Mailman - The GNU Mailing List Management System
Copyright (C) 2001 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA


INTEGRATING POSTFIX AND MAILMAN

    You can integrate Postfix and Mailman such that when new lists are
    created, or lists are removed, Postfix's alias database will
    automatically be updated.  This is done by Mailman writing alias
    entries to a DB hash file that Postfix has been configured to consult
    when looking for local delivery addresses.  The following are the
    steps you need to take to make this work.

    In the description below, $mailman is the directory into which you've
    installed Mailman.  I.e. it is /home/mailman if you did not use the
    --prefix switch when you configured Mailman, otherwise it is the
    directory you specified with --prefix.  Note that if you used
    --with-var-prefix then $mailman is this directory.

    - touch the file $mailman/data/aliases.db and make sure that both
      the owner and group-owner of the file is `mailman'.  Make sure
      that both owner and group have read and write permission.

    - Hack your Postfix's main.cf file to include $mailman/data/aliases
      (no trailing .db) in the alias_map variable but not alias_database.
      This is because you do not want Postfix's newalias command to modify
      Mailman's aliases.db file, but you do want Postfix to consult
      aliases.db when looking for local addresses.

      You want to be sure that that you're using the hash: style database
      for this entry.  Here's an example:

      alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/aliases, hash:/home/mailman/data/aliases

    - When you configure Mailman, use the --with-mail-gid=mailman
      switch.  Because the owner of the aliases.db file is `mailman',
      Postfix will execute Mailman's wrapper program as uid and gid
      mailman.  If you don't use the --with-mail-gid switch, the
      wrapper will bounce messages, complaining of a gid mismatch.

    - Add this to Mailman's mm_cfg.py file:

      MTA = 'Postfix'

      The MTA variable names a module in Mailman/MTA which contains the
      MTA-specific functions to be executed when a list is created or
      removed.

    That's it!  One caveat: when you add or remove a list, the aliases.db
    file will be modified by Mailman, but it will not automatically run
    "postfix reload".  This is because you need to be root to run this and
    suid-root scripts are not secure.  The only effect of this is that it
    will take one minute for Postfix to notice the change to the
    aliases.db file and update its tables.  I consider this a minor
    inconvenience.
  


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