Das Werkstatt

I was confused by the files I found in "/etc/exim4" after installing the "exim4" package

The right way to configure exim4 on Debian seems to be this: This will use the files in /etc/exim4 as templates (therefore the "script-ish" language parts in those files) and put an auto-generated config in:

/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated

Links:

• Exim Documentation in Debian Wiki

In order to send mails over an external SMTP mailserver, using STARTTLS encrypted authentication, you have to add the credentials to the following file:

/etc/exim4/passwd.client

The syntax is explained in the file itself:

# Example:
### target.mail.server.example:login:password

The password is stored in plaintext, so make sure this file is only readable by root (and "Debian-exim" user). This should be the case anyways by default.