The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Dale Ghent <address@concealed>]

On May 31, 2006, at 1:18 AM, address@concealed wrote:

> There is already some "alternative email feature" in the web  
> interface. Forgot it : it's really not well done and fact should  
> not be used. Alternate email is something we want to introduce from  
> scratch in Sympa : http://www.sympa.org/wiki/doku.php? 
> id=project_direction#alternate_email_addresses

We implemented and have this working here at UMBC, with the same  
desired outcome that Jeff mentioned, but it needs a little cleanup.

We call it email canonicalization. I'd give you a patch right now but  
it'll take me a day or so to separate this code out from some other  
stuff we're working on... but basically we have it integrated with  
our SSO. When a user logs in for the first time via our SSO, their  
username is canonicalized to an immutable ID that they have (eg:  
ab12345). This is then the key used to look up their user name (such  
as: jdoe1) and any alternate email addresses (such as john.doe).  
There are also some added auth.conf parameters to aid this (such as  
directories that do not include a RHS in alternate email addresses)

We are also going to expand this to include external addresses that  
our users may have their email forwarded to (this will happen after  
we put a email challenge/response verification process in to our  
campus portal where users can configure this for their accounts) so  
in the end a user can send to a list from their gmail.com account if  
that's what their campus email is forwarded to.

Perhaps we are making it too easy for them :)

/dale

--
Dale Ghent
UNIX Systems Specialist
UMBC - Office of Information Technology
ECS 201 - x51705