mlmpl

mlmpl is a simple mailing list and newsletter manager script. It's meant to be used as mta script.

Dependencies

• p5-DBI
• p5-DBD-SQLite
• p5-Email-Simple

How it works

mlmpl is made by two things:

• mda.pl: this is the MDA (mail delivery agent). Your mail server should call this script and provide three arguments: the receipt, the mailing list address and the sender address.
• mlmctl.pl: it's used to create and manage mailing lists.

both will look for /etc/mlmpl/config.pl (or any other file pointed by $MLMPL_CONFIG).

Tutorial

Make sure you have all the dependencies installed, then fetch the code:

git clone https://git.omarpolo.com/mlmpl

Copy config.pl to /etc/mlmpl/config.pl, customize the values and initialise the database

sqlite3 /path/to/db.sqlite < schema.sql

Create a mailing list/news letter:

./mlmctl.pl add news@example.com    \
    name='Example news letter'      \
    public=false                    \
    archive=true                    \
    moderated=true

The options means:

• public: the outgoing emails use the original address if true, or the default address of the mailing list otherwise
• archive: archive all the message sent
• moderated: only the moderators are allowed to post if true

Add a moderator:

./mlmctl.pl moderator news@example.com your@email.addre.ss

To finish, point your mail server to mda.pl. Done!

Using mlmpl with OpenSMTPD

To use it with OpenSMTPD you need two tables. Other setups are possible, but this is what I recommend:

• the list of addresses:

# /etc/mail/news-addresses
news@example.com
owner-news@example.com
subscribe-news@example.com
unsubscribe-news@example.com
help-news@example.com

• an alias table so OpenSMTPD can recognise the addresses:

# /etc/mail/news-aliases
news           localuser
owner          localuser
subscribe      localuser
unsubscribe    localuser
help           localuser

Then you can hook everything together with:

table news         file:/etc/mail/news-addresses
table news-aliases file:/etc/mail/news-aliases

action "newsletter" \
	mda "/usr/bin/perl /path/mda.pl %{rcpt:lowercase|strip} news@example.com %{sender:lowercase|strip}" \
	user "localuser" \
	alias <news-aliases>

match from any for rcpt-to <news> action "newsletter"

# "! rcpt-to" so mails for the mailing list don't get matched
match from any for domain <domains> ! rcpt-to <news> action "local_mail"