A common feature with mail environments is to use distribution groups that you could add and remove group members from. This is fairly common among organizations. For example, one might have hq@example.net and a list of members stored in LDAP. I wanted to have the ability to use mail distribution groups with my OpenLDAP infrastructure. LDAP group members could then easily be removed or added using ldapmodify or Apache Directory Studio.

Postfix

First, we need to tell Postfix about our LDAP distribution group config.

  1. Open /etc/postfix/main.cf
  2. Edit the virtual_alias_maps line and put ldap:/etc/postfix/ldap/ldap-groups.cf after the aliases definition. 
    virtual_alias_maps = ldap:/etc/postfix/ldap/ldap-aliases.cf,ldap:/etc/postfix/ldap/ldap-groups.cf

    Since the LDAP server is local I do not need TLS in ldap-groups.cf. The following is sufficient.

ldap-groups.cf

server_host = ldap://localhost
search_base = ou=Groups,ou=Mail,dc=example,dc=net
version = 3
bind = no
query_filter = mail=%s
result_attribute = mailGroupMember

!!!! The group attrributes can be loaded using postfix-book schema

An LDAP mail distribution group could look like this.

dn: mail=hq@example.email,ou=Groups,ou=Mail,dc=example,dc=net
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: PostfixBookMailAccount
mail: hq@example
mailEnabled: TRUE
mailUidNumber: 5000
mailGidNumber: 5000
cn: hq
sn: group
description: hq@example distribution group
mailGroupMember: user1@example
mailGroupMember: user2@example
mailGroupMember: user3@example
mailGroupMember: user4@example
mailGroupMember: user5@example
mailGroupMember: user6@example

So now, when an email is sent to hq@example that email will land in every group member’s Inbox. Each group member will be defined by the mailGroupMember attribute.

Once you have this configured it is a good idea to tail the logs and send a test mail to the group. If everything is setup correctly the mail logs will show the email delivered to all group members.