Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 17:33:11 +0300
From: "Alexei V. Alexandrov" <ava@elcomsoft.com>

  Attaced  you  will  find a plain text file where i explain how to
  setup  mailman  to use virtual environment (single setup for many
  domains). I think this will help exim users.

  If you have any questions, don not hesitate to contact me.


Using Mailman in virtual environment.

Download mailman and install it in a directory you prefer. (Note: compile mailman
to use the GID that your virtual accounts use. mine is "virtual").
Let`s presume that all virtual servers have an account in group named "virtual".
Setup exim to use mailman in the following way:

MAILMAN_HOME  = /virtual/usr/mailman
MAILMAN_WRAP  = MAILMAN_HOME/mail/wrapper
MAILMAN_UID   = exim
MAILMAN_GID   = virtual

######################################################################
#                      TRANSPORTS CONFIGURATION                      #
######################################################################

mailman:
        driver = pipe
        command = MAILMAN_WRAP post ${lc:$local_part}
        current_directory = MAILMAN_HOME
        home_directory = MAILMAN_HOME
        user = MAILMAN_UID
        group = MAILMAN_GID

mailman_request:
        driver = pipe
        command = MAILMAN_WRAP mailcmd ${lc:$local_part}
        current_directory = MAILMAN_HOME
        home_directory = MAILMAN_HOME
        user = MAILMAN_UID
        group = MAILMAN_GID

mailman_admin:
        driver = pipe
        command = MAILMAN_WRAP mailowner ${lc:$local_part}
        current_directory = MAILMAN_HOME
        home_directory = MAILMAN_HOME
        user = MAILMAN_UID
        group = MAILMAN_GID

######################################################################
#                      DIRECTORS CONFIGURATION                       #
#             Specifies how local addresses are handled              #
######################################################################

# Note: these directors should go after forward file driver
#       and before smart user driver (if you use "catchall" for your
#       virtual domains)

virtual_list_owner:
        driver = smartuser
        require_files = MAILMAN_HOME/${lc:$domain}/lists/${lc:$local_part}/config.db
        suffix = "-owner"
        new_address = "${lc:$local_part}-admin@${domain}"

virtual_owner_list:
        driver = smartuser
        require_files = MAILMAN_HOME/${lc:$domain}/lists/${lc:$local_part}/config.db
        prefix = "owner-"
        new_address = "${lc:$local_part}-admin@${domain}"

virtual_list_admin:
        driver = smartuser
        suffix = -admin
        require_files = MAILMAN_HOME/${lc:$domain}/lists/${lc:$local_part}/config.db
        transport = mailman_admin

virtual_list_request:
        driver = smartuser
        suffix = -request
        require_files = MAILMAN_HOME/${lc:$domain}/lists/${lc:$local_part}/config.db
        transport = mailman_request

virtual_list:
        driver = smartuser
        require_files = MAILMAN_HOME/${lc:$domain}/lists/${lc:$local_part}/config.db
        transport = mailman

# The trick is that we create in MAILMAN_HOME directories named like domains that we
# recieve mail for. The sufficient directory structure is the following:
# MAILMAN_HOME
# |__/data/
# |__/lists/
# |__/logs/
# |__/qfiles/
# |__/locks/

We have succesfully setup exim to use mailman listmanager. Next we will have to tweak
mailman to suite our virtual setup. What we do. Mailman has its default configuration
stored in MAILMAN_HOME/Mailman/Defaults.py this file is imported by mm_cfg.py and is
used by all other modules. We will twak it to use defaults.py for different domains.
Here is how i did it:

MAILMAN_HOME/Mailman/mm_cfg.py:

import os
import string

def loadDefaults ( name ):
        definition = ""
        module = '/vhost/usr/mailman/' + name + '/Defaults.py'
        hFile = open ( module, "r" )
        for line in hFile.readlines():
                definition = definition + line
        definition = definition + "\n"
        exec definition in globals()

if os.environ.get('HTTP_HOST') :
        junk, domain = tuple(string.split(os.environ['HTTP_HOST'], '.', 1))
        loadDefaults(domain)
elif os.environ.get('DOMAIN') :
        loadDefaults(os.environ['DOMAIN'])
else:
        loadDefaults('Mailman')

# from Defaults import *

The Defaults.py is stored in the directory: MAILMAN_HOME/domain.com/Defaults.py
and is not different from the original one. The lines you should modify are:

DEFAULT_HOST_NAME   = 'domain.com'
DEFAULT_URL         = 'http://mail.%s/' % DEFAULT_HOST_NAME

LIST_DATA_DIR   = os.path.join(VAR_PREFIX, DEFAULT_HOST_NAME + '/lists')
LOG_DIR         = os.path.join(VAR_PREFIX, DEFAULT_HOST_NAME + '/logs')
LOCK_DIR        = os.path.join(VAR_PREFIX, DEFAULT_HOST_NAME + '/locks')
DATA_DIR        = os.path.join(VAR_PREFIX, DEFAULT_HOST_NAME + '/data')
QUEUE_DIR       = os.path.join(VAR_PREFIX, DEFAULT_HOST_NAME + '/qfiles')

We use two environment variables on is HTTP_HOST (to be able to use mailman
managment interface for different domains). Other one is DOMAIN (this variable
is set by exim). Another thing is is to be able to run the man mailman script
called qrunner. As users have there accounts in the system, they are able to use cron.
Create a crontab file in the user`s directory with the following contents:

DOMAIN=domain.com

* * * * * /virtual/bin/python -S /virtual/usr/mailman/cron/qrunner

This will set the DOMAIN variable so the qrunner will use the right settings.

If you want to create a new list. first set the environment variable DOMAIN to the
desired domain and run the command MAILMAN_HOME/bin/newlist

About the managment interface everything is simple. Run the apache server and bind
it to a specific address (for ex.: 192.168.10.10). Create for each domain DNS record
listserv	IN	A	192.168.10.10
When the user will point his browser to http://listserv.domain.com/ he will see a list
of available mailing lists or he will get an error message indicating that the default settings
for this domain are not available.

That`s it. This setup works for me and it handles over 50 domains.