Configuring Postfix to work with piped scripts

 - This article is a Community contribution and may include unsupported customizations.

Background

Many users of Zimbra may want to integrate Request Tracker (RT) or Mailman, both of which are typically configured by executing scripts from /etc/aliases. With Zimbra 5, /etc/aliases appears to be mostly ignored and therefore cannot be used. This wiki entry is based on a trick that was figured out in this forum post.

Steps for integrating RT

1. Configure the Postfix main.cf to handle an additional transport map Execute the following command:

zmlocalconfig -e postfix_transport_maps=' hash:/opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/transport,ldap:/opt/zimbra/conf/ldap-transport.cf'

This will add /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/transport as an additional transport map.

2. Create the transport map

Edit /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/transport and place the following lines at the top:

# Pipe transports for RT queues
# YOU HAVE TO ADD THE PIPES TO /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/master.cf if you want them to work!!!
rt@example.com     rt-pipe
rt-comment@example.com     rt-comment-pipe

And then create the transport db by executing (as zimbra)

postmap /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/transport

3. Define the pipe transports

The transport definitions 'rt-pipe' and 'rt-comment-pipe' must now be defined. Edit /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/master.cf and add the following lines to the end of the file:

rt-pipe         unix    -       n               n               -               -       pipe
    flags= user=www argv=/opt/rt3/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action correspond --url http://rt.example.com/
rt-comment-pipe         unix    -       n               n               -               -       pipe
    flags= user=www argv=/opt/rt3/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action comment --url https://rt.example.com/

Note that the 2nd line needs to be right under the first and must start with whitespace. Also make sure the user= line is pointing to a valid user with permissions to execute the script.

4. Restart Postfix and test

Execute the following commands:

zmmtactl stop ; zmmtactl start

Now, you should be able to email rt@example.com and receive a message back. grep for RT in /var/log/messages as well as tail /var/log/mail to watch for errors.