[Mailman-Users] Mailman in a webhotel? I need some guidance in configuring the thing...

[Ralf Strandell]

Hi

I have a few basic questions at the bottom of this message.

But first some background:

TASK: I would like to set up two secure mailing lists with post archives and all that on my webhotel account. I would also need to transfer a few thousand important messages from our Yahoo groups lists to our new mailing list archives. I would like to do this with Mailman.

WHY: The ownership of the Yahoogroups accounts are dependent on email accounts, and there is no way for an organization to officially own its lists - or to backup them or to archive them on certified archive paper. Thus we want to break out to freedom from Yahoogroups. Majordomo is offered at our web hotel, but Majordomo does not have an easily browseable and searchable archive (web-ui) with attachment downloads and all that. The authentication mechanism is also a joke/nightmare - email the passwords... HTTPS has been invented... Majordomo is probably susceptible to a targeted brute force attack, too. I haven't figured out how to import/export to/from majordomo either. So I'm hoping that maybe Mailman could solve most of these problems.

PLATFORM: Our site is hosted on a webhotel that offers DirrectAdmin with majordomo, Exim (MTA) and vm-pop3d. I have access to php, perl, python, shell, cron and pop3/imap/smtp servers. No root access. One user. One database shared with WordPress. Write access to database and home directory only.

QUESTIONS:
1) Can I install Mailman without root access?
2) How do I configure Mailman to be secure? What are the best practices (group ownerships etc) for hosted installations?
3) Could you please lead me to the relevant documentation...

Thanks