[Mailman-Users] Configuration under EXIM and Debian v2.0

[Harald Meland]

[Tomas Fasth]

> From: Harald Meland <Harald.Meland at usit.uio.no>
> 
> >test: |"/var/lib/mailman/scripts/post test"
> 
> AFAIK, sendmail applies standard RFC822 syntactical rules on
> aliases. Hence the quotation to deal with white spaces.

OK, but does

test: "|/var/lib/mailman/scripts/post test"

do the same thing as the above alias?  Or does sendmail rely on the
first non-whitespace character to be `|' in the value of a pipe alias
(thereby making use of `"' as the first character inappropriate for
Mailman)?

> Another thing; There is no wrapper involved in your example. Like this:

Well, it wasn't really my example -- I just snipped the alias
described by Peter Gervai to explain the Exim/sendmail problem.  In my
Exim setup, I have set up things to use the wrapper:

Alias file entry:
-----------------
test:                     "|/local/Mailman/mail/wrapper post test"
test-admin:               "|/local/Mailman/mail/wrapper mailowner test"
test-request:             "|/local/Mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd test"
owner-test:               test-admin
test-owner:               test-admin

Relevant parts of my Exim configuration:
----------------------------------------
# My Mailman transport config:
mailman_list_pipe:
  driver = pipe
  allow_commands = /local/Mailman/mail/wrapper
  user = mailman
  return_output

# ... and the corresponding director config:
local_lists:
  driver = aliasfile
  search_type = lsearch
# This is not in production use yet, so don't mind the odd placement
# of my alias file :)
  file = /local/Mailman/data/MTA_aliases
  pipe_transport = mailman_list_pipe

> According to my understanding the wrapper is needed to set user id /
> group id accordingly, among other things.

On my system the wrapper is only setgid, not setuid.  As you can see
from the transport configuration above, I set the uid to run the pipe
as explicitly in the "user = mailman" line.

> How does exim handle the if not through a wrapper?

I guess that if all the wrapper does is to change UID and GID, Exim
should be able to do without it entirely (by setting them in the
transport config).  I haven't bothered to find out yet, though.

> Does this mean you're running mailman as root?

I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't think so.

> >, I propose changing the current "newlist" output.
> 
> Better up, if the current output isn't portable, make the newlist
> output configurable at installation time (by setting type of MTA).

Maybe this will be needed eventually.  However, if there is any chance
of making the output portable between MTAs, that would be less of a
hassle (to the installing admin) than having to specify which type of
alias to use.

-- 
Harald