Mac OS X Server Mail Service Boot Camp, Part 2: Advanced Mailing List Features and WebMail
By Ryan Faas
Part 1 of this series looked at the basic setup of mail services under Mac OS X Server. We discussed how to configure a server’s Internet configuration for email service; how to enable SMTP, POP, and IMAP; how to configure basic server security; and how to configure user accounts. We also touched on how to enable, create, and manage mailing lists using Server Admin. This article takes a deeper look at how you can manage mailing lists from a web-based interface and you’ll learn how to configure a web-based email client for your users.
As mentioned in part 1, mail services available in Mac OS X Server are now provided via a series of standard Unix email tools. This is particularly true with the features discussed in this article. Mailing lists are managed using a piece of software called Mailman and the web-based email client is a package called Squirrelmail. Unlike the other mail features, Apple has done less to integrate the management of these tools into Mac OS X Server. Squirrelmail configuration must be managed almost entirely from the command line (as it would be on any other Unix operating system) and the Mailman features that we’ll cover are managed from a web-based interface.
Enabling the Web Service
The first thing that you need to do to provide either web-based mailing list tools or WebMail is to enable and configure Mac OS X Server’s web service. For mailing lists, the web service must be enabled on the mail server itself. You could choose to use an alternate web server for WebMail because it is only a web-based email application, but sending or reading emails will generate additional network traffic if WebMail is hosted on an alternate server.
For mailing list management, you can configure just the basic settings for a single website hosted by your server and then start the web service. In fact, just enabling the web service will create a generic website configuration that can be used for mailing list administration. If you are also using the server a full-featured web server, configure as appropriate.