|
Things look quiet here. But I've been doing a lot of blogging at
dan.langille.org because I prefer WordPress now.
Not all my posts there are FreeBSD related.
I am in the midst of migrating The FreeBSD Diary over to WordPress
(and you can read about that here).
Once the migration is completed, I'll move the FreeBSD posts into the
new FreeBSD Diary website.
|
|
|
|
|
majordomo and virtual mailing lists
3 April 1999
|
|
|
One great strength of majordomo is the ability to run virtual mailing lists, like blacktop@theirdomain.org
and potplants@yourdomain.org, from the same machine. If you want to know more
about virtual machines, see http://cybernut.com/guides/virtual.html |
|
|
The resources
|
| As with everything, I don't figure these things out on my own. I use what
someone else has already written. In this case, I've used the majordomo FAQ which
contains a section on virtual
domains. From there, it refers to Ernest
Mueller's extremely useful article on Configuring Virtual
Domains. |
|
|
Assumption
|
| I will assume you have already configured sendmail to handle virtual domains.
I used Jim Mock's article on sendmail Virtual
Hosting. I found it very easy, using that article, to add virtual sendmail
domains to my machine. I will also assume you have already installed
majordomo. For this example, you are creating the mailing list yourlist@yourdomain.org. |
|
|
A new majordomo configuration file
|
I created a new config file for the virtual domain yourdomain.org (if you already have
other virtual domains sitting around, you could use that majordomo configuration file as a starting point) :
# cd /usr/local/majordomo
# cp majordomo.cf majordomo.yourdomain.org.cf
# chown majordom:majordom majordomo.yourdomain.org.cf
Then I modified the new file to contain these values:
$whereami = "yourdomain.org";
$listdir = "$homedir/lists/$whereami";
$digest_work_dir = "$homedir/lists/$whereami/digests";
$log = "$homedir/lists/$whereami/Log";
|
|
|
New virtual users
|
| These are the aliases you need to add to /etc/mail/virtusertable. A
template is available from samples/majordomo.virtusertable.txt.
Make the changes as shown in the comments at the top of the file. Here is what
you can find in the template.
#
# yourdomain.com
#
owner-majordomo@yourdomain.com owner-majordomo-yourdomain-com
majordomo-owner@yourdomain.com owner-majordomo-yourdomain-com
majordomo@yourdomain.com majordomo-yourdomain-com
The following is needed for each list in a given virtual domain:
#
# yourlist mailing list
#
yourlist-owner@yourdomain.com owner-yourlist-yourdomain-com
owner-yourlist@yourdomain.com owner-yourlist-yourdomain-com
yourlist@yourdomain.com yourlist-yourdomain-com
yourlist-request@yourdomain.com yourlist-yourdomain-com-request
yourlist-approval@yourdomain.com yourlist-yourdomain-com-approval
If you have a digest version of your list, you'll need one of the above sections for
the list and another one for the digest.
After you add these entries, you need to build the virtual user database. To do
so, run the following command:
makemap hash /etc/mail/virtusertable < /etc/mail/virtusertable
|
|
|
A new majordomo alias file
|
|
We will now create an alias file which defines both mojordomo for this domain and
the mailing list. This file defines aliases for a digest. A template is
example in a separate file because the lines are very long. Use the template text
available from sample/majordomo.alias.txt.
As you example that template, let's assume the following:
- your list name is mountainbikes
- your domain name is mountainbikes.com
- the list owner is blarf@anotherdomain.com
If that is the case, then you need to make the following changes to the template data:
| original text |
new text |
| yourlist |
mountainbikes |
| yourdomain.com |
mountainbike.com |
| yourdomain-com |
mountainbike-com |
| owner@ownerdomain.com |
blarf@anotherdomain.com |
This file goes in /etc/mail. Name it aliases.majordomo.yourdomain.com.
You will also need to add this file to /etc/mail/sendmail.cf, or, if you are using it,
your sendmail.m4 file (see following sections for details). Here's an example:
location of alias file
O AliasFile=/etc/mail/aliases,/etc/mail/aliases.majordomo.yourdomain.com
After creating the file and updating sendmail.cf, remember to run newaliases. See the next sections
for details.
|
|
|
Tell sendmail about the majordomo aliases
|
Now that we have created these majordomo aliases, we need to make sure that sendmail
knows about them. We do that by modifying the our .mc file.
