Sendmail question

[Sailesh_1]

Hi Admins,

We have sendmail configured on L2000 server running hpux-11.0. Setup is working fine.
We have maillists/aliases configured in /etc/mail/aliases with "include" option.
i.e, one sample entry looks like

all-employees: :include:/var/maillists/all-employees

so the actual list of members are in the file /var/maillists/all-employees.
Now, my question is,
is there any way we can restrict the users from using some of the maillists/aliases. i.e, I do not want all employees to have access to send mails to say "all-employees" alias. Other way, allow only managers to send mails to "all-employess" alias.
can anyone there suggest a solution?

Thanks in advance.
Sailesh

[Jeff_Traigle]

Hmmm... offhand, I can't think of a way to do this with sendmail alone. (Though I will admit that I'm not a sendmail guru by any stretch of the imagination.) I'm pretty sure a list server (such as MajorDomo) can be configured to handle these types of requirements, however.

[Sanjay_6 · Accepted solution]

Hi Sailesh,

If the file /var/maillists/all-employees is readble by only those people who need to use it, others won't be able to send an email to the people mentioned in that list.

say the file is owned by root:managers where root is the owner of the file and manager is the group that owns it. If you assign permission 640 to this file, root can read:modify it and anyone who is part of managers group on the system would be able to read it, but others won't be able to read it.

What it means is that if this file contains a list of addresses and is configured as an include list in the mail alias file, only root or anone from the managers group can use this list. Permission would be denied to everyone else.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Geoff Wild]

I can't think of a way either with just sendmail and the alias file - you can try Mailman:

http://www.list.org/

Rgds...Geoff

[Sailesh_1]

Thanks everyone for the reply.

Sanjay,
I had tried your solution. But the result is as follows.

if there is no read permission for others, no users are allowed to send mails to the alias. mails will bounce with error,
--------------------------------------------
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- :include:/usr/maillists/perm-test
(expanded from: )

----- Transcript of session follows ----- 550 5.2.4 :include:/usr/maillists/perm-test... Cannot open /usr/maillists/perm-test: Permission denied
--------------------------------------------

if the permission is,
-rw-rw---- 1 root staff 8 Oct 19 18:58 perm-test
then, no users are allowed (including group members and OWNER!!)

if the permission is,
-------r-- 1 root staff 8 Oct 19 18:58 perm-test
then everyone able to send mails to alias.
Any clues?

regards,
Sailesh

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Sailesh,

This is what i was trying to tell you in my original post.

If you create a include file, and you assign permissions to it. Depending on that permissions are assigned to it, perople who can read it can send mail to the mail addresses in that list.

If you assign read permissions to owner and group, only the owner and the group can send mails to that include list. If you assign world read permissions, the whole world can use that list.

I would say that is normal behavior and the permissions would be self explanatory.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Sailesh_1]

Thanks Sanjay. But unfortunately that doesn't workout.even if the include file has full permission for owner and or group,
still their mail bounces. which means, if the world has read permission, then only this works for every user including owner!
e.g, if sailesh is the owner of the include file perm-test with permission rwx for owner, still sailesh cannot send mails to this alias..it bounces.

Thanks,
Sailesh