Using Other MLMs

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Other Unix MLMs, such as L-Soft's LISTSERV (http://www.lsoft.com) and Listar (http://www.listar.org), have been made to work with qmail. Some, including Listar, document their installation under qmail. Before trying to figure out how to do it yourself, you should look for existing documentation on the process first. Likely sources of information include

• The MLM's installation documentation.

• Archives of the qmail mailing list. (See Chapter 1, "Introducing qmail.")

• Third-party Web-based documentation. Use your favorite search engine to search for documents containing both "qmail" and the name of the MLM you're trying to install.

If that search is fruitless, you might want to figure it out on your own-or switch to another MLM such as those documented in this chapter.

MLMs perform two major functions: maintaining lists and sending messages to subscribers-usually through the MTA. Therefore, configuring an MLM to run under qmail will require configuring both functions. The next sections describe some general strategies for configuring MLMs under qmail.

The List Maintenance Function

Generally, MLMs accept commands sent either to a general address (for all lists on the host) or to a list-specific address (for a single list). For example, with Majordomo, commands can be sent to majordomo@domain or to listname-request@domain. Mail sent to these addresses is usually delivered to a program provided by the MLM. Configuring an MLM's command interface with qmail is usually just a matter of determining how the MLM program expects to be invoked and setting up dot-qmail files to invoke it on the appropriate address. The qmail-users facility documented in Chapter 4, "Using qmail," is useful because it provides direct control over the location of the dot-qmail files and the user and group under which the delivery takes place.

The Resending Function

The second major MLM function is accepting messages for lists, validating them, if necessary, and resending them to the subscribers. The redelivery itself is almost always passed off to the MTA rather than handled directly by the MLM. The two most common methods for handing delivery to the MTA are Sendmail-style local injection and SMTP injection. qmail's sendmail command should be sufficiently Sendmail-compatible to work transparently with MLMs, and qmail's SMTP service should work with any compliant MLM. Make sure your SMTP service is configured to allow the local host to relay (see Chapter 3, "Configuring qmail: The Basics").

If, however, the MLM's SMTP is non-compliant in such a way that it can't successfully inject its messages, you might have to fix it by modifying the MLM source code or by setting up a special SMTP service that accommodates the MLM's quirks.

Or, if the MLM calls sendmail in a way that's incompatible with qmail's sendmail wrapper, you might have to modify the MLM source code or write your own qmail-inject-based sendmail.

If you can coerce the MLM into providing the list of subscribers, one per line, you can always send the message directly using qmail-inject.

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