Instructions for modifying your .mc file are included in the upgrading sendmail article. In short,
here's what you do:
# cd /usr/ports/mail/sendmail-8.9.3/cf/cf/
.mc files are normally of the form hostname.mc, where hostname is the name of your
machine. If you don't have a .mc file, you are welcome to use samples/hendrix.mc from my
system. You will need to edit this file and ensure the following appears in that
file:
#
# The aliases after installing majordomo
#
define(`ALIAS_FILE',`/etc/aliases,/etc/aliases.majordomo,\
/etc/aliases.majordomo.yourdomain.org')
WARNING: the above "define" example should be all on one line. It
appears as two lines above to keep the page narrow.
The key point here is that you add the alias file which you created in the previous
step.
Now you need to generate your new sendmail.cf file:
# m4 ../m4/cf.m4 hostname.mc > sendmail.cf
# cp /etc/sendmail.cf /etc/sendmail.cf.bak
# cp sendmail.cf /etc
|
|
|
Create new aliases
|
After adding new aliases, you must recreate the alias database. This is done
simply by issuing the following command:
# newaliases
You should check for errors by doing the following:
# tail /var/log/messages
The following indicates a successful run:
sendmail[90764]: alias database /etc/aliases.majordomo rebuilt by peter
sendmail[90764]: /etc/aliases.majordomo: 31 aliases, longest 118 bytes,
1834 bytes total
|
|
|
|
If you created a digest for your list, you'll have to create and chown the respective
directoires. I originally did this in Creating a digest and
archive for a majordomo mailing list but I've copied the relevent bits here.
Again, subsitute as appropriate for your situation.
# Let's assume the following:
# your list name is mountainbikes
# your domain name is mountainbikes.com
#
# Then you need to make the following changes:
# original text new text
# yourlist mountainbikes
# yourdomain.com mountainbike.com
mkdir /usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.com/digests/
chown majordom /usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.com/digests
mkdir /usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.com/digests/yourlist-digest
chown majordom /usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.com/digests/yourlist-digest
chmod 750 /usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.com/digests/yourlist-digest
mkdir /usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.com/yourlist.archive
chown majordom /usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.com/yourlist.archive
chmod 750 /usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.com/yourlist.archive
|
|
|
Restart sendmail and check for errors
|
After all of this work, it's time to restart sendmail so it can take notice
of the new aliases you have created.
# killall -HUP sendmail
Check for any errors by doing this:
# tail /var/log/maillog
If it looks something like this, then you're OK
ns sendmail[90896]: restarting /usr/sbin/sendmail on signal
ns sendmail[90901]: starting daemon (8.9.3): SMTP+queueing@00:15:00
|
|
|
Creating a new list
|
For this example, I'll be using my creation of the New Zealand FreeBSD User Group (nzfug)
mailing list. The address we want to use for subscribing is
majordomo@yourdomain.org. These steps will put all mailing lists relating to a given domain
in the directory
/usr/local/majordomo/lists/yourdomain.org.
Remember this point when it comes time to configure majordomo in the
following sections.
- cd /usr/local/majordomo/lists
- mkdir yourdomain.org
- chown majordom:majordom yourdomain.org
- cd yourdomain.org
- touch mountainbikes
- chown majordom:majordom mountainbikes
- chmod 640 mountainbikes
- echo 'config mountainbikes mountainbikes.admin' | mail majordomo@yourdomain.com
If you are creating virtual domains or if you are not on the box on which
majordomo resides, then you need to specify the domain in the mail message (i.e. majordomo@yourdomain.org).
- Modify newlist.config which the previous step created. Change
passwords, add footers, etc. You may also wish to see my list of Commonly Changed Configuration Items.
- echo 'subscribe mountainbikes' | mail majordomo@yourdomain.com
- Respond to any email that majordomo sends back to you. This is normally
confirmation that you have supplied a valid email address and that you are subscribing
yourself and not somebody else.
- test the list by send a message to the list at mountainbikes@yourdomain.com
|
|
|
Finished
|
| With all that work, you should now be able to use your virtual mailing lists.
Try subscribing. See what happens. Remember, when you subscribe, you need to
send to majordomo@yourdomain.org. I've just rewritten large portions of
this article. If you notice any omissions or errors, please add your comments. |
|
