Hi,
I'm contemplating using mailman in a new system setup, and am hoping I could get a "heads up" warning about potential problems from the list before killing too much time on it.
I have installed mailman before, using postfix on a redhat (ClarkConnect) server. It took a bit of fiddling with, but I got there in the end.
The new project is a fedora core based server, purchased on a subscription. It runs qmail by default, and has plesk running to give some web-based admin. Given the constraint that we need to keep Plesk running, I'd be most pleased to be able to run mailman on top of qmail.
Two points:
First off, I've read that there are some unique issues with qmail/mailman. Does this make installation significantly harder than with a postfix system (it was as much as I could do to get the postfix/mailman system going - but I'm willing to persevere!) What are the main issues? Also, is Plesk likely to foul up the installation if it is used post the mailman install?
Second, my previous install of mailman was 2.1.x running under /usr/local/mailman. I note that the fedora installation already seems to have mailman files distributed around the filesystem. Is there a standard installation now as part of fedora, and am I better to use this or stick with a fresh installation into /usr/local/mailman?
One final related issue: this system has a greater need for security than the last one. Is it simple to administer the web side of mailman using https so that user login is ecrypted? Is there much needed for apache to be able to do this?
As ever, many thanks in advance for any advice. The speed, knowledge and helpfulness of people on this list when I last had occasion to be here was just great!
With thanks,
Jon
At 7:21 PM +0000 2006-07-26, Jon Loose wrote:
The new project is a fedora core based server, purchased on a subscription. It runs qmail by default,
Ouch.
and has plesk running to give some web-basedadmin.
Double ouch.
Given the constraint that we need to keep Plesk running, I'd bemost pleased to be able to run mailman on top of qmail.
Understood.
First off, I've read that there are some unique issues with qmail/mailman.
Yeah, not too many people run with this configuration. Most people using qmail use ezmlm instead of Mailman.
That said, I know that at least some versions of Plesk actually integrate a version of Mailman into their system. Unfortunately, what I've seen is a really ancient version (not even the latest 2.0.x release), and depends on an old version of Python, etc.... It is very difficult to upgrade that version of Python and that version of Mailman, without causing everything else on the system to break.
I think you need to have a talk with your system provider to see what options are available to you.
Does this make installation significantly harder than with a postfix system (it was as much as I could do to get the postfix/mailman system going - but I'm willing to persevere!) What are the main issues?
IMO, postfix and sendmail are the most natural MTAs to use with Mailman, although I believe that postfix tends to work better out-of-the-box as an MTA that handles the kinds of loads that a mailing list may tend to generate.
You can get equal or better performance from sendmail (especially if you're doing a lot of anti-spam/anti-virus processing or other type of filtering on your mail), but it takes more work to get there with sendmail than it does with postfix, and it takes more work to keep the system operating at that level with sendmail than it does with postfix.
But all of this should be covered in the instructions.
Also,is Plesk likely to foul up the installation if it is used post the mailman install?
Generally speaking, my view is that if you're going to use Plesk, then you should stick with whatever they provide, or at least whatever they make easy to integrate. That may very well mean that Mailman is not a part of that picture, at least not anything we would consider to be a reasonably modern version of Mailman.
Second, my previous install of mailman was 2.1.x running under /usr/local/mailman. I note that the fedora installation already seems to have mailman files distributed around the filesystem. Is there a standard installation now as part of fedora, and am I better to use this or stick with a fresh installation into /usr/local/mailman?
They've done whatever they've done and didn't ask for any involvement from us. You need to choose whether you want to stick with their way of doing things, or if you want to do things our way. If you're going to go with doing things their way, you need to be aware that some of your support issues will need to be addressed to them and not us, and you'll need to be able to figure out which types of support issues need to be addressed where.
One final related issue: this system has a greater need for security than the last one. Is it simple to administer the web side of mailman using https so that user login is ecrypted?
My personal belief is that all interactions between any user or admin and the web interface of Mailman should go through an SSL encrypted connection. All. That's not too hard to set up, if you follow the instructions.
Is there much needed for apache tobe able to do this?
It's not too hard to set up, and apache should be able to handle things just fine.
Just make sure to read all the instructions, and to search the FAQ and the archives.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA. See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Brad Knowles wrote:
At 7:21 PM +0000 2006-07-26, Jon Loose wrote: [...]
Second, my previous install of mailman was 2.1.x running under /usr/local/mailman. I note that the fedora installation already seems to have mailman files distributed around the filesystem. Is there a standard installation now as part of fedora, and am I better to use this or stick with a fresh installation into /usr/local/mailman?
They've done whatever they've done and didn't ask for any involvement from us.
That doesn't seem entirely fair to the Red Hat/Fedora folks. John Dennis of Red Hat very clearly solicited comment on these changes on mailman-developers back in Oct 2004 and submitted a patch as well[1].
I agree with pretty much everything else though. :-)
[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers@python.org/msg08110.html
Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?
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At 10:22 PM -0400 2006-07-26, Todd Zullinger wrote:
They've done whatever they've done and didn't ask for any involvement from us.
That doesn't seem entirely fair to the Red Hat/Fedora folks. John Dennis of Red Hat very clearly solicited comment on these changes on mailman-developers back in Oct 2004 and submitted a patch as well[1].
I don't recall anyone ever contacting us regarding how we would like to see Mailman get packaged together, but clearly I have at least missed his message if nothing else. I will also state that John is one of the more active participants on our lists, and we appreciate his involvement in the community.
That said, they have certain goals towards their packaged installation of Mailman (such as making it FHS compliant), and that leads to their making a fairly substantial number of changes to the system. And that's probably not really avoidable, but it does mean that supporting the Red Hat packaged version of Mailman can be somewhat different than supporting a source-installed version, if for no other reason than the files are stored in different places.
As far as things go, the official Red Hat package is probably as close to the source-installed version as they could reasonably manage under the circumstances, and would probably be a good guide for other vendors to follow -- assuming they have similar goals.
If we had the same level of involvement in our community from other vendors as we get from John and the Red Hat folks, I think we'd be much happier campers.
Thanks for the correction, and giving me the opportunity to clarify my views.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA. See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.
Thanks for the swift replies. Food for thought! No doubt I'll be back to you soon.
Jon
----- