The Mercian Labels Group Blog – Security Labels International, Mercian Labels and AC Labels

A little back end tweak here to allow multiple Zimbra email accounts to use a single alias.

Normally, you can only assign an alias to one single user, otherwise you are presented with a similar error:

Cannot add alias:
Account user@domain already has alias aliasuser@domain

We needed to be able to allow two user accounts to send emails from the same account (alias); there may be other ways to do this, but the fix that worked for us is:

zmprov ma user1 +zimbraAllowFromAddress aliasuser@domain.com
zmprov ma user2 +zimbraAllowFromAddress aliasuser@domain.com

To run these commands, You need to connect to your zimbra server (I used SSH) and then su to the zimbra user:

su zimbra

then simply enter the commands:

zmprov ma user1 +zimbraAllowFromAddress aliasuser@domain.com
zmprov ma user2 +zimbraAllowFromAddress aliasuser@domain.com

that should be all that’s needed.

This basically then allows user1 to use the alias, and user2 to use the same alias, and as far as I can tell, there are no limits to the number accounts you can apply this to. I did actually use two test accounts first to ensure of no problems, but all worked 100%.

Thanks to Matt at Senokian for the suggestion.

For those who enjoy a more satirical outlook on life, today’s Daily Mash article on the launch of Windows 7 should be enjoyable.

As previously posted, Business Link West Midlands, are running the West Midlands IT Expo on March 31 in Birmingham.  Phil from Outserve is using us as a case study in part of his presentation, so please come along if you wish to hear more and learn about open source and IT in the west midlands region. Apparently this event is going to attract in excess of 1,000 people, and its going to be a cracking day.

We have recently recruited Dave, our new website designer, who being from a windows background has not really clicked with our linux platform and so has swapped back to Windows (whilst I was on holiday!).  I thought someone may be interested in his experience and rational, so here goes:

“After being a Windows user for 14 years, the move back from linux was a choice that had to be made based on old habits and autonomy picked up from prolonged use. I don’t feel windows is any better as an operating system, or any better as a tool in aiding web design. What I did feel was I couldn’t work as efficiently without the software and menus that I have grown accustomed to. I needed my ’start button’, dreamweaver, and photoshop on my local PC without any modifications, hacks or virtual machines.

In summary, like someone who uses an Ipod for their music, I use a PC with Windows, because it works for me.”

I’d be interested in peoples views of this, can you only migrate users to an unfamiliar OS if they are told to do it, or how long does it take to be as efficient on a linux desktop as a seasoned windows user?

Thanks for the feedback Dave!

It is good to see the adoption of open source support in government by the HMRC, as observed in this post by The Open Sourcerer.