HowTo bring together exim4 and sasl2 etc. with Debian/Ubuntu

How To combine exim4, sasl2, clamav to enable SMTP-AUTH with plaintext passwords.

Plaintext passwords do not hurt if encrypted channels are used! 

Secret 1:
Add Debian-exim to the group sasl. 
You might also add clamav to the group Debian-exim. 

Secret 2: 
To enable plaintext passwords create /etc/c-client.cf like this: 
( echo "I accept the risk" ; echo "set disable-plaintext nil" ) >/etc/c-client.cf 

Secret 3: 
Restart those in the correct order, and do not forget exim4 does not stop all it's processes immediatly sometimes: 
/etc/init.d/saslauthd restart 
/etc/init.d/clamav-daemon restart 
/etc/init.d/exim4 stop 
killall exim4 # perhaps twice 
/etc/init.d/exim4 start 

Tip 4: 
Do not bother to use our echo service to test mail exchange with the outside world. I.e., write an E-Mail to echo@ibcl.at and worry if you don't get some answer within minutes. Nevertheless, if it does'nt work: We have service downtimes, seldom but not never.


From: IBCL BLog.
Originally posted: 2006-06-25