Postfix: The Definitive Guide

Simple Mailing Lists

Postfix provides the means to create simple mailing lists through the normal alias facility (see Chapter 4). Because aliases can point to lists of addresses or files that contain lists of addresses, it is easy to create an alias that points to multiple names. You can create list aliases in the system aliases file, or in any other file that you specify in the alias_maps parameter. See more about the alias_maps parameter later in the chapter. The default alias file when you install Postfix is /etc/aliases.

Let’s suppose that you administer mail for the domain http://example.com, and you want to create a new mailing list for people to discuss needlepoint. You decide to create a mailing list alias [e-mail] to be used for online discussions. Edit your alias file, and add the following line with the email addresses of people who want to subscribe to the list:

needlepoint:        [e-mail], [e-mail],
   [e-mail]

After making changes to the file, rebuild the alias lookup table by executing:

# postalias /etc/aliases

Now any messages sent to [e-mail] will be forwarded to each of the email addresses listed in the example.

Mailing-List Owners

If any messages cannot be delivered to one of the addresses listed, the original sender of the message receives an error message explaining that there was a delivery problem. For small or internal lists this may be perfectly acceptable; however, if you are creating a large list, or the ...