[Mailman-Users] Is postfix owner_request_special needed for mailman2?

2025-05-07 Thread Sean McBride

Hi all,

I'm migrating a server with older postfix & older mailman2 and noticed 
one setting in postfix's main.cf:


owner_request_special = no

The postfix docs for this setting say:

"Enable special treatment for owner-listname entries in the aliases(5) 
file, and don't split owner-listname and listname-request address 
localparts when the recipient_delimiter is set to "-". This feature is 
useful for mailing lists."


Which I don't really grok.  I'm not sure why it's set to `no` on the 
older server.


Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Sean
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[Mailman-Users] Re: Is postfix owner_request_special needed for mailman2?

2025-05-07 Thread Mark Sapiro

On 5/7/25 07:08, Sean McBride wrote:

Hi all,

I'm migrating a server with older postfix & older mailman2 and noticed 
one setting in postfix's main.cf:


owner_request_special = no

The postfix docs for this setting say:

"Enable special treatment for owner-listname entries in the aliases(5) 
file, and don't split owner-listname and listname-request address 
localparts when the recipient_delimiter is set to "-". This feature is 
useful for mailing lists."


Which I don't really grok.  I'm not sure why it's set to `no` on the 
older server.


It's set to `no` because `yes` is the default and the appropriate 
setting for MM 2.1 is `no` except it shouldn't matter because 
owner-listname is not a MM 2.1 address and while listname-request is, in 
a MM 2.1 installation recipient_delimiter is normally set to `+`.


--
Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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[Mailman-Users] Is postfix owner_request_special needed for mailman2?

2025-05-07 Thread Stephen J. Turnbull
Sean McBride writes:

 > I'm migrating a server with older postfix & older mailman2 and noticed 
 > one setting in postfix's main.cf:
 > 
 > owner_request_special = no
 > 
 > I'm not sure why it's set to `no` on the older server.

If 'recipient_delimiter' is set to '+', which is the modern
convention, this setting is a no-op, because no splitting on '-' would
be done anyway.  Check the setting with "postconf recipient_delimiter".

Otherwise, to Mailman it still doesn't matter what that setting is,
and it's highly unlikely it would matter to other mailboxes served by
that Postfix instance.

tldr:

The 'owner-LIST' convention hasn't been used by any mailing list
manager in decades as far as I know.  I believe it never was used by
GNU Mailman.  For valid addresses, specifically 'LIST-request', any
other splitting that results in 'LIST' wouldn't matter, as Postfix does
not change either the metadata (envelope recipient) or the message
header, and Postfix delivers to the same pipe to the 'mailman' program
-- mailman handles it the same as if Postfix delivered it to the full
address.  So for a site where all lists are managed by GNU Mailman,
the setting doesn't really matter to Mailman.

I'm not sure why Postfix says is it useful for lists.  The way Postfix
handles splitting (delivering to the full address if valid, otherwise
trying the stem after splitting), a properly configured mailing list
gets no benefit because all its addresses have explicit aliases.  I
guess it protects a mailbox for 'owner' from getting bombarded by mail
for 'owner-LIST', and lists that don't support 'LIST-request' from
being spammed by mail for that address.  And in the ancient past when
mailing lists weren't served by list management software, but were
implemented as manually maintained aliases, I suppose subscribers of
accidentally misconfigured lists were protected.

-- 
GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization)
Sirius Open Sourcehttps://www.siriusopensource.com/
Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan
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