Migrating Distribution Lists with > 1000 users

[rbarnes]

We've been migrating an Exchange infrastructure to Zimbra and now want to move our distribution lists, several of which have many 1000s of users.

However according to the administrator guides, 1000 is the maximum number of recipients that a distribution list can contain. It seems this would cause problems for a lot of organizations. How do you handle lists with over 1000 users?

Our version: 6.0.6_GA_2330.RHEL5_64

[lytledd]

If I'm recalling correctly, Distribution lists can be members of other distribution lists. So, split them up into:

dist_a has 900 addresses
dist_b has 900 addresses

Make the both members of the:

mydist@domain.com

Doug

[luh3417]

Originally Posted by lytledd

If I'm recalling correctly, Distribution lists can be members of other distribution lists. So, split them up into:

dist_a has 900 addresses
dist_b has 900 addresses

Make the both members of the:

mydist@domain.com

Doug

That is a very slow and cumbersome fix if you have quite a few thousand contacts as medium businesses like us have. Can't Zimbra allow an admin rights over ride and up the limit?

[lytledd]

Originally Posted by luh3417

Can't Zimbra allow an admin rights over ride and up the limit?

Not that I'm aware of. Maybe you could open a ticket on it and vote to have this limit removed.

Doug

[rbarnes]

Thanks for the replies.

According to the documentation it seems that nesting distribution lists (lytledd's suggestion) won't work either -- the nested addresses will count against the 1000 limit.

The 1000 recipients include addresses in distribution lists that are nested within a distribution list. Senders do not receive an error when they send a message to a distribution list with more than 1000 members, but the message is not sent to more than 1000 recipients.

We're looking at a mailman solution but not happy that Zimbra can't handle large enterprise distribution groups internally.

[ski98033]

We use mailman for lists larger than 1000 members in our organization. Not the greatest, but it works. We have scripts that populate the lists from ldap nightly to pick up changes in users status (e.g. new users, deleted users, etc.).

[doriger]

They told me how to increase the distribution list size. Not sure how big you can make it, but here's how.

Check configuration
$ postconf virtual_alias_expansion_limit

Set configuration
$ postconf -e virtual_alias_expansion_limit=3000

Restart Postfix
$ postfix stop
$ postfix start