How do I set up an email Group?

Question

How do I set up an email Group?

I have made a group called "Accounts" and a different group called "Sales" each with a different set of members. But when I try to send an email to sales@cp-lighting.co.uk it is not recognised y the serveer as a valid email address.

I can't find where to enable email for the groups I would really appreciate some help on this. My Cobalt Qube has given up the ghost and I have bought this xServe as a replacement although it appears to be overkill for what I want to do. My Qube was 5 years old and a lot easier to configure!

PowerMac G5, iMac G5, iMac G4, etc, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Aug 30, 2007 11:30 AM

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Answer 1

David_x

Level 4

3,011 points

Aug 30, 2007 1:11 PM in response to Paul Reading2

Unfortunately, 10.4 server does not use groups as valid email recipients. 10.3 DID but not 10.4.

Two ways to handle it...

Easiest way if only a few people need the group and you use Apple Mail... use Address Book... make a group (e.g. "accounts"), add the users you want to be in the group (ensuring they have email addresses set). Now send an email simply to: "accounts". Mail app will put it into bold type indicating it has recognised it as a group & will expand this to be all the users in that group. They all receive an email with the recipient shown as "accounts@yourdomain" - you do not get a list of all the members (so good for privacy).

Method 2 uses edited group files on the server, so useful for central control of members...

The following sends to members of groups but does not show all recipients in the received message...

In /etc/postfix/aliases, add...

groupname: :include:/path/to/groupname.txt

-that's a space between the first two colons.

In a file called groupname.txt (using plaintext editor)...

name1@some.domain
name2@other.domain

(Check permissions - ideally 644 root:wheel)

Reload aliases...

sudo newaliases
sudo postalias aliases
sudo postfix reload

Mail sent to groupname@your.domain gets passed to amavisd once, before then being relayed out for each individual recipient.
Mail.log shows "to=<name@recipient.domain>, orig_to=<groupname@your.domain>", for each outgoing mail.

The recipient sees the To: field as being groupname@your.domain. Extended headers show "Delivered-To:" headers for both the groupname and that individual recipient. It does not show every recipient.

-david

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Answer 2

Aug 30, 2007 1:24 PM in response to David_x

Are you saying use addressbook on the server? I don't think this is any good for me, unless I missunderstand what is happening. On our invoices we give out the email address accounts@mydomain.co.uk this goes to two people.

You say this feature was removed from 10.3, can you think if any reason why Apple would do such a thing? It makes no sense at all. Most companies what to have a generic email address such as sales or info or support. If I had know that there is no support for this functio it would hevbeen a deal breaker for me. I only bought this server as a mail server.

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Answer 3

David_x

Level 4

3,011 points

Aug 30, 2007 1:51 PM in response to Paul Reading2

Oops, did I miss option 3... :-0

Even easier if just a couple of people in the 'group'...

Make a user, e.g., "accounts"

In mail settings, select 'Forward' option and enter the group members' email addresses, comma separated e.g.,

jimmy@mydomain.com,jack@mydomain.com

This gets a bit 'long' for lots of members and I find the alias files (method 2) easier to manage when this is the case.

The email then gets sent to each of the people in this list.

The Address Book method uses the address book on the client so only useful for outgoing mail.

Another method (yet another) would be to have a simple imap user called 'accounts', and allow other imap users access to that mail box by sharing it to them. This needs configuration under the hood but is a 'true' way to share mail between different users.

Hopefully the 'forward' way will be suitable for you.

-david

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