Mailman integration (was Re: Feature request: reply-to setting for distribution lists)

[Mark Berndt]

> On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Alex <lbf at dragonrising.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Firstly, to the developers - a big well done for the good work on Kolab
> > Server 2.2. I found this release a million times easier to install than
> > my efforts on 2.0 + horde, which I never got working properly.
> >
> > Now for the request...
> >
> > I use distribution lists as a way for my colleagues to chat amongst each
> > other, so it would be really useful if the reply-to field of the email
> > header could point my users reply back at the distribution list.
> >
> > At the moment, I can get round this by manually setting the reply-to
> > field in Thunderbird mail client - but it's not convenient and many of
> > my users forget to do this, causing their reply to just go back to the
> > user that sent the mail.
> >
> > If that makes sense.
>
> I think mailman do the trick :-)
> Then the question is:  why, if mailman does that already add this
> feature to kolab :-)
> And you are lucky, the kolab's wiki has a section about how to
> integrate mailman into kolab.

Mailman won't directly integrate with kolab, but can be made to work.

There are two choices - integrate mailman with your base operating system or 
use the openpkg mailman package.

I was able to make it work using the openpkg system.  I gave up trying to make 
it work with debian packages.

I couldn't get the wiki method working and went with using 
postfix_to_mailman.py script as there was less configuration file setup 
needed when adding new lists.  

Either way, I had to rebuild the mailman executable to ensure it has the 
correct uid/gid for the system. 

You need to modify the postfix configuration file, including removing the 
masqurade_domains section and add the new relay_domains and mydestination 
entries.  You also must use local_transport, not mailbox_transport since only 
local_transport will process transport_maps (see below).

I went with using mailman_to_postfix.py as it was easier to setup in the 
postfix master.cf config file.   I used lists.somedomain.com to separate the 
mail from normal kolabuser at somedomain.com and a transport_map file to call 
the mailman_to_postfix on receiving mail for somelist at lists.somedomain.com.

Unfortunately I could not find a way to make the kolab template write the 
required lists.somedomain.com and somedomain.com entries in the mydestination 
section without causing kolabconf to go into an endless loop.  This means 
that everytime the kolab admin web interface is called (eg adding a user), it 
will trash your postfix main.cf file and you need to copy a backup over it 
manually.  All the other changes can be made in the templates.

I don't think it would be too hard to integrate mailman into kolab, it would 
just need an entry for the list subdomain prefix in the admin interface and 
some minor changes to config files.  This would certainly be something that 
would be used by many kolab sites.

I'll be doing another kolab/mailman install soon and hopefully will create 
some better documentation for the kolab wiki.

kind regards,

Marko
 

>
> Regards.
>
> > Thanks again,
> >
> > Alex
> >
> > ps: SyncKolab - also excellent!
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Kolab-users mailing list
> > Kolab-users at kolab.org
> > https://kolab.org/mailman/listinfo/kolab-users



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