MESSAGE
| DATE | 2015-10-20 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] events
|
Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben-at-mrbrklyn.com):
> So, if anyone didn't notice, the mailing had been down for a short
> while. I was always proud of the fact that my highly hacking mailing
> list solution which had majordomo in its center, was the only list I had
> seen never to go down for any significant time and never needed to be
> serivces. It just worked...
That was the great thing about majordomo. Very simple to set up, and
then it just ran.
> It seems majordomo is dependent on a number of Perl4 components which
> have been removed from the mainstram Perl distributions.
A fix to the upstream code would have been more likely if Brent Chapman
had ever fixed its no-commercial-use licence to make it open source, but
he never did, so third-party coders chose to ignore it, and it's been a
dead codebase since 2000. I'm not sure what the story is: It's
possible that Brent lacked the authority to change its licensing terms
by the time he realised the problem, having vested copyright title in
Great Circle Associates, who in turn abandoned it.
Anyway, yep, Perl5 and up breaks it completely.
> Overall, mailman has some issues. It is too complex and the SuSE package seems to leave it as a mystery as to where things are located.
Unless SUSE has done something very peculiar, you'll find highly useful
command-line utilities in $MAILMAN_HOME/bin (where $MAILMAN_HOME, as
noted below, is usually /var/lib/mailman).
$ ls /var/lib/mailman/bin
add_members convert.pyc invite_members postfix-to-mailman.py show_qfiles
arch discard list_admins postfix-to-mailman.pyc sync_members
b4b5-archfix dumpdb list_lists qmail-to-mailman.py transcheck
change_pw export.py list_members qmail-to-mailman.pyc unshunt
check_db export.pyc list_owners qrunner update
check_perms find_member mailmanctl rb-archfix version
cleanarch fix_url.py mmsitepass remove_members withlist
clone_member fix_url.pyc newlist reset_pw.py
config_list genaliases paths.py reset_pw.pyc
convert.py inject paths.pyc rmlist
$
> It uses a web admin interface which I despise....
It also has the above-cited command-line interface, _and_ also a
send-mail-to-the-MLM interface very reminiscent of majordomo's.
I'm pretty sure all of the administrative functions can be carried out
by mail instead of via the Web interface. For example, I have in front
of me a held-mail message from the SVLUG Mailman instance, from one of
the mailing lists' -request-at- addresses. Sure, it says up at the top:
At your convenience, visit:
http://lists.svlug.org/lists/admindb/svlug
to approve or deny the request.
...but it also says this at the bottom:
Subject: confirm 361c754d16f24a21a13b1aac77cb181354cee04c
Sender: svlug-request-at-lists.svlug.org
From: svlug-request-at-lists.svlug.org
If you reply to this message, keeping the Subject: header intact,
Mailman will discard the held message. Do this if the message is
spam. If you reply to this message and include an Approved: header
with the list password in it, the message will be approved for posting
to the list. The Approved: header can also appear in the first line
of the body of the reply.
You will want to Read The Fine Manual for further details.
> ...and it makes it difficult to just pop open a
> file in vim and add or remove things.
There is indeed less use of plain-ASCII data files than with majordomo,
which is occasionally irksome. Many of Mailman's internal records are
kept in Python 'pickled' files, IIRC with '.pck' filename extensions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickle_(Python)
http://www.hoboes.com/NetLife/pytown/mailman/viewing-mailman-config-files/
> The new list is slow... much slower than what majordomo did. Why?
Do some basic troubleshooting to figure out where your specific
performance bottleneck is (DNS, SMTP delivery from Postfix to Mailman,
or Mailman), then tune it.
http://wiki.list.org/DOC/Mailman%20Performance%20Tuning%20for%20Mail%20Delivery
Does the MTA/MLM box run its own local recursive nameserver and specify
it in /etc/resolv.conf as the system's resolver? If not, I very
_strongly_ recommend doing so. For that purpose, I also strongly
recommend Unbound.
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Network_Other/dns-servers.html#unbound
> Maybe because it is not usung the OS level Unix Pipes? But that is a
> guess.
When you're done guessing, start diagnosing.
> Overall, its security is less than it was with majordomo, IMO, because
> of the complexity and its web based admin, which is rich but a PIA.
If you don't want the Web-based admin, you can turn it off.
> A Major problem here is that the configuration of mailman is spread
> out all over the fucking hard drive in usr and var.
No, it's really not (again, unless SUSE has done something very
peculiar). Everything's under $MAILMAN_HOME, which is traditionally
/var/lib/mailman -- though there are a couple of symlinks to things in
/usr/lib/mailman and in /etc.
> That means it is a PIA to make a backup or rebuild it need be.
No, it's not. Here you go:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Admin/linuxmafia.com-backup.html
> Instead of everything being in one nice location that I can just scoop
> up, I have to find a dozen or so fragments.
Copying and pasting from the above cheat-sheet:
/etc System configuration files
/var/lib/mailman/archives Mailing list archives for Mailman
/var/lib/mailman/data Mailing list state and other data
/var/lib/mailman/lists Mailing list definitions for Mailman
/var/lib/mailman/nntp Mailing list NNTP gateway data
/var/lib/mailman/qfiles Mailing list in-process data
The /etc stuff is, unsurprisingly, in /etc/mailman. Here's the symlink
to the key conffile therein:
$ ls -al /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Aug 23 2010 /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py -> /etc/mailman/mm_cfg.py
$
And here are what I am pretty sure are most or all of the remaining
symlinks:
$ ls -al /var/lib/mailman/
total 15
drwxrwsr-x 9 root list 1024 Aug 23 2010 .
drwxr-xr-x 52 root root 1024 Oct 1 06:52 ..
drwxrwsr-x 4 root list 1024 Jan 11 2012 archives
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Mar 4 2008 bin -> /usr/lib/mailman/bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Mar 4 2008 cgi-bin -> /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mailman
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Mar 4 2008 cron -> /usr/lib/mailman/cron
drwxrwsr-x 2 root list 6144 Oct 20 12:15 data
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Mar 4 2008 icons -> /usr/share/images/mailman
drwxrwsr-x 19 root list 1024 Jun 20 2011 lists
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Mar 4 2008 locks -> /var/lock/mailman
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Mar 4 2008 logs -> /var/log/mailman
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Mar 4 2008 mail -> /usr/lib/mailman/mail
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Mar 4 2008 Mailman -> /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman
drwxrwsr-x 38 root list 1024 Aug 23 2010 messages
drwxrwsr-x 2 list list 1024 Apr 3 2009 nntp
drwxrwsr-x 12 list list 1024 Apr 3 2009 qfiles
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Mar 4 2008 scripts -> /usr/lib/mailman/scripts
drwxrwsr-x 2 root list 1024 Feb 21 2008 spam
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Mar 4 2008 templates -> /etc/mailman
-rw-r--r-- 1 root list 11 Jul 27 2010 .version
$
> With means that the next step is rewriting my backup
> scripts.
Well, yes, immediately after you say 'Thank you, Rick'.
--
Cheers, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog --
Rick Moen unless you type 'woof, woof, woof'."
rick-at-linuxmafia.com -- pyellman
McQ! (4x80)
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