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

Rod@freeserve rod at coate.fsnet.co.uk
Thu Dec 6 16:40:53 CET 2007


Mark

Your diagnosis was exactly right - the problem was that the messages were being handled by
maildrop, and not by local(8). The Postfix README explained the things I hadn't
understood.

Because my server is a pre-configured appliance I need to be careful with changing
transport for the whole domain, but Postfix lets you change the transport for individual
addresses, like this:

list at mydomain.net    local:
list-owner at mydomain.net  local:
etc

Putting these into the Postfix transport table got Postfix sending messages for these
addresses to the Mailman commands. Of course it didn't work straight off, but a look at
the maillog showed a very clear diagnostic from Mailman telling me that Postfix was trying
to execute the commands with a gid of nobody, when I had it set up to use the Postfix gid.
After reconfiguring Mailman with the right gid, the lists started to work and now my
service is back on the air.

A big thankyou to Mark for identifying the problem so clearly and quickly.

I'll look at integrating more closely with Postfix and moving the aliases as suggested in
a few days.

Thanks again.

Rod

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Sapiro" <mark at msapiro.net>
To: "Rod at freeserve" <rod at coate.fsnet.co.uk>
Cc: <mailman-users at python.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 1:42 AM
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Postfix won't recognise lists built by Mailman.


> 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
>
>
>




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