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Subsections


4. Mail aliases

Mail aliases are required in Sympa for sympa.pl to receive mail commands and list messages. Management of these aliases management will depend on the MTA (sendmail, qmail, postfix, exim) you're using, where you store aliases and whether you are managing virtual domains or not.


4.1 Robot aliases

An electronic list manager such as Sympa is built around two processing steps:

To separate the processing of commands (subscription, unsubscription, help requests, etc.) from the processing of messages destined for mailing lists, a special mail alias is reserved for administrative requests, so that Sympa can be permanently accessible to users. The following lines must therefore be added to the sendmail alias file (often /etc/aliases):

sympa: "| /home/sympa/bin/queue sympa@my.domain.org" listmaster: "| /home/sympa/bin/queue listmaster@my.domain.org" bounce+*: "| /home/sympa/bin/bouncequeue sympa@my.domain.org" sympa-request: postmaster sympa-owner: postmaster

Note: if you run Sympa virtual robots, you will need one sympa alias entry per virtual robot (see virtual robots section, 10, page [*]).

sympa-request should be the address of the robot administrator, i.e. a person who looks after Sympa (here postmastercru.fr).

sympa-owner is the return address for Sympa error messages.

The alias bounce+* is dedicated to collect bounces. It is useful only if at least one list uses welcome_return_path unique or remind_return_path unique. Don't forget to run newaliases after any change to the /etc/aliases file!

Note: aliases based on listserv (in addition to those based on sympa) can be added for the benefit of users accustomed to the listserv and majordomo names. For example:

listserv:          sympa
listserv-request:  sympa-request
majordomo:         sympa
listserv-owner:    sympa-owner


4.2 List aliases

For each new list, it is necessary to create up to six mail aliases (at least three). If you managed to setup the alias manager (see next section) then Sympa will install automatically the following aliases for you.

For example, to create the mylist list, the following aliases must be added:

mylist: "|/home/sympa/bin/queue mylist@my.domain.org"
mylist-request: "|/home/sympa/bin/queue mylist-request@my.domain.org"
mylist-editor: "|/home/sympa/bin/queue mylist-editor@my.domain.org"
mylist-owner: "|/home/sympa/bin/bouncequeue mylist@my.domain.org
mylist-subscribe: "|/home/sympa/bin/queue mylist-subscribe@my.domain.org@my.domain.org"
mylist-unsubscribe: "|/home/sympa/bin/queue mylist-unsubscribe@my.domain.org"

The address mylist-request should correspond to the person responsible for managing mylist (the owner). Sympa will forward messages for mylist-request to the owner of mylist, as defined in the /home/sympa/expl/mylist/config file. Using this feature means you would not need to modify the alias file if the owner of the list were to change.

Similarly, the address mylist-editor can be used to contact the list editors if any are defined in /home/sympa/expl/mylist/config. This address definition is not compulsory.

The address mylist-owner is the address receiving non-delivery reports. The bouncequeue program stores these messages in the queuebounce directory. WWSympa ((see 1.2, page [*]) may then analyze them and provide a web access to them.

The address mylist-subscribe is an address enabling users to subscribe in a manner which can easily be explained to them. Beware: subscribing this way is so straightforward that you may find spammers subscribing to your list by accident.

The address mylist-unsubscribe is the equivalent for unsubscribing. By the way, the easier it is for users to unsubscribe, the easier it will be for you to manage your list!


4.3 Alias manager

The alias_manager.pl script does aliases management. It is run by WWSympa and will install aliases for a new list and delete aliases for closed lists.

The script expects the following arguments :

  1. add | del
  2. <list name>
  3. <list domain>
Example : /home/sympa/bin/alias_manager.pl add mylistcru.fr

/home/sympa/bin/alias_manager.pl works on the alias file as defined by the variable (default is /etc/mail/sympa_aliases) in the main Makefile (see 3.3, page [*]). You must refer to this aliases file in your sendmail.cf (if using sendmail) :

define(`ALIAS_FILE', `/etc/aliases,/etc/mail/sympa_aliases')dnl

/home/sympa/bin/alias_manager.pl runs a newaliases command (via aliaswrapper), after any changes to aliases file.

If you manage virtual domains with your mail server, then you might want to change the form of aliases used by the alias_manager. You can customize the list_aliases template that is parsed to generate list aliases (see12.7.8, page [*]).


4.4 Virtual domains

When using virtual domains with sendmail or postfix, you can't refer to mylist@my.domain.org on the right-hand side of an /etc/aliases entry. You need to define an additional entry in a virtual table. You can also add a unique entry, with a regular expression, for your domain.

With Postfix, you should edit the /etc/postfix/virtual.regexp file as follows :

/^(.*)my.domain.org$/ my.domain.org-$1
Entries in the 'aliases' file will look like this :
my.domain.org-sympa: "|/home/sympa/bin/sympa.pl sympa@my.domain.org" ..... my.domain.org-listA: "|/home/sympa/bin/sympa.pl listA@my.domain.org"

With Sendmail, add the following entry to /etc/mail/virtusertable file :

@my.domain.org my.domain.org-%1%3


next up previous contents index
Next: 5. sympa.conf parameters Up: Sympa Mailing Lists Management Software version Previous: 3. Installing Sympa   Contents   Index
root 2003-10-15