[Mailman-Users] problem with mailing lists general contact address

[Mark Sapiro]

Henrik wrote:
>
>>>If VIRTUAL_HOST_OVERVIEW is set to Yes, the domain is the result of
>looking up the host domain from the URL used to access the page.
>
>This appears to be the case:
>
>In fact if I access the page with mail.domainname.ca/mailman/, the 
>contact address is mailman at mail.domainname.ca, whereas if I access the 
>page with domainname.ca/mailman/listinfo (ie without the "mail." 
>subdomain), the contact address shows as mailman at domainname.ca.


Actually, my description in that reply was incomplete. I should have
added to the above

"and if the host domain is not a key in VIRTUAL_HOSTS, the host domain
itself is used"


>Reading the domain from the URL is desirable as I have a number of 
>domain names associated with the account, and wish to have mailing lists 
>set up for all or most of them. But is seems like what should be used is 
>something like (in totally pseudo regex, I have no idea what the syntax 
>is in python)
>
>add_virtualhost('/(mail\.)?(*.)/', '$2')


You need to do one of two things:

Either have one canonical host name per domain for web access, enforced
if necessary with rewrite rules in the web server, and then have one

add_virtualhost('web host name', 'corresponding email domain')

for each domain.

Or have two (assuming the email domain should be 'example.com')

add_virtualhost('example.com', 'example.com')
add_virtualhost('mail.example.com', 'example.com')

Note that it is OK to have two entries with the same email host if the
web hosts are different, but you can't have two entries with the same
web host as the second just replaces the first.


>Is this true? What would the entry look like? (I don't unfortunately 
>have access to mm_cfg.py - is it in principle possible to have a 
>mm_cfg.py for a user of a linux system -- ie for a web account). I would 
>have to pass this on to the web host.


There is one mm_cfg.py for the whole mailman installation. The only way
around this is to run separate instances of Mailman for separate
domains.


>Then the other problem would appear to be that the default mail address 
>(mailman at domainnname.ca) is not set up properly on creation of the mail 
>list.


It is not an attribute of the list at all. The local part is the name
of the site list and the domain is determined as above. This is all
determined on the fly when the listinfo page is sent.



>>>Yet, since this is presumably a cPanel Mailman, if it is the case that
>the domain for mail to your lists IS mail.domainname.ca, you may be
>able to solve the whole problem by just creating a 'mailman' list in
>your own domain.
>
>
>Sorry, don't quite get that. You mean create a list called 
>mailman at domainname.ca, and this would pre-empt the central installation 
>routing? And just make the list private, with only the owner as a 
>recipient?


Well, I didn't have enough information (and I still don't because I'm
shooting in the dark and don't know how cPanel does this), but I
thought your lists might be in the mail.domainname.ca domain and not
the domainname.ca domain. In that case, I was pretty sure you could
have created a mailman at mail.domainname.ca list. You may still be able
to create a mailman at domainname.ca list which would override the site
list for your domain.

I don't know if it would work or not, but the worst that can happen is
it won't create the list, or it will but mail will still go to the
site list.


>This is an interesting possibility, though if I understand it 
>right, the proper solution would be to have the mail list installation 
>process check sendmail for the existence of a default address for the 
>domain list administrator (mailman at domainname.ca) and create one if it 
>doesn't exist. But I may not be understanding this properly. What about 
>creating a sendmail account called mailman at domainname.ca? Would this 
>pre-empt the mail from going to the installation-wide address?


It might. You could try that.


>If this 
>were the case, then the remaining problem would be the aforementioned 
>assignment by add_virtualhost. True?


I think so.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan