[Mailman-Users] Advice pls?

[Brad Knowles]

At 1:32 PM +0100 2004/04/30, Rob Hackney wrote:

>  Does the silence on this mean
>  A) you don't approve of the question
>  B) it's a dumb question and I need to read a bit more?
>  C) no-one can help

	B.  Start with <http://www.list.org/docs.html>.

>                                         I need the program to do the
>  following: send out html formatted emails to a list of subscribed users
>  disallow replies to the from email address.

	Mailman doesn't send out HTML-formatted e-mail.  If you send 
HTML-formatted e-mail to the list, and the list isn't configured to 
strip or convert that, then the HTML formatted e-mail will be sent on 
to the list recipients.  But in terms of the e-mail that Mailman 
itself generates (mostly announcements that they've been 
subscribed/unsubscribed, password reminders, etc...), it's not 
HTML-formatted.

>  create an auto unsub manage bounces/ non-deliverables

	No problem.

>  I'd like to be able to track the messages tho this isn't strictly
>  necessary.

	Track the messages?  In what way?  There are the logs as to which 
message-ids have come in when from what sender, and when the system 
was able to transmit the outgoing messages to the next hop for the 
given recipient(s), but I'm not sure just exactly what you're looking 
for.

>  I have told my boss that I think postfix + mailman can do this (or at
>  least the main parts)

	Could be.  Your list of requirements is not really very detailed, 
so it's hard to tell.

>  Am I right?  I've just installed mailman and am currently configuring
>  and testing it but don't want to waste my time if it is not suitable. My
>  main concern is sending out the emails and making sure that this isn't
>  an address to reply to.

	Mailman is capable of setting up announce-only lists.  See the 
FAQ (link from the page mentioned above).

>  One other thing:  this will need to work on a network which currently
>  has an ms exch server handling out two domains; dom1.co.uk dom2.co.uk It
>  is vital that the email comes from newsletters at dom2.co.uk This is
>  currently an exch mailbox. thanks

	I'm not sure how this would interact with Exchange.  Certainly, 
you can configure your mail server to generate outgoing mail and 
claim that it is any other machine on the planet that you like, but 
if the IP address for which those messages are coming from doesn't 
match the name that you claim, then a lot of mail servers will reject 
your mail as being "spoofed" -- which it is.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.