Pkg exim4 users - Sep 2009 - Upgrade from Debian 4 to 5 leads to exim4 problems

Today I upgraded a Linux server from Debian 4.0 to 5.0.3.  I have had  
this server since October 2005, when it was at Debian 3.1.  I  
successfully upgraded to 4.0 in 2007 and, more the most part, today''s  
upgrade went smoothly.

The exception was exim4.  Following the upgrade, when I work on  
packages that depend on exim4, I get error messages like this:

Setting up exim4-config (4.69-9) ...
DEBCONFsomethingDEBCONF found in exim configuration. This is most  
probably
caused by you upgrading to exim4 4.67-3 or later without accepting the
suggested conffile changes. Please read
/usr/share/doc/exim4-config/NEWS.Debian.gz for 4.67-2 and 4.67-4
2009-09-20 15:25:22 Exim configuration error in line 31 of /var/lib/ 
exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp:
   malformed macro definition
Invalid new configfile /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp, not  
installing
/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp to /var/lib/exim4/ 
config.autogenerated
dpkg: error processing exim4-config (--configure):
  subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of exim4-base:

... and so forth.  In the course of the Debian upgrade I was prompted  
several times to make choices and, in every instance, I chose the  
default prompt.  In the case of exim4, this meant maintaining my  
current configuration file.

But, apparently that was the wrong choice.  My upgrade log shows the  
following:

upgrade-lenny.script:2888:Configuration file `/etc/exim4/conf.d/main/ 
01_exim4-config_listmacrosdefs''
upgrade-lenny.script:2897:*** 01_exim4-config_listmacrosdefs (Y/I/N/O/ 
D/Z) [default=N] ? N
upgrade-lenny.script:2898:Installing new version of config file /etc/ 
exim4/conf.d/main/02_exim4-config_options ...

... and a bit later ...

upgrade-lenny.script:2922:2009-09-20 10:06:58 Exim configuration  
error in line 31 of /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp:
upgrade-lenny.script:2924:Invalid new configfile /var/lib/exim4/ 
config.autogenerated.tmp, not installing
upgrade-lenny.script:2925:/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp to / 
var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated

... and it continues with the same type of errors I am now getting.

I have tried to ''apt-get remove'' exim4, but get exactly the
same
errors.  Note:  When I originally installed exim4 years ago, I did  
modify exim4.conf.template to get mailman to run on top  of it.  That  
is the *only* modification to exim4 that I made in that timespan.

I read in the docs:

     It _is_ necessary to either accept the offered configuration file
     change _or_ to manually check a manually changed exim config. Exim
     will _NOT_ run if a configuration file of an older version is
     being used with a more recent exim4-config.

However, I am unclear what a "manual check of a manually changed exim  
config" entails.

Checking the mailing list archives, I see that Wm. Josiah Erikson  
encountered this problem in April 2009.  In response, Andreas Metzler  
responded:

"This is all about dpkg conffiles. You should have one (or more)
.dpkg-dist files in /etc/exim4. You will need to port forward your
local modification of the respective file to the dpkg-dist version and
use this one instead."

I do have /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template.dpkg-dist dating from Sept  
2008, but I don''t understand what "porting forward my local  
modification of the respective file to the dpkg-dist version" means.

Can anyone advise me as to what I can do to get exim4 working again?

Thank you very much.
James E Keenan

> I do have /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template.dpkg-dist dating from Sept 
> 2008, but I don''t understand what "porting forward my local 
> modification of the respective file to the dpkg-dist version" means.
> Can anyone advise me as to what I can do to get exim4 working again?
That''s a nasty one to upgrade.

It means that you have to do it manually. Some of the config keywords 
are obsolete and won''t work with a newer exim.
What I did was a clean install of exim and compared the config-files of 
the split config by hand.

greets,
  thomy

Hi,

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 07:46:12AM +0200, thomy at vincentz.com
wrote:
>> I do have /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template.dpkg-dist dating from Sept  
>> 2008, but I don''t understand what "porting forward my
local
>> modification of the respective file to the dpkg-dist version"
means.
>> Can anyone advise me as to what I can do to get exim4 working again?
> That''s a nasty one to upgrade.
>
> It means that you have to do it manually. Some of the config keywords  
> are obsolete and won''t work with a newer exim.
> What I did was a clean install of exim and compared the config-files of  
> the split config by hand.
During a package update, no information is ever lost. If you decide
to keep your configuration, the new configuration is unpacked and
saved with a .dpkg-dist extension. In this case, you''ll probably have
a non-working exim because your old configuration may not fit the new
software. 

If you decide to take our new configuration, your old configuration
gets renamed to a .dpkg-old extension. In this case, you''ll definetely
have your manual changes temporarily disabled.

In both cases, you''d probably go ahead with comparing new and old
configuration, and decide whether a change was yours or ours, and
apply your changes to our new configuration, which will most probably
yield a working configuration. This process is considerably easier if
you knew what you were doing instead of blindly following some HOWTO
document from the web.

Since the script with tries to identify old configuration snippets is
rather paranoid, you would probably have to manually move away the
.dpkg-old/.dpkg-dist files.

Greetings
Marc

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