[Mailman-Developers] New MTA interface in mailman 2.0b

Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham@VData.co.uk
Mon, 10 Apr 2000 17:54:27 +0100


I've got a couple of queries about how the MTA interfaces in mailman 
hang together now - I'm also putting some of the initial stuff in more 
detail so others can find out what to hack to select things.

There are 2 MTA modules - 
	Mailman/Handlers/SMTPDirect.py
	Mailman/Handlers/Sendmail.py

I would say from what I have seen of the Sendmail.py one that most 
developers have been using SMTPDirect :-)  - thats the default in 
Defaults.py

To use the sendmail i/f add this to mm_cfg.py
	DELIVERY_MODULE = 'Sendmail'
	SENDMAIL_CMD = '/usr/sbin/sendmail'

[I actually use exim, but MTAs on linux with a sendmail like interface 
normally have a presence - either a symlink or a sendmail CLI emulator 
- at /usr/sbin/sendmail ]

You also need to add the appropriate magic for your MTA to accept the 
lies that mailman tells it as an appropriate sender address (ie the -f 
parameter to sendmail).  In my config with exim this means adding
	trusted_groups=mailman

to my config file.

I also needed to patch Sendmail.py to get the envelope from addresses 
right:-
--- Sendmail.py.orig Tue Mar 21 06:25:51 2000
+++ Sendmail.py Sun Apr  9 22:17:37 2000
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@
         # nothing to do!
         return
     # Use -f to set the envelope sender
-    cmd = mm_cfg.SENDMAIL_CMD + ' -f ' + msg.GetSender() + ' '
+    cmd = mm_cfg.SENDMAIL_CMD + ' -f ' + mlist.GetAdminEmail() + ' '
     # make sure the command line is of a manageable size
     recipchunks = []
     currentchunk = []


So, now to the questions:-

 1. Everything now looks like a list mail - looks like some items which 
used
    to look distinct from list mails have the same headers as the list 
mails
    [ie admin/info mails have now acquired extra headers]
    Is this intentional/good??
    [I'm agnostics really - its just a change]

 2. I'm concerned the patch above might do bad things when it comes to
    sending out list reminders :-)

 3. What happens in either MTA interface if the MTA cannot accept the 
message
    [for SMTP either connection refused, or a negative reply code?   For
    Sendmail a negative reply code] - is the message dropped??
    How does the bit of queue handling thats left tie into this?

	Nigel.
-- 
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[ Nigel Metheringham                  Nigel.Metheringham@VData.co.uk ]
[ Phone: +44 1423 850000                         Fax +44 1423 858866 ]