aliases of various types

[Gunnar Wrobel]

Quoting Gavin McCullagh <gavin.mccullagh at gcd.ie>:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 01 Jul 2010, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
>
>> Previously (on a kolab v1), we tended to use /etc/aliases fairly heavily.
>> This was probably not ideal, but it allowed us to do lots of useful things
>> like:
>>
>> 1. where <user> left the organisation, forward their mail to <newuser>
>> 	<user>: <newuser>
>> 2. create simple distribution lists:
>> 	<listname>: <localuser1>, <localuser2>, <remoteuser1>, ....
>> 3. create simple name aliases:
>> 	<nickname>: <realname>
>> 	<nickname>: <remote_realname>
>> 4. Copy all email to <user1> to <user2> and possibly <remoteuser1>
>> 	<user1>: <user1>, <user2>, <remoteuser1>
>
> I'm going to add in what I have been able to find out so far.
>
> The available tools (if you don't wish to manually edit config files)
> seem to be:
>
>  - sieve rules (not ideal as you have to login as a user to easily admin
>    them)
>  - distribution lists
>  - user aliases
>  - shared mail folders
>  - address book (to allow adding external accounts in distribution lists)
>
>
> The best solution I can find to [1] is either of:
>  - set the account password, login to the account and set a forward
>  - share the account's folders with the replacement user.
>  - delete the account and set it up as an alias or distribution list for
>    other user(s)
>
> You can achieve [2] for local users easily using distribution lists.  For
> remote users you have to add them first to the addressbook.  That's a bit
> messy, but it's doable.
>
> It seems that [3] can be solved using user aliases as long as the
> <realname> is a local email account.  So if someone wants a nickname email,
> I can simply add the nickname to their normal account.  However, where a
> local account doesn't exist, I can't give them an alias which forwards,
> say, to their external gmail account.  I also can't give two people the
> same alias -- actually the kolab admin interface allows you to, but it
> shouldn't.
>
> To give other users a forwarding address on our mail system [3b], you can
> add the <remote_address> to the address book and then add it to a
> one-address distribution list.  This is pretty messy.  You don't appear to
> be able to add a alias to the addressbook entry and expect that to cause
> the email to go out (that would be a nice feature though?).  Does anyone
> know of a better way to do this?
>
> [4] can be done with sieve, but that's not ideal for someone managing the
> system.  I can't see another way just now.
>
>
> Does anyone have any corrections/additions to this?

I think it would be great if you could also paste your summary into a  
wiki page ;)

I don't have anything new to add to your summary but I guess Thomas  
might still have the one or the other suggestion. You focus solely on  
the web admin however. This might be too restrictive. There is nothing  
that would prevent you from also using the postfix aliases file on the  
Kolab server.

Of course the Kolab web admin is limited in its abilities but it would  
be hard to support a large amount of the possible use cases with this  
tool. So for anything which is not directly possible via the web admin  
it is quite okay to use the server configuration templates and files.

Cheers,

Gunnar

>
> Gavin
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Kolab-users mailing list
> Kolab-users at kolab.org
> https://kolab.org/mailman/listinfo/kolab-users
>



-- 
______ http://kdab.com _______________ http://kolab-konsortium.com _

p at rdus Kolab work is funded in part by KDAB and the Kolab Konsortium

____ http://www.pardus.de _________________ http://gunnarwrobel.de _
E-mail : p at rdus.de                                 Dr. Gunnar Wrobel
Tel.   : +49 700 6245 0000                          Bundesstrasse 29
Fax    : +49 721 1513 52322                          D-20146 Hamburg
--------------------------------------------------------------------
    >> Mail at ease - Rent a kolab groupware server at p at rdus <<
--------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: Digitale PGP-Unterschrift
URL: <http://lists.kolab.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20100706/2f366e6d/attachment.sig>