webadmin-list

[webmin-l] Virtual E-Mails With Virtualmin

[Conrad D. <co...@cd...>]

Ok..here's a question for you. Platform - Red Hat 7.2.

Brief rundown of the situation:
I've currently got a client that we've setup webmin/virtualmin for on a 
server. They have utilized virtualmin to create virtualhosts on the 
server. Everything is working fine, but I'm having a hard time trying to 
figure out how to handle aliases when it comes to virtual e-mail 
hosting. Standard virtual e-mail addresses are fine and get delivered 
without a problem, but when I'm trying to setup e-mail addresses that 
accept e-mail and forward e-mail along to other users I run into problems.

Here's how I see it. There are three ways to handle virtual e-mails, you 
can store a users e-mail (deliver it to their mailbox), you can forward 
a users e-mail (deliver it to someone elses mailbox), or you can do both 
of these (deliver it to their mailbox as well as someone elses). In 
virtualmin, if I create a user to just accept e-mail there's no problem. 
In addition, if I want it to act as an alias to one other e-mail 
address, I realize I can manage that via "Mail Aliases". However, if I 
want it to act as an alias to multiple other e-mail addresses it gets a 
little complicated. Under "Mail Aliases" it now has alias desitinations 
as "user-domain.com" and it creates an alias in the /etc/aliases file. 
This makes sense...however, if there are two or three e-mail addresses 
that we're supposed to be forwarding mail to there's no way to modify 
them as the only thing that shows up is the alias to "user-domain.com". 
If I clear this field out and put in e-mail addresses again it just does 
the same thing and makes another entry in /etc/aliases like before. I'm 
now looking at three alias records in /etc/aliases.

Wow...I realize this might not make much sense, but I guess my question 
is...what's the best way to handle setting up an e-mail address to act 
as an alias to multiple other e-mails? Anybody have any recommendations?

*......................................................*
*Conrad Decker,* * President*
*CDev * *Technologies *
*904.716.3298* *||* *cdevtechnologies.com*

Re: [webmin-l] Virtual E-Mails With Virtualmin

[Kris D. <kd...@vi...>]

Conrad Decker wrote:
> Ok..here's a question for you. Platform - Red Hat 7.2.

Eeep!  RH7.2 hasn't had *any* security support (much less "fix important
bugs" support) that I know of for about three years now.  You should
*really* look into upgrading to something that still has some form of
security support.

> Here's how I see it. There are three ways to handle virtual e-mails, you
> can store a users e-mail (deliver it to their mailbox), you can forward
> a users e-mail (deliver it to someone elses mailbox), or you can do both
> of these (deliver it to their mailbox as well as someone elses). In
> virtualmin, if I create a user to just accept e-mail there's no problem.
> In addition, if I want it to act as an alias to one other e-mail
> address, I realize I can manage that via "Mail Aliases". However, if I
> want it to act as an alias to multiple other e-mail addresses it gets a
> little complicated. Under "Mail Aliases" it now has alias desitinations
> as "user-domain.com" and it creates an alias in the /etc/aliases file.
> This makes sense...however, if there are two or three e-mail addresses
> that we're supposed to be forwarding mail to there's no way to modify
> them as the only thing that shows up is the alias to "user-domain.com".
> If I clear this field out and put in e-mail addresses again it just does
> the same thing and makes another entry in /etc/aliases like before. I'm
> now looking at three alias records in /etc/aliases.

I'm not quite clear on what you're seeing here, can you show excerpts
from your aliases file?  Can you give any examples of what you think
needs to be added instead of or in addition to what's already being entered?

Secondly, which MTA are you using?  That may affect the order in which
destination email addresses are expanded through aliases and other
virtual user tables.

> Wow...I realize this might not make much sense, but I guess my question
> is...what's the best way to handle setting up an e-mail address to act
> as an alias to multiple other e-mails? Anybody have any recommendations?

Currently, I'd write some custom code for MIMEDefang (a sendmail milter)
to do a hash table lookup on the original destination address, expand as
needed, and rewrite the list of "real" destination addresses.  <g>  It
would take about 10 minutes to write, and half a day to fix my
inevitable boneheaded mistakes.  ;)

Figuring out how to present this in a web-based admin interface would
probably take longer than the functional code.

