postfixadmin-devel

[Postfixadmin-devel] Integration with MLM?

[Aaron <ar...@gr...>]

I come from a primarily qmail background, and that's one thing that's 
stopped me from doing a full conversion -- I like Postfixadmin, but I 
can't imagine not having MLM integrated at the top level, especially if 
someone less technical might be doing management work.

I don't know if anyone's asked this before, but do you have a guide for, 
or plans to do integration with any of the mailing list manager?

Thanks!

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] Integration with MLM?

[Geoff S. <ge...@Qu...>]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Aaron wrote:

> I don't know if anyone's asked this before, but do you have a guide for,
> or plans to do integration with any of the mailing list manager?

IMHO, an MTA and an MLM are two entirely different beasts and there's 
little to be gained by trying to integrate them.

We're quite happily running PFA and Gnu Mailman side-by-side with no 
problems whatsoever.

Full-on mail server administration is not something for the inexperienced, 
and really neither is list server administration.   If you're simply 
talking about those who would use the web interfaces, they shouldn't have 
to worry about the underlying details.

Geoff.

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] Integration with MLM?

[Christian B. <pos...@cb...>]

Hello,

Am Friday 07 January 2011 schrieb Aaron:
> I come from a primarily qmail background, and that's one thing that's
> stopped me from doing a full conversion -- I like Postfixadmin, but I
> can't imagine not having MLM integrated at the top level, especially
> if someone less technical might be doing management work.
> 
> I don't know if anyone's asked this before, but do you have a guide
> for, or plans to do integration with any of the mailing list
> manager?

We don't have a "direct" integration of any mailinglist manager, and 
also (at least I) don't have plans to do so.

There is also the limitation that virtual aliases in a database can't 
redirect to a pipe instead of a mail address (security restriction by 
postfix).

However, I can tell you how I integrate mailman - it's quite simple and 
works ;-)

a) /etc/postfix/main.cf
- add a domain like lists.yourdomain.com in mydestination
- add hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/aliases to alias_maps
- restart postfix

b) create the list in mailman (on the lists.yourdomain.com domain)

c) add redirects in postfixadmin:
- lis...@yo... -> lis...@li...
- lis...@yo... -> 
      lis...@li...
- [same for the other mailman aliases]

I can send you a script that does part c) if you want - however it is 
more or less becoming obsolete with the PostfixAdmin command line 
interface we have in SVN trunk.

BTW: I just put a similar text to the wiki for future reference:
https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/postfixadmin/index.php?title=Mailman_integration


Regarding more integration in postfixadmin: Mailman doesn't use MySQL 
databases, so it would be *lots* of work to integrate it.

I have no idea about other MLMs because mailman does all I need ;-)


Regards,

Christian Boltz
-- 
Ich wollte auf etwas anderes hinaus. Normale Anwender loggen sich doch
i.d.R.  nicht in irgendwelche Shells ein. Heutzutage muss doch alles
bunt sein. Denn nur was bunt ist, ist professionell. Das ist doch die
gängige Meinung der Schlipse. Seufz. [Jürgen Knelangen in suse-linux]

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] Integration with MLM?

[Geoff S. <ge...@Qu...>]

On Sat, 8 Jan 2011, Christian Boltz wrote:

> However, I can tell you how I integrate mailman - it's quite simple and
> works ;-)
>
> a) /etc/postfix/main.cf
> - add a domain like lists.yourdomain.com in mydestination

This isn't strictly necessary.  If you want to just use yourdomain.com you 
can set it up as a virtual mailbox domain.

> - add hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/aliases to alias_maps

This path is used by the Debian package at least, but other installations 
(including from source) may place this file elsewhere.

> - restart postfix
>
> b) create the list in mailman (on the lists.yourdomain.com domain)
>
> c) add redirects in postfixadmin:
> - lis...@yo... -> lis...@li...
> - lis...@yo... ->
>      lis...@li...
> - [same for the other mailman aliases]

This part isn't necessary if you use Mailman's in-built postfix virtual 
domain support.

