For Immediate Release
July 17, 2001
For more information, a review copy, cover art or an interview with
the author, contact:
Kathryn Barrett (707) 829-0515 ext 387 or kathrynb@oreilly.com 


CREATOR OF EXIM WRITES O'REILLY'S NEW EXIM BOOK


Sebastopol, CA--It's not a new story, especially in open source
circles--that of a software program that gains widespread use and
practically takes on a life of its own apart from its creator. In the
case of Exim, the popularity and endurance of the program are
particularly telling of its merits. Philip Hazel, author of "Exim: The
Mail Transfer Agent" (O'Reilly, US $44.95), began building Exim from
scratch in 1995 when it became clear to him that the system they were
using at the University of Cambridge no longer met their requirements.
As Hazel explains, "Up to that time, the Internet had been a pretty
friendly place, and there was little need to take many precautions
against hostile acts. Most sites ran open mail relays, for example. It
was clear, however, that this situation was changing." Because he
wasn't exactly sure what the outcome would be, he called his program
the EXperimental Internet Mailer, or Exim.

Hazel shared his creation with one of his colleagues, who began telling
others about it. "I put it on an ftp site just in case anybody else was
interested, but never advertised it," Hazel says, "I am somewhat amazed
at how widely it has spread, and how many different types of systems it
is used on." The early releases of Exim were never "announced;" they
just spread by word of mouth. Today Exim is the default mail transfer
agent (MTA) installed on some Linux systems, runs on many versions of
Unix, and is suitable for any TCP/IP network with any combination or
hosts and end-user software. Exim continues to grow in popularity
because it is open source, scalable, rich in features, and easy to
configure.

A mail transfer agent, known interchangeably as a "mail transport
agent" is responsible for routing and delivering electronic mail. Every
local area network and any multi-user system requires an MTA to deliver
local mail after it reaches the system. Exim, qmail, and sendmail are
examples of MTAs. While sendmail is by far the most popular MTA on Unix
and Linux systems, Exim is rapidly gaining ground because it is simpler
and more intuitive to configure than sendmail, and offers all the
features and flexibility needed by most Internet-connected sites.

Although Hazel has made a point of maintaining a comprehensive
reference manual for Exim, the need for introductory and tutorial
material has become apparent. As Hazel says, "Some Linux distributions
are now shipping with Exim. This means that less-experienced system
administrators are having to learn about it. The official specification
is written as a reference manual, which is not the best format for
learning, especially if you have no previous experience of mail
transfer agents. 'Exim: The Mail Transfer Agent' contains much more
introductory material than the reference manual, and is presented in a
better order for reading through."

Exim's features include sophisticated rules for routing mail to
individual users or sets of users, information lookups in a variety of
formats, spam filtering, virus or attachment checking, and mailing list
management. "Exim: The Mail Transfer Agent" was written in particular
for Unix system administrators, but should be valuable to anyone who
maintains an Exim installation or is considering running Exim as a
replacement for an existing MTA.


Chapter 3, "Exim Overview," is available free online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/exim/chapter/ch03.html 

An article by the author is may be found at:
http://sysadmin.oreilly.com/news/exim_0701.html 

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents,
index, author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/exim/

For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596000987.jpg


Exim: The Mail Transfer Agent 
By Philip Hazel
July 2001
ISBN 0-596-00098-7, 611 pages, $44.95 (US)
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
http://www.oreilly.com

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