The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

["Michael D. Sofka" <address@concealed>]

On 2021-03-11 22:44, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> On 3/11/21 9:18 AM, Luis Manzi wrote:
> > Hi Guys, I’m trying to configure postfix instead sendmail and in last
> > step I got this error
> >
> > postalias: fatal: open database /etc/mail/sympa_aliases.db: Permission
> > denied
>
> Have you tried making postfix a member of the sympa group?

On Sympa I'm using Sendmail, not Postfix.  But in both cases the alias 
db file is created by the mail program (sendmail or postfix) running the 
newalaises program.  What Sympa needs to do when creating a new list is: 
(1) Edit the aliases text file, and (2) invoke newalaises.  This means 
that the aliases text file must be writable by the Sympa process, but 
the aliases db file *must* have ownership and permissions consistent 
with what the newaliases program requires.  This means owned by the mail 
process, readable and writable by the mail process, and not writable by 
any other group or user.

On my Sympa system, which uses sendmail, this means the sympa/aliases 
file is owned by sympa:sympa, and is readable to all, but the 
sympa/aliasesd.db file is owned by mail process, and read/write only to 
the mail process.  I suggest copying the ownership and permissions of 
/etc/mail/aliases.db, or /etc/postfix/aliases.db for postfix.

I believe it should be sufficient to create the aliases file with at 
least one alias, and run newaliases.  If your postfix/sendmail is 
configured with the alias file newaliases will create the aliases.db 
with the correct permissions.

One final caveat, if the sympa aliases file is in a subdirectory of 
/etc/mail or /etc/postfix the sendmail/postfix process will be sensitive 
to the permissions on the directory.  You can also restart the mail 
process and look for permission warnings mail.log.

Mike



--
Michael D. Sofka               address@concealed
ITI Software Architect,   Email, TeX, Epistemology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.  http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/