No support for (x)inetd?
========================

* Why does Debian's exim4 not run from (x)inetd but as a separate daemon?

#1 Ease of maintainance:
   update-inetd is difficult to impossible to handle correctly (Just
   check the archived bug reports of exim.) and update-inetd seems to be
   unmaintained for a long time, nobody dares to touch it. To quote Mark
   Baker, the maintainer of exim (v3): "I really wish I had never used
   inetd in the first place, but simply set up exim to run as a daemon,
   but it's too late to change that now."
   
#2 Extended features
   Running from inetd interferes with exim's resource controls (e.g it
   disables smtp_accept_max_per_host and smtp_accept_max).

If you introduce bugs on your systems by running from (x)inetd you are
on your own!

==================================
Dan Weber has provided us with instructions for running from xinetd:
Disable exim4's listening daemon by executing
update-exim4defaults --queuerunner queueonly

Save this as /etc/xinetd.d/exim4
--------------------
service smtp
{
        disable	    = no
	flags       = NAMEINARGS
        socket_type = stream
        protocol    = tcp
        wait        = no
        user        = Debian-exim
        group       = Debian-exim
        server      = /usr/sbin/exim4
        server_args = exim4 -bs
}
--------------------
Run invoke-rc.d exim4 restart; invoke-rc.d (x)inetd restart

Done.
==================================
If you want to use plain inetd, you can use the following line:
mail stream   tcp     nowait  Debian-exim     /usr/sbin/exim4 exim4 -bs
(This has been provided by Ryen Underwood)