Put your virtual domain in POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS in mm_cfg.py and 
add hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/virtual-mailman to virtual_alias_maps in 
main.cf (the same applies here about the location of this file).

The virtual-mailman file will be generated by Mailman and can take the 
place of the entries in postfixadmin.

This issue is discussed further in the Mailman installation guide at 
http://list.org/./mailman-install/node12.html

As you can gather, there's more than one way to slice this, but IMHO 
postfixadmin doesn't really add anything to the process.

Geoff.

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] Integration with MLM?

[Christian B. <pos...@cb...>]

Hello,

Am Saturday 08 January 2011 schrieb Geoff Shang:
> On Sat, 8 Jan 2011, Christian Boltz wrote:
...
> > - add hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/aliases to alias_maps
> 
> This path is used by the Debian package at least, but other
> installations (including from source) may place this file elsewhere.

openSUSE uses the same path, therefore I'd say it's quite common.
People who installed mailman from source will probably know they might 
have to adopt the path ;-)

[...]
> This part isn't necessary if you use Mailman's in-built postfix
> virtual domain support.
> 
> Put your virtual domain in POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS in mm_cfg.py

Exactly that is what I want to avoid - I run mailinglists on lots of 
domains, and adding them in mm_cfg.py would mean lots of work. 
Additionally there's another admin on the server who needs to create 
mailinglists, but shouldn't need to edit config files.

I have a simple script to add a mailinglist in the way I described - 
that's easy enough for him. If he would need to edit mm_cfg.py all the 
time, I would probably have to spend some time on phone-supporting him 
;-)

> and add hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/virtual-mailman to
> virtual_alias_maps in main.cf (the same applies here about the
> location of this file).

That brings up the next "problem" - the aliases aren't visible in 
PostfixAdmin. So a domain admin could create an alias with the same name 
as a mailinglist - needless to say that either the mailinglist or the 
alias wouldn't work afterwards. (The risk that a domain admin deletes 
one of the mailman aliases isn't that big IMHO.)

> This issue is discussed further in the Mailman installation guide at
> http://list.org/./mailman-install/node12.html

I'd say the exact page is
http://list.org/mailman-install/postfix-virtual.html

I have updated the wiki page 
https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/postfixadmin/index.php?title=Mailman_integration
In detail, I have added a link for the mailman virtual domain setup and 
added pros and cons of every method.

If you think the page needs more changes, just tell me. Or, easier, ask 
for write access to the wiki as described on 
https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/postfixadmin/index.php?title=About
(sorry for the paperworks, but that's how SF has implemented it...)


Regards,

Christian Boltz
-- 
>Gibt es hier in dieser Liste eigentlich ausser mir noch jemanden ??
Nein, aber es laufen einige Robots, die Traffic vortäuschen. Ich bin
auch einer davon.
[Tobias Korb und Thorsten Haude in suse-programming]

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] Integration with MLM?

[Aaron <ar...@gr...>]

On 1/11/2011 4:55 AM, Christian Boltz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> (Was it intentional to reply off-list? If not, feel free to reply to
> this mail on the list.)
>
Indeed, it wasn't intentional, sorry about that.
> Am Dienstag, 11. Januar 2011 schrieb Aaron:
>> Here's a dumb question, what about integrating some kind of post
>> hook  when using option #1?  ie, some kind of pluggable script spot
>> where you could pass something like
>>
>> external-command.sh [add|remove|modify] aliasname ?
> I don't see a real need for script hooks when aliases are created,
> modified or deleted. If you have a usecase, tell me ;-)
>
Other than handling potential MLM integration?  I can't think of another 
use currently, no.  There may be additional cases where you'd pipe an 
alias out to an external command for handling, but I haven't run across 
them yet.
>> I realize that may be a slippery slope, but I could see a few places
>> where having a post-action script might have value (like delete
>> having  an option to tgz the user's folder, etc).
> We have that already (for mailboxes and domains), however it's disabled
> in the default config.
>
> grep 'CONF.*script' config.inc.php
> // $CONF['mailbox_postcreation_script']='sudo -u courier /usr/local/bin/postfixadmin-mailbox-postcreation.sh';
> // $CONF['mailbox_postedit_script']='sudo -u courier /usr/local/bin/postfixadmin-mailbox-postedit.sh';
> // $CONF['mailbox_postdeletion_script']='sudo -u courier /usr/local/bin/postfixadmin-mailbox-postdeletion.sh';
> // $CONF['domain_postcreation_script']='sudo -u courier /usr/local/bin/postfixadmin-domain-postcreation.sh';
> // $CONF['domain_postdeletion_script']='sudo -u courier /usr/local/bin/postfixadmin-domain-postdeletion.sh';
>
That's kind of what I was thinking would be right for aliases.

