Mailman - The GNU Mailing List Management System Copyright (C) 2001,2002 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA GENERAL SETUP INFORMATION Mailman should work pretty much out of the box with a standard Postfix installation. As of this writing I've tested it with Postfix 19991231 up to pl13, and with 200010228 up to pl08. It is recommended that you set "owner_request_special = no" in your main.cf config file so that Postfix won't treat -owner and -request addresses specially (we want Postfix to simply deliver such messages to the Mailman wrapper). The default is "yes" I believe. In order to support Mailman's optional VERP delivery, you will want to disable luser_relay (the default) and you will want to set recipient_delimiter for extended address semantics. Here, my recommendations are to comment out any luser_relay value in your main.cf and just go with the defaults. Also, set "recipient_delimiter = +" so that the symbol used to separate an address from its extended semantics is a + sign. This will work well with the default values for VERP_FORMAT and VERP_REGEXP in Defaults.py. Finally, if you are using Postfix-style virtual domains, read the section on virtual domain support below. INTEGRATING POSTFIX AND MAILMAN You can integrate Postfix and Mailman such that when new lists are created, or lists are removed, Postfix's alias database will be automatically updated. The following are the steps you need to take to make this work. In the description below, we assume that you've installed Mailman in the default location, i.e. /usr/local/mailman. If that's not the case, adjust the instructions according to your use of configure's --prefix and --with-var-prefix options. - If you are using Postfix-style virtual domains and you want Mailman to honor your virtual domains, read the section below first! - Add this to the bottom of the $prefix/Mailman/mm_cfg.py file: MTA = 'Postfix' The MTA variable names a module in Mailman/MTA which contains the MTA-specific functions to be executed when a list is created or removed. - Look at the Defaults.py file for the variables POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD and POSTFIX_MAP_CMD command. Make sure these point to your postalias and postmap programs respectively. - Run the genaliases script to initialize your aliases file. % cd /usr/local/mailman % bin/genaliases Make sure that the owner of the data/aliases and data/aliases.db file is `mailman' and that the group owner for those files is `mailman'. E.g.: % su % chown mailman:mailman data/aliases* - Hack your Postfix's main.cf file to include the following path in your alias_maps variable: /usr/local/mailman/data/aliases (no trailing .db). Do not include this in your alias_database variable. This is because you do not want Postfix's newaliases command to modify Mailman's aliases.db file, but you do want Postfix to consult aliases.db when looking for local addresses. You probably want to use a hash: style database for this entry. Here's an example: alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/aliases, hash:/usr/local/mailman/data/aliases - When you configure Mailman, use the --with-mail-gid=mailman switch (actually, this will be the default if you configured Mailman after adding the `mailman' owner). Because the owner of the aliases.db file is `mailman', Postfix will execute Mailman's wrapper program as uid and gid mailman. That's it! One caveat: when you add or remove a list, the aliases.db file will updated, but it will not automatically run "postfix reload". This is because you need to be root to run this and suid-root scripts are not secure. The only effect of this is that it will take about a minute for Postfix to notice the change to the aliases.db file and update its tables. I consider this a minor inconvenience. VIRTUAL DOMAINS Postfix supports two styles of virtual domains, called "Postfix-style" and "Sendmail-style". With the latter, all aliases are visible in all domains, and nothing special need be done with Mailman. With Postfix-style virtual domains, things are a little trickier, although Mailman should work well with it. First, you'll need to add a path to Postfix's virtual_maps variable: virtual_maps = , hash:/usr/local/mailman/data/virtual-mailman assuming you've installed Mailman in the default location. Note that you must follow Postfix's instructions for setting up the virtual domains; get your virtual domains working in Postfix first before integrating Mailman. Next, in your mm_cfg.py file, you will want to set the variable POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS to the list of virtual domains that Mailman should update. This may not be all of the virtual domains that your Postfix installation supports! The values in this list will be matched against the host_name attribute of mailing lists objects, and must be an exact match. Here's an example: Let's say I've set up Postfix to handle the virtual domains dom1.ain, dom2.ain, and dom3.ain. Let's say further that in main.cf you've got the following settings: myhostname = mail.dom1.ain mydomain = dom1.ain mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain virtual_maps = hash:/some/path/to/virtual-dom1, hash:/some/path/to/virtual-dom2, hash:/some/path/to/virtual-dom2 Let's say further that in virtual-dom1, you've got the following lines: dom1.ain IGNORE @dom1.ain @mail.dom1.ain This tells Postfix to deliver anything addressed to dom1.ain to the same mailbox at mail.dom1.com, it's default destination. In this case you would not include dom1.ain in POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS because otherwise Mailman will write entries for mailing lists in the dom1.ain domain as mylist@dom1.ain mylist mylist-request@dom1.ain mylist-request # and so on... The more specific entries trump your more general entries and thus breaking the delivery of any dom1.ain mailing list. However, you would include dom2.ain and dom3.ain in mm_cfg.py: POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = ['dom2.ain', 'dom3.ain'] Now, any list that Mailman creates in either of those two domains, will have the correct entries written to /usr/local/mailman/data/virtual-mailman As above with the data/aliases* files, you want to make sure that both data/virtual-mailman and data/virtual-mailman.db are user and group owned by the `mailman' user/group. So to get things started, set up your virtual domains, run bin/genaliases, and check the ownerships of the files. From here on out, you should be good to go. AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH Fil has an alternative approach based on virtual maps and regular expressions, as described at: (French) http://listes.rezo.net/comment.php (English) http://listes.rezo.net/how.php This is a good (and simpler) alternative if you don't mind exposing an additional hostname in the domain part of the addresses people will use to contact your list. I.e. if people should use mylist@lists.dom.ain instead of mylist@dom.ain. I have not extensively tested this approach however. Local Variables: mode: text indent-tabs-mode: nil End: