Ubuntu
mailman package

Ubuntu 10.04 and mailman and exim4 pipes?

Asked by Malcolm Slaney

OK, I give up.

I have a stock installation of ubuntu. I've done an apt-get of mailman. (I can't remember whether I first got exim4 or whether it is installed by default.)

But it doesn't work. The log files are saying
 2010-08-08 15:50:01 1Ohvv0-0000br-KS == |/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post mailman <email address hidden> R=system_aliases defer (-30): pipe_transport unset in system_aliases router

There are lots of mentions of pipe_transport problems on the web, but none of the instructions seem to work on Ubuntu 10.4 or they say that pipe_transport is not recommended. This is not useful!

Why doesn't this configuration work out of the box? What do I need to enable on Ubuntu 10.4 to make this work? I'm completely stymied. (And I really don't want to become an expert on exim4... I just want mailman to work.)

Please? Thank you.

- Malcolm

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Malcolm Slaney (malcolm-ieee) said : 		#1

I finally found a working solution in this blog: http://www.jcomeau.com/blog/?2006-09

He said:
I had forgotten how to get the old-style Mailman pipes working with Exim4. Yes, I know it's deprecated, but the new way is way too convoluted for me. Simplicity always gets the benefit of the doubt; if something is too complicated, any security advantage it might have is nullified in my mind.

The necessary addition to somewhere near the top of /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template is:

.ifndef SYSTEM_ALIASES_PIPE_TRANSPORT
SYSTEM_ALIASES_PIPE_TRANSPORT = address_pipe
SYSTEM_ALIASES_USER = Debian-exim
SYSTEM_ALIASES_GROUP = daemon
.endif

I added this to the start of my /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template, ran update-exim4.conf, and then /etc/init.d/exim4 restart.

All appears to be well now. Hurray.

But this should be in the standard configuration for mailman/exim4 on Ubuntu.

-- Malcolm
P.S. I don't know if this is the best way.. hopefully somebody smarter than me knows how to check this.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#2

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.