[Mailman-Users] Can we use an external mail server with mailman ?

[John Dennis]

On Fri, 2005-09-23 at 16:27 +0200, julien grosjean wrote:
> MAIL SERVER DETAILS
> 
> My Mail Server is NOT on the same server than my mailman server...
> My mail server is proxiad.com (217.109.179.10) with smtp.proxiad.com and 
> pop.proxiad.com (This server requiert an authentification... )
> 
> My mailman server is extranet-proxiad.com (193.252.219.206)
> 
> All emails are create on the mail server.
> The mail server receive the mail correctly.
> With my mail client, test at proxiad.com receive the mail, but not 
> suscribers...

> THE PROBLEM :
> 
> I create a test list via web interface.
> 
> We can suscribe to the list, but the problem is than when we sent an
> email to the list email, such as test at proxiad.com,
> just this email receive the mail...
> Only test at proxiad.com receive the mail from the sender...
> Is there a configuration to make ?
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps there is an aliases problem ?
> 
> Should aliases be on the mail server or on the mailman server ?

Part of the problem is the term mail server can be confusing because
there are two mail servers in the picture, a receiving mail server and a
sending mail server. Mailman needs run on the same machine the receiving
mail server is on otherwise your aliases will not work. The reason is
because when the receving mail server receives an email destined for a
mailman list the mail server will via its aliases determine the
destination for that list email is a program called mailman, thats what
all those aliases are all about. The receiving mail server then hands
the incoming list email to the program mailman. It can only give it to
the program mailman if mailman is running on the same machine.

Mailman in turn takes the email it received and looks up all the members
of the list and forwards the email to each of them. To do this mailman
invokes a sending mail server. Often the sending and receiving mail
servers (SMTP) are the same and run on the same box. But you can direct
mailman to use a different sending SMTP server via the SMTPHOST
variable.

Summary: mailman and the receiving SMTP server must be on the same
machine.

You description is a bit confusing because the way I read it mailman has
in fact received the list email (your previous post shows mailman
sending smtp posts). It could only have done that if it the its running
on the same machine as the receiving SMTP server and the aliaes are
correct. I suspect what actually occurred is those are examples from
mail sent on the machine mailman is running on where everything will
resolve correctly.
-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>