[Dovecot] pop before smtp with 'exact' and 'exim4'

[Jools Smyth]

Hello,

I just thought I would write this in case its useful to anyone. I've used 
dovecot for a while, as its so easy to set up, its fast and it and just 
"works". I recently wanted to be able to send via my server after pop3s 
authentication. I'm also running debian (testing) which utilises exim4 by 
default. I found no information about how to do it with this combination of 
software so went about sorting it out myself.

First I got exact : (a pop before smtp daemon)

http://adju.st/dist/exact/

After compiling and installing i edited its
/usr/local/etc/exact-servers.conf

It doesn't support dovecot's log format out of the box, so i created a regular 
expression entry for it.

<server dovecot>
    order username,address
    match (Login): (.*) \[(.*)\]
</server>

I then edited its main configuration, (/usr/local/etc/exact.conf) changing 
only the user its running on (default mail/mail) to Debian-exim/mail. (so 
that the state file it creates can be read fine by exim4)

I also changed the mail log ownership so that group mail can read them,
/usr/local/var/state/exact to

drwxr-sr-x  2 Debian-exim mail  1024 Mar 13 16:39 exact

and

/usr/local/var/run/exact to
drwxr-sr-x  2 Debian-exim mail  1024 Mar 12 21:54 exact

Exact's exim documentation is not for the most recent version, so I had to 
locate the correct line to modify.

I went into the exim4 configuration files. I use the debian split format 
configuration. In the file 

/etc/exim4/conf.d/acl/30_exim4-config_check_rcpt

there is a line near the bottom which reads

accept hosts = +relay_from_hosts 

I changed this to 

accept hosts = +relay_from_hosts : net-lsearch;/usr/local/var/state/exact/rela
y

I then just set exact to and start/stop in /etc/init.d/exim4

thats all!

Best Regards

Jools
-- 
Oxford Inspire
jools at oxfordinspire.co.uk
Tel: 01865 751879
Mob: 07966 577498