[Mailman-Users] Postfix won't recognise lists built by Mailman.

[Mark Sapiro]

Rod at freeserve wrote:
>
>I build a Mailman list called test, add an address to the mailing list, and manually add the relevant alias to /etc/postfix/aliases (and then run postalias), and finally send a message to the
>list address.


You may find it easier to use Postfix-Mailman integration as described at
<http://www.list.org/mailman-install/node13.html>, but that may cause group
mismatch errors if you don't already have them, so I suggest not doing that
immediately.


>The error response "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender" comes in by email, and the Postfix mail log says:
>----------
>Dec  5 15:27:04 localhost postfix/pipe[3185]: 15373754FE: to=<test at AAAAAA.net>,
>relay=maildrop, delay=0.07, delays=0.04/0/0/0.02, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (user unknown.
>Command output: Invalid user specified. )
>----------
>
>The Mailman logs show no activity, i.e. the message has not been handled by Mailman. What seems to be happening is that Postfix is trying to deliver the message to a mailbox,
>instead of to the command in the aliases file. There is no mailbox 'test' on this server.


Actually, it's trying to deliver to a maildrop. See
<http://www.postfix.org/MAILDROP_README.html>


>Aliases contains this line:
>----------
>test:              "|/var/www/html/mailman/mail/mailman post test"
>----------
>
>I've 'set allow_mail_to_commands = alias' in Postfix's main.cf.


It never gets to your alias because the maildrop delivery takes priority.


>The question for Mailman experts who also know Postfix is - is this clearly a problem with my Postfix setup, or could the problem be that I have the wrong --with-mail-gid ?? If I had the mail-gid wrong, would this show up in the Mailman logs?


It is not a group mismatch. No, a group mismatch is not logged in Mailman, but
there will be a clear message from the wrapper both in the Postfix log and the
DSN sent back to the poster.


>After painfully trying lots of systematic changes to the Postfix setup without success, all I can think of now is either I'm using the wrong --with-mail-gid or I need to move the Mailman aliases into a separate mm.aliases file (then run postalias and amend the Postfix main.cf to recognise this) and change the permissions on that. If neither of those work I really have no idea where to go next.


You should move the aliases per the documentation I linked above, but that
won't solve this problem. You need to make sure that 'maildrop' is not
configured as the transport for this domain.

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