Issued:
2009-12-02
Updated:
2010-03-30

RHBA-2009:1627 - exim bug fix update

Synopsis

exim bug fix update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory (none)

Topic

Updated exim packages that resolve several issues are now available.

Description

Exim is a message transfer agent (MTA) developed at the University of Cambridge for use on Unix systems connected to the Internet. It is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence. In style it is similar to Smail 3, but its facilities are more general. There is a great deal of flexibility in the way mail can be routed, and there are extensive facilities for checking incoming mail. Exim can be installed in place of sendmail, although the configuration of exim is quite different to that of sendmail.

These updated exim packages provide fixes for the following bugs:

  • The exim init script would return with error code 0 regardless of if the service had actually been started. An incorrect return code would be issued concerning the exim init script because of an unimplemented feature of the script. These bugs concerning the exim init script have been corrected by modifying it to return a value of 2 on an unsupported command, a return of 1 when the $NETWORKING parameter is set to no, returning the correct status error to the user and forcing the script to restart (using condrestart) when the status is not equal to 0.

  • The default configuration referred to an undefined domain list causing errors when trying to relay email. The correct domain list of relay_to_domains is now utilized.

  • Exim listened on all interfaces by default, whereas Sendmail and Postfix only listen on loopback by default. Administrators who would assume exim had default settings configured the same as Sendmail and Postfix may have introduced a security hole when installing exim. To correct this the code segment local_interfaces = <; 127.0.0.1 ; ::1; has been added to the default configuration; allowing Administrators to treat exim default settings the same as Sendmail and Postfix.

  • Exim used to attempt generation of the certificate on installation instead of the first start, which could cause the installation to fail when the certificate could not be generated. Certificate generation is now undertaken upon the first start of exim after installation, allowing the installation to succeed.

All users of exim are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at This content is not included.http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian5ppc
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems5s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5ia64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5i386

Updated Packages

  • exim-4.63-5.el5.ppc.rpm
  • exim-mon-4.63-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
  • exim-mon-4.63-5.el5.ia64.rpm
  • exim-4.63-5.el5.ia64.rpm
  • exim-4.63-5.el5.i386.rpm
  • exim-sa-4.63-5.el5.i386.rpm
  • exim-mon-4.63-5.el5.s390x.rpm
  • exim-sa-4.63-5.el5.ia64.rpm
  • exim-sa-4.63-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
  • exim-mon-4.63-5.el5.ppc.rpm
  • exim-4.63-5.el5.src.rpm
  • exim-4.63-5.el5.s390x.rpm
  • exim-sa-4.63-5.el5.s390x.rpm
  • exim-sa-4.63-5.el5.ppc.rpm
  • exim-mon-4.63-5.el5.i386.rpm
  • exim-4.63-5.el5.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information