How can common email addresses like webmaster@ postmaster@ etc. be used? (incl. sending)

Discuss
1

My YunoHost server

Hardware: Old laptop or computer with lxd
YunoHost version: 11.2.27 (stable), and also tested 12.0.2 (testing)
I have access to my server : Through SSH | through the webadmin | direct access via keyboard / screen
Are you in a special context or did you perform some particular tweaking on your YunoHost instance ? : no

Description of my issue

Hello,

I also encountered the problem that trying to set up “webmaster@…” as address, or alias, for non-main domains produces
This e-mail address is reserved for the admins group
errors in the admin interface, and for the main domain it’s even a 500 server error frame stating:

attribute 'mail' with value 'webmaster@....' is not unique

(It’s the same on ynh12 bookworm.)

However, I didn’t quite understand yet the solution from Admin email alias not working on secondary domain.

I didn’t get the intention and am thus surprised that it is changing a group setting, and am not sure of which domain?

Maybe could the actual error message be fixed to only trigger on the main domain? And to provide info and point to the possible usage, like “on main domain incoming email to [this address] is always forwarded to group “admins” members , you may send emails by…”?

2

Why would anybody ever want to hardcode reserving administrative email addresses to be only configurable for the admins group?

It’s very fine to have some common and needed addresses set up for the admins group by default. But why should every admin be bothered with every address of each domain, or why would every my_webapp webmaster have to be a host admin?

What would actually seem desirable might be to have the typical administrative addresses only be configurable by the admins group. (For any group or user.)

  • It could prevent that regular users can set such administrative aliases for themselves.
  • And there could be a simple general option for that restriction check to completely disallow regular users to configure their own mail aliases for themselves. (Or maybe does that option already exist?)

PS: I couldn’t test yet, nor know if it is still required, but I found a thread that seems related and mentions a config-hack needed to allow sending from group-alias addresses:

3

Hm, if admins were allowed to set adminstrative email aliases also for regular users…

  • Sending emails should work right-away already (no group alias case).
  • Admins can use different (non-admin) accounts for their day-to-day tasks.
  • Maybe configuring the same alias for multiple accounts could even be an alternative to configuring an alias for a group.
4

Allowing admins to set these aliases for users or themselves, but not allowing to use these publicly known administrative names as usernames could be seen as ok solution, or even a good one, because there would be no guessable usernames.

5

Maybe it’s basicly just about allowing these two commands to work for receiving and sending email:

sudo yunohost user group add-mailalias webmaster webmaster@...

sudo yunohost user update <user> --add-mailalias webmaster@...
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