[Mailman-Users] Please review this procedure for sendmail integration

[Richard Barrett]

On 19 Jun 2004, at 15:45, Ed Greenberg wrote:

> Since many people cannot use David Champion's mm-handler due to shared  
> use of domains,

The other major problem with this perl script, which is logically part  
of the MTA, is (or was when I used it) that incoming mail is silently  
lost if the Mailman delivery agent script terminates abnormally for any  
reason. More normal practice if a delivery agent fails is for the  
delivering MTA to hold and retry later, ultimately reporting  
non-delivery to the sender if delivery failure persists.

> I've worked this up. I'd appreciate some constructive comments, yea or  
> nay, on this procedure.
>
> Using the postfix MTA functionality to do automatic sendmail alias  
> handling
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----
>
> In order to add a list to mailman on a sendmail based system, you need  
> to
> add a bunch of aliases for that list to the alias file. In this  
> customization,
> we implement a second alias file and teach sendmail about it.
>
> We use a mailman feature that was designed for the postfix mail  
> program - a replacement for sendmail.  This feature creates  
> /home/mailman/data/aliases
>
> 1. We have a script that will copy the alias file and then process it.  
> We need to do this
> since sendmail doesn't like alias files to be in directories that  
> don't meet very
> specific permission requirements.  /home/mailman/data doesn't meet  
> this requirement. Our script will copy the alias file from  
> /home/mailman/data to /etc. It uses a different name in order not to  
> clash with the existing /etc/aliases
>
> Create /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases with these commands:
>
> /bin/cp /home/mailman/data/aliases /etc/mailman.aliases
> /usr/bin/newaliases
>
> 2. We have to tell mailman that it is using postfix. We lie.
>
> Add these to mm_cfg.py:
>
> MTA='Postfix'
> POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD = '/usr/bin/sudo /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases'
> POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = []
>
> 3. We have to tell sendmail about the new alias file.
>
> in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc find this line:
> define(`ALIAS_FILE', `/etc/aliases')dnl
> and change it to:
> define(`ALIAS_FILE', `/etc/aliases,/etc/mailman.aliases')dnl
> Run a make (or otherwise refresh sendmail.cf and then restart sendmail
>
> Now when we run newaliases, it will rebuild both alias files.
>
> 4. We need permission for apache and mailman to run our script from  
> step 1.
>
> In the /etc/sudoers file (use the command /usr/sbin/visudo) we need  
> two lines:
> apache ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases
> mailman ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases
>
> Note that your web server may not run as 'apache' It may run as 'www'  
> or 'nobody'.
> Whatever it runs as is what you need where it says apache.
>
>
> 5. As mailman, run /home/mailman/bin/genaliases
> Check for a file /home/mailman/data/aliases and
> also TWO files /etc/mailman.aliases and /etc/mailman.aliases.db
>
> 6. Test creating a list using /home/mailman/bin/newlist
> Check for the appearance of aliases for that list in  
> /etc/mailman.aliases
> Add some users and test the list
>
> 7. Test for creating a list using http://domain.com/mailman/create
> Check for the appearance of aliases for that list in  
> /etc/mailman.aliases
> Add some users and test the list
>
> Ed Greenberg
> edg at greenberg.org
> 6/19/2004
>
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