-kgd

Re: [webmin-l] Virtual E-Mails With Virtualmin

[Conrad D. <co...@cd...>]

Kris Deugau wrote:
> Conrad Decker wrote:
>   
>> Ok..here's a question for you. Platform - Red Hat 7.2.
>>     
>
> Eeep!  RH7.2 hasn't had *any* security support (much less "fix important
> bugs" support) that I know of for about three years now.  You should
> *really* look into upgrading to something that still has some form of
> security support.
>   
Ah....well that's good to know. Wasn't aware.
>> Here's how I see it. There are three ways to handle virtual e-mails, you
>> can store a users e-mail (deliver it to their mailbox), you can forward
>> a users e-mail (deliver it to someone elses mailbox), or you can do both
>> of these (deliver it to their mailbox as well as someone elses). In
>> virtualmin, if I create a user to just accept e-mail there's no problem.
>> In addition, if I want it to act as an alias to one other e-mail
>> address, I realize I can manage that via "Mail Aliases". However, if I
>> want it to act as an alias to multiple other e-mail addresses it gets a
>> little complicated. Under "Mail Aliases" it now has alias desitinations
>> as "user-domain.com" and it creates an alias in the /etc/aliases file.
>> This makes sense...however, if there are two or three e-mail addresses
>> that we're supposed to be forwarding mail to there's no way to modify
>> them as the only thing that shows up is the alias to "user-domain.com".
>> If I clear this field out and put in e-mail addresses again it just does
>> the same thing and makes another entry in /etc/aliases like before. I'm
>> now looking at three alias records in /etc/aliases.
>>     
>
> I'm not quite clear on what you're seeing here, can you show excerpts
> from your aliases file?  Can you give any examples of what you think
> needs to be added instead of or in addition to what's already being entered?
>   
Yeah, I figured that might be a little confusing. Basically when I add 
one or more e-mail addresses as aliases...lets say it's for the user 
jo...@no... and I want to create an alias on that e-mail address to 
go to jd...@so... and do...@so.... If I do this in 
virtualmin it creates an alias john-nowhere.com: 
jd...@so...,do...@so.... in the /etc/aliases file. 
This makes sense, and I understand what it's doing...however a less 
technical person who is managing aliases in Virtualmin now sees only one 
alias and it's setup as an alias to john-nowhere.com...rather then 
listing the two e-mail addresses that it's going to. What I would expect 
to see is something more like the screen that you see in the Webmin 
Sendmail module where you can edit aliases..you actually see which 
e-mail addresses are setup to be forwarded to and can modify them. I 
guess I can set the user up with access to that module, but I was hoping 
to keep everything in the Virtualmin module.
> Secondly, which MTA are you using?  That may affect the order in which
> destination email addresses are expanded through aliases and other
> virtual user tables.
>   
Using Sendmail
>   
>> Wow...I realize this might not make much sense, but I guess my question
>> is...what's the best way to handle setting up an e-mail address to act
>> as an alias to multiple other e-mails? Anybody have any recommendations?
>>     
>
> Currently, I'd write some custom code for MIMEDefang (a sendmail milter)
> to do a hash table lookup on the original destination address, expand as
> needed, and rewrite the list of "real" destination addresses.  <g>  It
> would take about 10 minutes to write, and half a day to fix my
> inevitable boneheaded mistakes.  ;)
>   
The problem isn't necessarily that sendmail isn't handling it correctly, 
in fact, it's handling it perfectly. The problem is from the managment 
perspective, Virtualmin doesn't make it easy to manage those aliases.

Re: [webmin-l] Virtual E-Mails With Virtualmin

[Kris D. <kd...@vi...>]

Conrad Decker wrote:
> Ah....well that's good to know. Wasn't aware.

Something you should do no matter *which* Linux distro you're using is
to find the "announce" list from that organization, and watch for
security notices and "end-of-life" notices - at a *minimum*.  Signing up
for some of the more general systems-security mailing lists is probably
a good idea as well- being aware of what's happening can help you at
least set up workarounds for security issues that haven't been patched yet.

Leaving an outdated, unsupported machine online is likely to bite you in
the rear sooner or later when someone cracks it and gets that system on
one or more blacklists for various things - or worse, gets it involved
in criminal activities.

> Yeah, I figured that might be a little confusing. Basically when I add
> one or more e-mail addresses as aliases...lets say it's for the user
> jo...@no... and I want to create an alias on that e-mail address to
> go to jd...@so... and do...@so.... If I do this in
> virtualmin it creates an alias john-nowhere.com:
> jd...@so...,do...@so.... in the /etc/aliases file.
> This makes sense, and I understand what it's doing...however a less
> technical person who is managing aliases in Virtualmin now sees only one
> alias and it's setup as an alias to john-nowhere.com...rather then
> listing the two e-mail addresses that it's going to. What I would expect
> to see is something more like the screen that you see in the Webmin
> Sendmail module where you can edit aliases..you actually see which
> e-mail addresses are setup to be forwarded to and can modify them.

Ah, OK, so it's not actually a "real" functional issue, "just" a display
issue.  <g>  Sorry, not much I can do about that, but it certainly
sounds like something of a rough edge that Jamie will likely fix up
sooner or later.

-kgd