[Mailman-Users] Using Mailman without /etc/aliases

[Akop Pogosian]

On Mon, 21 May 2001, Luke wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Our unix system here uses a kind of strange distributed aliases system-
> running newaliases affects /etc/aliases on all machines.  So getting
> mailman to work in the traditional sense wouldn't be acceptable at my
> site.
>

Does /etc/aliases get replaced every time or they just run "newliases"?
You can have as many aliases files as you want, take a look at the
AliasFile option in your sendmail.cf. You can add your own alias
file such as /etc/mailman.aliases. Though, if your site is using rdist or
something similar to distribute the aliases files, they might as well use
it to distribute sendmail.cf some day and nuke all your modifications.
Ask your system administrator about that.

> I do, however, have root access on my own machine.  So I could create a
> mail spool, or even a user, for each mailing list I create (not many).


That would work if you machine can receive mail on its own. If your
site has a central mail server and for each host there has an MX DNS
record that points to your mail hub then you won't be able to receive
any mail on your machine because all or most mail software out there
respects MX records. Why not ask the system administrator to install
mailman on their central mail server if there is one and make it
available to the users?


-akop