Creating the aliases in postfixadmin first, then running whatever 
additional commands manually isn't an impossible task, but I have to 
admit being able to do everything in one place has it's benefits.  I can 
see how it would add complexity, you'd certainly need to add something 
like "enable external script" as an unselected checkbox to avoid running 
the external hook on every alias transaction.

Would it be difficult to extend the existing script options to include a 
set for aliases ? (and make it selectable on the alias page?)

Thank you for your time, regardless.

Aaron

Re: [Postfixadmin-devel] Integration with MLM?

[Christian B. <pos...@cb...>]

Hello,

Am Dienstag, 11. Januar 2011 schrieb Aaron:
> On 1/11/2011 4:55 AM, Christian Boltz wrote:
> > Am Dienstag, 11. Januar 2011 schrieb Aaron:
> >> Here's a dumb question, what about integrating some kind of post
> >> hook  when using option #1?  ie, some kind of pluggable script
> >> spot where you could pass something like
> >> 
> >> external-command.sh [add|remove|modify] aliasname ?
> > 
> > I don't see a real need for script hooks when aliases are created,
> > modified or deleted. If you have a usecase, tell me ;-)
> 
> Other than handling potential MLM integration?  I can't think of
> another use currently, no. 

I'm afraid I don't get your point (yet) - how would you handle this? 
Creating a mailinglist is much more than just adding an alias...

> There may be additional cases where
> you'd pipe an alias out to an external command for handling, but I
> haven't run across them yet.

You don't even *want* to control aliases with a pipe as target in the 
web interface - the security risk is too big. (What about piping a mail 
to "| rm -rf /"? ;-)  (and it's forbidden for databases in postfix 
anyways - pipe targets have to be in text-based maps.)

[post-* scripts]
> That's kind of what I was thinking would be right for aliases.
> 
> Creating the aliases in postfixadmin first, then running whatever
> additional commands manually isn't an impossible task, but I have to
> admit being able to do everything in one place has it's benefits.  I
> can see how it would add complexity, you'd certainly need to add
> something like "enable external script" as an unselected checkbox to
> avoid running the external hook on every alias transaction.
> 
> Would it be difficult to extend the existing script options to
> include a set for aliases ? (and make it selectable on the alias
> page?)

Difficult is relative ;-) but I don't see how adding an alias can be 
used to create a mailinglist - it misses some important information like 
the list owner's mail address, admin password for the mailinglist etc.

OTOH, creating a mailinglist is a totally different task and unrelated 
to creating an alias (creating an alias is only a very small part of 
creating a mailinglist), so I'd prefer to have a separate page/script to 
do that.

At the risk of disappointing you: I have several things on my TODO list 
that are more important, therefore I won't have time to work on this. 
However, if you come up with a good solution, we'll probably accept your 
patch ;-) (And, BTW, which MLM are you talking about?)


Regards,

Christian Boltz
-- 
    Trojanisches Pferd
Zum Thema "Trojaner" muss doch vielleicht mal jemand sagen, dass ein
Trojanisches Pferd kein Trojaner ist. Im Gegenteil. Sein Bauch ist
nämlich mit Griechen gefüllt, die dann die Stadttore öffnen. Wäre das
trojanische Pferd ein Trojaner, wäre es völlig ungefährlich.
[Werner Hintze]