kistner wrote:

> This has been sitting on my hard drive since last year. I have now 
> managed to give it some documentation and release it. I'm using it
> myself and it really makes a difference sometimes. I'm looking for
> some feedback on the project before I announce it somewhere else.

Hi Tom,

Exilog looks fab - well done! My one 'bug' that I've found so far is
that the exilog_agent.pl script fails to import entries into the
database if there are un-escaped strings in the log file. We have some
Exim filters which check message content for known malware and reject
accordingly, which produces custom 550's that seem to be getting munged
by exilog:

SQL Error (code 1064) on 'unknown' with query: INSERT INTO unknown
(server,line,message_id,timestamp) VALUES('mail-1','cancelled by system
filter: This message has been rejected because it has\na potentially
executable attachment "hotmail.4927.word.scr"\nThis form of attachment
has been used by\nrecent viruses or other malware.\nIf you meant to send
this file then please\','1CjNzO-00081Y-WE','1104265855')

--

-- 
James Sheridan <james.sheridan <at> rockford-uk.com>
Rockford IT Ltd
Tel: 0871 871 2778 Fax: 0871 871 2779

This email originates from IT Group UK Limited.

Re: Announce: "Exilog" - Exim central logging / reporting tool

James Sheridan wrote:

> SQL Error (code 1064) on 'unknown' with query: INSERT INTO unknown
> (server,line,message_id,timestamp) VALUES('mail-1','cancelled by system
> filter: This message has been rejected because it has\na potentially
> executable attachment "hotmail.4927.word.scr"\nThis form of attachment
> has been used by\nrecent viruses or other malware.\nIf you meant to send
> this file then please\','1CjNzO-00081Y-WE','1104265855')

Can you please send me the raw log line that caused that error? Then I 
can fix it :)

Thanks,

/tom

--

-- 

Re: Announce: "Exilog" - Exim central logging / reporting tool

Tom Kistner wrote:

> Read the docs to find out what it can do. Pasted below for your
> convinience.

Replying to myself:

There is no usage section in the docs, but the usage is more or less 
intuitive.

One important detail: When searching for strings (addresses, hostnames 
etc.), you must use SQL wildcards if you only specify a substring.

%                 Matches any string of zero or more characters.
-                 Matches any one character.

Just searching for a substring without wildcards will not yield a result.

/tom

--

-- 
## List details at http://www.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users 
## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/
## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://www.exim.org/eximwiki/

Talking point - websites, wikis and documentation

The website for exim has never been particularly dynamic, and has been
suffering from minimal management and updates through the last year or
so as well.

I have some ideas on what I intend to do with the website, however
before I develop those further I'd like to open some discussion on the
overall subject - making sure my intentions align with what folks want
etc.

The website has remained unchanged in structure (content has been added)
and overall design since its inception way back in the 90s.  Even
without doing anything else I would like to rehash it to a templated
system using CSS for layout control rather than frames and hardwired
HTML.

However there are alternatives:-
      * We could move to a dynamic based website using a content
        management package.  Not sure what this buys us for our
        requirements, however the cost is that the website will not be
        mirror-able.
      * We could reduce the website to the bare minimum and move
        everything into the wiki.

The wiki is another related issue.   As an experiment it would currently
be hard to call it a success, as the number of updates being made to it
(even by me) is *really* low.  Even in areas where I know simple
corrections could be made its not getting any fixes.  In my opinion the
FAQ does not currently work well within the wiki - and I probably ought
to be biased towards it having done the work to move it there.  I do not
feel the wiki form is currently giving us any real advantage to the FAQ

Re: Announce: "Exilog" - Exim central logging / reporting tool

Um 15:57 Uhr am 02.06.05 schrieb Tom Kistner:

> Then run ./exilog_agent.pl as root. You might want to include
> a start/stop procedure for the agent in your Exim rc file. It
> needs to be run from the ./ CWD since otherwise Perl won't
> find its modules.

Try the using "FindBin":

use FindBin;
use FindBin qw($RealBin);
use lib "$RealBin/";

I attached a little patch, which adds the needed code to the agent, the 
config module and the cleanup script.

Grüße,
Sven.

--

-- 
Sven Hartge -- professioneller Unix-Geek
Meine Gedanken im Netz: http://sven.formvision.de/blog/

diff -ur exilog-0.1.orig/exilog.conf exilog-0.1/exilog.conf
--- exilog-0.1.orig/exilog.conf	2005-06-02 15:48:21.000000000 +0200
+++ exilog-0.1/exilog.conf	2005-06-02 22:39:56.000000000 +0200
 <at>  <at>  -16,13 +16,17  <at>  <at> 
       # Keep the server names short (do not use FQDN).
       # Likewise, keep the group names short.