Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 17:25:51 +1100 From: Tony Landells <ahl@austclear.com.au> To: Brennan Stehling <brennan@offwhite.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: a temporary mail alias Message-ID: <200102120625.RAA13092@tungsten.austclear.com.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 12 Feb 2001 00:01:25 MDT." <Pine.BSF.4.21.0102112350450.73165-100000@home.offwhite.net>
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> I am avoiding creating a majordomo system and would like to know if there > is a way to create a temporary mail alias. I have aliases in > /etc/mail/aliases but in order to create more aliases the only way I know > to do it is edit that file to add a new alias with a list of addresses and > then run newaliases. There are more options, such as alternate .forward paths, and aliases that refer to files with lists of users, but they all require some understanding of how to pacify sendmail. > I am wondering if there is another way to do it. Any sendmail buffs out > there? I have used bulk_mailer in the past to send mailings out to > friends for summer parties and such, but what I want to do is build a nice > web interface which can leverage sendmail as a delivery agent. Since the > web server will never run as root it will not have access to edit the > alias file. This web interface would allow users to add and remove > themselves for the list easily. > > Previously I have sent an email to each user one by one, and that is > inefficient. It is also prone to problems and it also takes longer than > it should. I would have thought for what you're doing you could just maintain the list through your web thing, and then do something like: mail -s "message subject" `cat /var/lists/message_list` < message_text assuming the list of user names is in /var/lists/message_list, which should work fine if your lists aren't that big (say 10 or 20 people). Of course, if this sort of thing is okay, and you have a fixed number of lists, then you're only one short step from having aliases that refer to the files of users anyway with an alias like: message_list: :include:/var/lists/message_list If you set things up carefully (in this example, /var and /var/lists would need to be mode 755 or less, and /var/lists/message_list would need to be mode 644 or less) you should be able to make it work without having to fiddle with the awful DontBlameSendmail option, though it isn't something I've tried to do myself--for the effort it will take to do the web interface I could have Majordomo up and running. Good luck, Tony -- Tony Landells <ahl@austclear.com.au> Senior Network Engineer Ph: +61 3 9677 9319 Australian Clearing Services Pty Ltd Fax: +61 3 9677 9355 Level 4, Rialto North Tower 525 Collins Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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