A short link to this page is https://wiki.list.org/x/786602

Clear message

This method uses the mm-handler.
See also Method 2 which does not use the mm-handler

Assumption

The following has been tested using the following configuration

  • Mailman 2.1.9
  • Sendmail 8.13.1
  • CentOS release 4.5 (Final)
  • Attached mm-handler (most noticeable change is writing logs to syslog)
  • You are going to be using the server only for mailing lists and not for delivery to local addresses

Method

For the purpose of this document the server domain shall be called mailman.foo.com and it is a 'A' name entry in the DNS. 

virtusertable

add the following in your /etc/mail/virtusertable

virtusertable

root@mailman.foo.bar    admin@foo.bar 

this shall redirect any email to root on the server to be redirected to the email admin on the mail server.







local.m4

local mailer is used by sendmail to deliver mails; however since we are not using the server to host any emails we don't need it.  We can change it to pass all the mails to mm-handler. Edit /usr/share/sendmail-cf/mailer/local.m4

local.m4

at the end of the file look for Mlocal,    ... and replace it with Mlocal,    P=/etc/mail/mm-handler, F=rDFMhlqSu, S=EnvFromL, R=EnvToL/HdrToL,
             T=DNS/RFC822/X-Unix, U=mailman:mail,
             A=mm-handler $h -j $j -d $u

Warning

Make sure that there is a tab after Mlocal, and not spaces.  Otherwise it might not work

Warning

This Mlocal is modified so that sendmail passes the hostname using -j parameter.  Also a -d parameter has been added before $u.

  1. This assumes that mm-handler is installed in /etc/mail/mm-handler.  You change it to the location where mm-handler is installed/copied.
  2. U=mailman:mail shall run mm-handler as user:mailman, group:mail.  Change it to one that your mailman installation expects.

mm-handler

Copy the file into /etc/mail/ directory (or where ever your installation of sendmail is).

Make sure that the path in your local.m4 is the same as the one where you are copying the mm-handler file

chmod ug+x mm-handler

This shall make the script executable by user and group. 

chown root:mail mm-handler This changes the group to mail.  However you should make it that specified in local.m4.

Now edit mm-hanlder and make sure that.

  • perl path is correct.
  • $MMWRAPPER is referring to right mailman configuration.
  • $MMLISTDIR is referring to the correct directory.
  • $SEND_MAIL is referring to correct program.

    Warning

    $SEND_MAIL is specific to the mm-handler attached to this document

    After configuring the variables in mm-handler run it on the console.  This should generate log entries in your syslog.  In this case look for /var/log/maillog or /var/log/messages or wherever your system is configured to log these subsystems (refer to syslog.conf).

    Month  DD HH:MM:SS mailman mm-handler\[32284\]: running as root:root
    Month  DD HH:MM:SS mailman mm-handler\[32284\]: running as root. For security reasons you should configure sendmail.mc to run the mailer as non-root
    Month  DD HH:MM:SS mailman mm-handler\[32284\]: #ARGV = \-1 ARGV =  
    Month  DD HH:MM:SS mailman mm-handler\[32284\]: No arguments passed, doing nothing
    If any of the configuration parameters are not correct i.e. correct file is not there or directory doesn't exist then you should see error messages like
    Month DD HH:MM:SS mailman mm-handler\[3402\]: can not find /path/to/mailman.  Please configure
    
    Month DD HH:MM:SS mailman mm-handler\[3408\]: can not find /path/to/lists.  Please configure
    Once mm-handler can run with no errors.  Now you can try to send emails the server and see how it behaves.  You can see the log output to verify that emails are being handled properly.  Once you are satisfied with the configuration, you can change the syslog.conf and change the log level of mail to level 4 e.g
    mail.4                   /path/to/maillog
    This will log error and warning messages to your log file that can be used for administration purposes.