Using Mailing Lists with Mail Service
Mac OS X Server provides two types of mailing lists:
A Mailman-based list where a single mail message is distributed to recipients who Â
have subscribed to the list
A wiki-based list that allows you to send a single message that is copied to each Â
member of a Mac OS X Server wiki group
Mailman-Based Mailing Lists
Mac OS X Server uses Mailman for its traditional mailing list service.
Mailman is a mailing list service with support for built-in archiving, automatic bounce
processing, content ltering, digest delivery, spam lters, and other features. Mailman
provides a customizable web page for each mailing list.
Users can subscribe and unsubscribe themselves, as well as change list preferences.
List and site administrators can use the web interface for common tasks such as
account management, approvals, moderation, and list conguration. The web interface
requires that you have the Apache web server running.
You can access Mailman at www.yourdomain.com/mailman/listinfo.
Mailman receives mail from the local postx process by conguring alias maps.
Messages destined for a mail list are piped by the local process to Mailman processes.
The mapping is provided in /var/mailman/data/aliases.
You can nd more information about conguring and administering mail lists using
Mailman at www.list.org and at /Library/Documentation/Services/mailman.
Mailing lists dier from workgroups in a few fundamental ways:
Mailing lists aren’t linked to le or directory permissions. Â
Mailing lists can be administered by someone other than the workgroup or Â
server administrator.
Mailing list subscribers do not need an account (mail or le access) on the list’s Â
server. Any mail address can be added to the list.
Mailing list subscribers can often remove themselves from and add themselves to lists. Â
Wiki-Based Mailing Lists
A wiki-based mailing list is based on a Mac OS X wiki group. It diers from a Mailman-
based mailing list in the following ways:
Group members receive all messages sent to the group’s address. No subscription Â
is required.
The recipients list is up-to-date with the wiki group, so only members of the group Â
receive mail messages.
The group administrator controls the membership of the group. Â
18 Chapter 1 Understanding Mail Service
