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Hooking up your mail server
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===========================
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Mailman needs to be hooked up to your mail server (a.k.a. *mail transport
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agent* or *MTA*) both to accept incoming mail and to deliver outgoing mail.
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Mailman itself never delivers messages to the end user; it lets its immediate
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upstream mail server do that.
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The preferred way to allow Mailman to accept incoming messages from your mail
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server is to use the `Local Mail Transfer Protocol`_ (LMTP_) interface. Most
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open source mail server support LMTP for local delivery, and this is much more
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efficient than spawning a process just to do the delivery.
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Your mail server should also accept `Simple Mail Transfer Protocol`_ (SMTP_)
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connections from Mailman, for all outgoing messages.
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The specific instructions for hooking your mail server up to Mailman differs
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depending on which mail server you're using. The following are instructions
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for the popular open source mail servers.
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Note that Mailman provides lots of configuration variables that you can use to
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tweak performance for your operating environment. See the
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Mailman needs to communicate with your *MTA* (*mail transport agent*
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or *mail server*, the software which handles sending mail across the
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Internet), both to accept incoming mail and to deliver outgoing mail.
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Mailman itself never delivers messages to the end user. It sends them
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to its immediate upstream MTA, which delivers them. In the same way,
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Mailman never receives mail directly. Mail from outside always comes
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Mailman accepts incoming messages from the MTA using the `Local Mail
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Transfer Protocol`_ (LMTP_) interface. Mailman can use other incoming
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transports, but LMTP is much more efficient than spawning a process
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just to do the delivery. Most open source MTAs support LMTP for local
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delivery. If yours doesn't, and you need to use a different
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interface, please ask on the `mailing list or on IRC`_.
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Mailman passes all outgoing messages to the MTA using the `Simple Mail
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Transfer Protocol`_ (SMTP_).
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Cooperation between Mailman and the MTA requires some configuration of
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both. MTA configuration differs for each of the available MTAs, and
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there is a section for each one. Instructions for Postfix are given
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below. We would really appreciate contributions of configurations for
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Exim and Sendmail, and welcome information about other popular open
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Configuring Mailman to communicate with the MTA is straightforward,
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and basically the same for all MTAs. In your ``mailman.cfg`` file,
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add (or edit) a section like the following::
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incoming: mailman.mta.postfix.LMTP
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outgoing: mailman.mta.deliver.deliver
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This configuration is for a system where Mailman and the MTA are on
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The ``incoming`` and ``outgoing`` parameters identify the Python
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objects used to communicate with the MTA. The ``deliver`` module used
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in ``outgoing`` is pretty standard across all MTAs. The ``postfix``
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module in ``incoming`` is specific to Postfix. See the section for
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your MTA below for details on these parameters.
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``lmtp_host`` and ``lmtp_port`` are parameters which are used by
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Mailman, but also will be passed to the MTA to identify the Mailman
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host. The "same host" case is special; some MTAs (including Postfix)
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do not recognize "localhost", and need the numerical IP address. If
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they are on different hosts, ``lmtp_host`` should be set to the domain
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name or IP address of the Mailman host. ``lmtp_port`` is fairly
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arbitrary (there is no standard port for LMTP). Use any port
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convenient for your site. "8024" is as good as any, unless another
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``smtp_host`` and ``smtp_port`` are parameters used to identify the
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MTA to Mailman. If the MTA and Mailman are on separate hosts,
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``smtp_host`` should be set to the domain name or IP address of the
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MTA host. ``smtp_port`` will almost always be 25, which is the
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standard port for SMTP. (Some special site configurations set it to a
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different port. If you need this, you probably already know that,
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know why, and what to do, too!)
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Mailman also provides many other configuration variables that you can
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use to tweak performance for your operating environment. See the
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``src/mailman/config/schema.cfg`` file for details.
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Contributions are welcome!
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src/mailman/docs/MTA.rst
