Topic: help with setting up mail aliases for multiple user accounts

[jbonevia]

I am in the process of configuring a SME machine to be our companies new mail server. We are migrating from an old old SCO machine running mmdf as the mail delivery agent.

This is the first time i have used SME.

I have setup all the user accounts (300+) and have got the server to talk to our 3rd party mail server.

Its now time to create the mail aliases for all the users.

As far as i can see there are 3 ways i can setup an alias:

1. As a pseudonym in the server-manager - easy to setup but only has a 1->1 relationship and is not limited to one virtual domain.

2. By using: http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/virtual%20domain%20email%20aliases%20HOWTO%20for%20sme%20server.htm
This also works well, but i cant get it to send the email to more than one user - eg info@domain1.com.au needs to go to user1 AND user2 mailboxes.

3. By setting up a group - easy to do, allows me to add multiple usernames to one group, however it has a big limitation in that there is only a maximum of 28 groups able to be added. I have already maxed out my groups by setting up all our company departments/locations etc. Also not able to limit a group to one virtual domain.

SO i need some advice/suggestions on the best way of tackling the setup - i wouldnt mind using option 2 but does anyone know of a way i can add multiple user accounts to one alias in the 90aliases file?

Otherwise when are we going to overcome the 28 group limit - as this is a serious hinderance to setting up the server correctly - not just for me but for many others too!

[smeghead]

.. take a look at the Dungog http://www.dungog.net/sme commercial virtual domain contrib, it may provide a workaround and added flexibility courtesy of procmail.

HTH

[jbonevia]

yeah but the whole point of this server was that the software was free...

Plus i have just setup all the users in qmail - would i have to do that all again for procmail? Also its not really clear exactly what the commercial package can provide on the site... i am not 100% sure it can do what i want anyway.

[raem]

jbonevia

You can use method 2 (aliases HOWTO) to send your different domains mail to the appropriate user.
Then in the user account setup, set it to deliver locally and forward, and insert the second users email address.

[jbonevia]

Thanks for that...

But that also means that any private/personal email the first user would receive will then also be forwarded onto the second email user, so not really an option i dont think.

I think i will setup a combination of option 2 for any email alias where there is only 1 user to send the email on to.

If there is more than one user that receives the email then i will setup a group...

[pmiranda]

jbonevia wrote:

As far as i can see there are 3 ways i can setup an alias:

1. As a pseudonym in the server-manager - easy to setup but only has a 1->1 relationship and is not limited to one virtual domain.

2. By using: http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/virtual%20domain%20email%20aliases%20HOWTO%20for%20sme%20server.htm
This also works well, but i cant get it to send the email to more than one user - eg info@domain1.com.au needs to go to user1 AND user2 mailboxes.

3. By setting up a group - easy to do, allows me to add multiple usernames to one group, however it has a big limitation in that there is only a maximum of 28 groups able to be added. I have already maxed out my groups by setting up all our company departments/locations etc. Also not able to limit a group to one virtual domain.

After a major hardware failure of my old faithful E-Smith 4.0.1, compatibility issues forced me to install the most recent SME Server release from scratch.

I am really disappointed by the pseudonym paradigm replacing the old alias one: I have about 45 corporate email address that redirect incoming messages to one or more users, and a php script that dinamically generated the corporate mail directory from the LDAP server and the aliases in the configuration file.

As I can see, none of the tree method you listed can handle my  needs: the "create a group" one is limited to 28 groups (and a group just to distribute mail messages is a waste! Groups are better used to I-Bay access, IMHO), the other two are limited to a single address and a combination of any of the three does not allow to manage each address category separately and consistently.

So, if no one is already working in this direction, I am planning to study the new SME Server architecture to develop an "email aliases" panel to reintroduce the old aliases concept in my new server.

Meanwhile, I did some basic testing: even if the new pseudonyms are managed differently, the old way qmail used aliases still works (and it is still used someway).

You can create all the aliases you need by hand: e.g., if you need an email address "info" to deliver incoming mail to "user1", "user2" and "user3", you can create in the /var/qmail/aliases directory a file named .qmail-info containing what follows:

Code: [Select]

&user1
&user2
&user3

The trick works even if the users are on different domains.