I've been working on getting mailman set up and working with qmail for the
last month in my spare time. I already have qmail up and running happily
on two different systems, and I'm mailing from a qmail server so I know
it's working okay so far. I'm glad to be rid of snedmail, finally.
The major obstacle that I'm encountering with mailman has to do with using
virtual domains. I've meticulously followed the instructions included in
the latest mailman distribution, 2.0.3. Mailman includes a script called
qmail-to-mailman.py which catches all mail sent to 'mailman-*' locally and
runs it through the appropriate mailman commands to post messages to lists
or to mangle and manage administrative mails.
I've set up a virtual domain 'lists.unlambda.com'. This is a CNAME
pointing to 'mail.unlambda.com' which is my mail server. If I subscribe
or send mail to a mailman list from an account local to mail.unlambda.com
I have no problems at all. I mail from the list and administrative
requests are handled correctly.
If I subscribe or send mail to a mailman list from a remote system for
some reason I get bounces. I can *receive* mail from the list without
problem, but mail *sent* to the list from the remote system, and in fact
*any* mail sent to the 'lists.unlambda.com' CNAME (which should be
translated by virtualdomains: "lists.unlambda.com:mailman") causes a
bounce. The interesting part of the bounce is that somehow the
address 'lists.unlambda.com' is translated to 'mail.unlambda.com' before
it ever hits virtualdomains.
Here's an example scenario. I make a list called
'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'. If I send mail to this list from an account
local to the qmail server the mail goes through fine. If I mail this list
from a remote system then I get a bounce message like the following:
---8<---
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at kappa.unlambda.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following
addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)
--- Below this line is a copy of the message.
Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Received: (qmail 6145 invoked from network); 14 Mar 2001 08:01:18 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO
control.spectrumwireless.net) ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
by kappa.unlambda.com with SMTP; 14 Mar 2001 08:01:18 -0000
Received: from spectrumwireless.net (tachyon.spectrumwireless.net [12.17.190.232])
by control.spectrumwireless.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E59436CF5
for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Tue, 13 Mar 2001 22:56:03 -0900 (AKST)
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 22:56:13 -0900
From: "James A. Crippen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: Spectrum Wireless, Inc.
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2 i686)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Test 6
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
---8<---
What I see there is that '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' never made it to the
point where the address was translated to
'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'. Instead the 'lists.unlambda.com'
CNAME was translated to 'mail.unlambda.com' and then qmail finds that that
user doesn't exist.
Any clues what's going on? Should I just blow away both my qmail and
mailman installations and start from scratch? I've removed and
reinstalled mailman something like ten times now and I don't think that
it's mailman which is causing the problem. When it *does* actually get a
message it seems to be behaving correctly. But for some reason it's not
getting messages delivered other than locally.
Sigh.
'james
