aliases of various types
Gavin McCullagh
gavin.mccullagh at gcd.ie
Tue Jul 6 15:09:31 CEST 2010
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?
Gavin
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