Re: Using Netscape to mail to a group

[Jeff Clowser <jclowser@aerotek.com>]

In every case I've seen, the expansion of test1 is done by a mail server,
not a client. I.e. the test1 record would have a mail attribute (such as
test1@valor.com). There may need to be other attributes (On Netscape
Messaging
server, you typically have objectclass mailGroup and groupOfUniqueNames,
mailhost, etc).

As far as I know, the common approach has been something like this:
Every email client can send to test1@valor.com.  valor.com could consistently

(and transparently) find the appropriate members of that list from LDAP.  For

example, Netscape Messaging server will look in the member, uniquemember, and

mgrprfc822mailmember attributes.  Note that the mgrprfc822mailmember is an
extension Netscape's server uses. This is ok, because LDAP is made to be
extensible, and the idea is that these are settings messaging server uses
(the client accesses this by using the test1 email address), and Messaging
server knows their proper format. (BTW - I keep mentioning Netscape Messaging

server not to endorse it so much as it's what I' most familiar with)
Sendmail uses a particular format in a text file (/etc/aliases).  Other
mail servers use other mechanisms that are invisible to the client - in this
case, the client just has the ability to see what's in that mail servers
config as part of the directory service (kinda like if a client can see
what's in /etc/aliases on a sendmail server).  It would be perfectly
legitimate
to configure your ldap server to let the mail server see the member
attribute,
but not an anonymous client (so you can avoid exposing members of your list
to
the public, such as spammers, but still allow people to send to it).

Different mail servers may store and access lists in different ways.  Clients

should be interchangable and compatible - i.e. whether I use Communicator,
Eudora, Pine, /bin/mail, Simeon, etc, they should all "work" - that's part of

the beauty of standards based systems over proprietary systems (like cc:mail,

etc).  If the client looked up mail lists and used them, the list would have
to be defined the way each client looks for it, rather than for the mail
server, or you would be limited to a particular client, which puts you back
in the proprietary column (now if all server vendors standardized on list
definitions and such so mail servers were equally replacable, that would be
even better).  It's not uncommon for there to be multiple clients at a site
with a single mail server (or at least a single brand of mail server), so
it makes more sense to have list expansion at the server rather than the
client. Unless all your clients know the proper LDAP schemas for lists, it
won't work universally. The mail server is the common point for making all
this work.

Other considerations:
1.  Not all clients are LDAP aware - it's easier to make the mail server
    ldap aware than limit yourself to ldap aware clients.
2.  For security, you may not want to expose the members of a list - if
    the client only sees the list name, and the ldap server or lists on it
    can be seen by the server, but not the clients, you can provide this
    protection.
3.  If the list is large, some clients have problems with a large number
    of To: addresses.  By using one address and allowing the server to
    expand it, you get around these client bugs.
4.  Probably most importantly for answering your question, I don't know
    of any clients that can do what you want :).  Communicator cannot.


Peter Gordon wrote:

> I am having a problem with Netscape. I define individual users and a
> group of users as shown below and load it into the openldap database.
>
> I can send mail to the first two entries. I want to be able to send
> mail to the group "test1". Can you suggest how I can do this. I do not
> want to set up an alias test1, but I want Netscape to have a look at
> the member names and expand them. Does anyone know if this is
> possible, and if so, what is the correct format for the entries.
>
> dn: cn=Fred Smith,o=Valor,c=IL
> cn: Fred Smith
> mail: fred@valor.com
> givenname: Fred
> sn:  Smith
> objectclass: top
> objectclass: person
>
> dn: cn=Peter Gordon,o=Valor,c=IL
> cn: Peter Gordon
> mail: peter@valor.com
> givenname: Peter
> sn:  Gordon
> objectclass: top
> objectclass: person
>
> dn: cn=test1,o=Valor,c=IL
> cn: test1
> description: test1
> objectclass: top
> objectclass: groupOfNames
> member: cn=Peter Gordon,o=Valor,c=IL
> member: cn=Fred Smith,o=Valor,c=IL
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Peter
>
> --
> Peter Gordon
> Tel: (972) 8 9432430 Ext: 129 Fax: (972) 8 9432429  Email: peter@valor.com
> Valor Ltd, PO Box 152, Yavne 70600, Israel

--
 Jeff Clowser
 mailto:jclowser@aerotek.com       Hanover MD  21076 USA
 Phone: (410)-579-4328             7312 Parkway Drive