RHBA-2009:1627 - Bug Fix Advisory

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
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 238026 - Wrong init script
• BZ - 248289 - exim.conf refers to an undefined domainlist
• BZ - 510203 - exim installation, error in %post, chown: cannot access `/etc/pki/tls/private/exim.pem'
• BZ - 513492 - Exim listens on all IP by default

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)