eXimon

Yann Golanski, yann at theplanet.net Š1998

Last update: Wed Sep 29 11:29:14 BST 1999

A new monitor for exim

eXimon is a monitor for clearing frozen mail in high loaded systems such as in an ISP environment. It has a strong resemblance to the mail user agent called mutt and users of one will recognise the other.
eXimon is configurable to some extant, but will be kept as a simple and fast tool to use. The whole deisgne of it was for simplicity and speed, not prettiness.

Commpiling and Installing eXimon

0 - Install ncurses, otherwise, eXimon will not work at all...
1 - Before compiling eXimon, you will need to edit the following file: ./eXimon/src/config.h and change anything that needs changing in there.
2 - Then type cp ./src/make-os ./src/Makefile where os is whatever you os is -- so far only linux. Then type cd src && make. You should now have a compiled version of eXimon.
3 - After that, a make install will take care of the rest. by default the binary will be installed in /usr/sbin/eXimon. If you want to change this, edit the makefile.

Introduction to eXimon

This is a screen capture of how eXimon looks like: [the main eXimon window]

Here is an explanation of the highlighted line in the image:
The first column is the number of the entry.
The second column is the state of the email. F for forzen, T for thawed, and S for spam save.
The third column is the number of similar messages that are in the queue. When a message matches the same criterions as another one then it is marked as being the same. Whatever you do to one of those messages, it will be done to all the other in the thread.
The forth column is the time since the email was frozen, in seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years -- whatever is appropriate.
The fifth column is the size of the email, in bites, kilobites or megabites -- again, whichever is appropriate.
The sixth column is the number of recipients to the mail.
The seventh column is the sender of the email.
The last and eight column is the subject of the mail. If either of the last one has a "$", then the line has been truncated.

In the above picture, one can see a highlighted mail. It is the 3rd mail in the list and has been frozen for 47 minutes. There are 10 copies of this mail, each send to one user, with a 3k size for each email. It has been send by "sales@elektronix.co.uk" with a subject Winning Bid for USB 4-Port Hub" that has been truncated. Simple?

The green line at the bottom of the screen is the quick help menu. It sums some of the most commonly commands. If you type the magic "?" then you will see the following menu. Again, it is should be pretty clear to read.

.eXimonrc file and configuration options

eXimon will read a file called $HOME/.eXimonrc and get some options from it. If you do not have this file, then it will completly ignore it and use the defaults. Most of them are defined at compile time in ./src/config.h others are built-in (see ./src.eXimon.c if you realy want to have a look at them).
The options you can give in the .eXimonrc file are:

WARNING_LOAD The value for which eXimon will warn the user that the mailer/machine on which it is run on is over-loaded. The default value is 5.
HASH_TABLE_SIZE The size of the hash table that is used for threading. eXimon will perform better is this is a prime number. The default is 10007.
TOLERENCE This is used as part of the test to see if a mail is threaded or not. The default is 0, and unless you want problems, should never be above 10.
NO_HUMOUR means that you don't have a sens of humour and eXimon will not send random messages at you. While the threading is taking place, eXimon will hang there and this was a way to make users still look at it from time to time. That and I was bored ;)
EXPERT If you are an expert, this will allow you to skin a few warning messages and such like. Use with care.
SPLIT_SPOOL_DIR If you are using the split_spool_dir option in exim you might want to use this as well here. See exim for more info.
MOVE_FROZEN_MAILS If you are using the new exim optio to move frozen mails out od the queue, then you will need to set this option for eXimon, or else it will read the normal spool, and find no forzen messages. Simple?

The furure...

Colors for the messages display screen. This will require a huge re-write of the main curses code and will take some time. Bear with me.

eXimon has been written by Yann golanski and John Denholm at the Planet Online LTD in 1999. It is avaible under the GNU Public Licence.