Jon LaBadie wrote (Wed 2026-Jun-24 11:18:01 -0400):
> My simple first thought is to set up a new user "ClubBoard" > and in something like procmail to set up rules for mutt to > forward (or mutt's bounce feature) the emails to the other > members. Why include Mutt? Or even Procmail -- you could grab the message earlier than during local delivery, e.g. via aliases. 30 years ago, one would have added this to /etc/aliases and be done: clubboard: jon, [email protected], [email protected] To get error messages delivered to the "list admin" instead of each message's respective sender, you'll want to change the envelope "From ". This will also help against SPF rules causing recipients' email servers to refuse accepting a message submitted by your server with the original envelope "From ". In an aliases file of the typical syntax, something like the following should work (if piping is allowed), depending on the tools you have available. The same commands should also work from a procmailrc, but then they'll probably be running as a different user, so something might behave differently or add a warning header or whatever. clubboard-bounces: jon clubboard: "| /usr/sbin/exim4 -f [email protected] -- [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]" clubboard: "| /usr/bin/msmtp --host=localhost [email protected] -- [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]" > ... for mutt to forward (or mutt's bounce feature) ... That's an interesting idea, but forwarding will probably break references/threading and replying to the original author (both of which need machine-readable information from the original message). Forwarding as attachment will also make quoting hard for many users. Bouncing should be quite similar to the aliases approach (use a new envelope "From ", add a few header lines, keep the rest unchanged). > One concern is endless loops. For example a board member > automagically sends back a "notice of received email receipt" > to ClubBoard and we are off to the races. Well, when would that happen? The recipient's email software would need to have sent the automatic reply to the list's address. That address should not have been in "From:", you should not set it as the envelope "From " -- would it appear as "Reply-To:" or "Follow-up-to:"? Should the automatic reply get sent there? Taking a peek into the crystal ball: Like everyone else starting their own mailing-list implementation, you'll quickly notice the DKIM-induced trouble for some recipients, forcing you to strip headers and rewrite "From:" (breaking personal replies to the original author). And you'll notice that some users can't handle the workflow without a "Reply-To:" pointing to the list (which will make other users send personal messages to the list, or maybe the out-of-office replies which you'll want to detect and block), and that some users want a "[ClubBoard]" prefix in the subject, and that having an archive would be nice for users with trouble unnoticed for too many days (mailbox full or whatever), and that sooner or later the list's address will end up in a spammer's database so you'll want to allow posting to the list only to subscribers, but you'll need to additonally allow an extra address for some user. You'll be developing your own implementation of mlmmj/quickml/smartlist/..., shake your head at Mailman3, check Sympa, shortly (but seriously) consider running Mailman2 without any security support, and then start looking for a good-enough mailing-list service provider which is hard to find. :-} If your implementation works, you'll use it for a bunch of other lists with more users, getting your server blocked (while you are on vacation) for sending mass-emails and because not all users are smart enough to unsubscribe (even after you added a "List-Unsubscribe:" header) but instead report the no-longer-wanted mails as spam to their email service provider. I'd say: Go for it. Start by calling it a test, make each user send a message to the list, see if those messages reach every user -- maybe you're lucky. Don't make the list's address public, and maybe it'll work fine for a few years... Cheers, Marcus -- Marcus C. Gottwald · <[email protected]> · @mcg:cheers.de
