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regarding my question here: remote smtp with local failover I need to setup two exim on the same server, both listening on localhost. I evaluated using nullmailer and exim, but Debian wont allow to have both installed, i also feel that two exim instances should use less memory than one copy of exim and one of nullmailer.

Is this possible? i know postfix has instances, but im unable to find this kind of functionality on exim. The setup should receive mails from localhost (php) and attempt to use mandrill (like a smart host) and in case is not reachable try sending over the local exim running on a different port

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I'm struggling to understand the specific problem you're trying to solve:

  • PHP/Web-application sends mail via SMTP to localhost:25.
  • Exim4 receives it and forwards to a remote smart-host

If that forwarding fails then it will be queued and retried later. Forwarding to a second instance of exim doesn't make things more likely to be delivered, it just doubles the complexity.

(i.e. If the mail can't be sent, because the recipient's server is down you'll have shifted it from the queue on the first exim4 instance to the queue of the second exim4 instance. It still won't go, it will still be queued and retried. Having two exims won't make delivery more reliable, or faster.)

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  • sorry, im using mandrill (as smart host) for sending my site's mail, but im facing connectivity issues, the idea here is to use mandrill, but if that fails, not because of a bounce, because of a connection issue or mandrill is down, attempt direct delivery. Also, the delivery from php is local because i found out it reduces blocking on pages
    – Luis M
    Aug 17, 2013 at 15:28
  • Doesn't really change my answer too much. In short php->exim4. exim4->smart-host. If that second step fails it'll be queued and will be retried. I'd suggest just updating the retry times to try every 5-10 minutes, and avoiding the complexity. If your smarthost is down then something is broken pretty badly anyway ..
    – user9565
    Aug 17, 2013 at 15:39

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