postfix

[Paul Lussier]

"Ken Campbell" <kcampbell at conval.edu> writes:

> Hi toi all,
>
> I have followed this list for quite some time but have never
> posted. The time has arrived.
>
> Running postfix mail server and have an immediate need to email all
> users in domain. As postmaster, I have no address book. Is there a
> method to blanket email all users?

Hi Ken,

There is no easy way to do this if you're simply using postfix to
relay mail between many mail servers within your domain.  Postfix is
simply an MTA, as such, it does usually validate the existance of a
mailbox for a given piece of e-mail (sendmail doesn't do this either).

You can of course, set any MTA up to search for valid mail boxes prior
to delivery.  The simplest case is if the MTA (postfix) is delivering
the e-mail to the localhost as it's final destination.  As others have
pointed out, in this case, postfix looks at /etc/passwd to determine
who are valid users.

In most cases, postfix is an intermediary MTA, handing the e-mail off
to an LDA like a POP or IMAP server (or Exchange, etc.).  In this more
common case, the LDA is what does the final destination validation.

So, in short, if your postfix installation is handing off e-mail to
other LDAs, there's no easy way to do this.  If it's a more simple
install, you can, as others stated, do things like grep the
/etc/passwd file or look in /home for valid users to send mail to.

It sounds like you're used to an Exchange environment where one
"product" (Exchange) actually consists of several different
components; the MTA, the LDA, the DNS server, the addressbook (which
is called Active Directory, but is really "just an LDAP server"), the
calendar manager, and the coffee machine all rolled into one.

>From this aspect, Microsoft has done a wonderful job of integrating
everything under the sun into one "package" and completely hiding from
both users and administrators what happens under the covers.

I apologize if this isn't a helpful response.  It might help in the
future to create a mailing list consisting of all users.  This can be
easily accomplished by setting up an alias in /etc/aliases which sends
copies to everyone on that list.
-- 
Seeya,
Paul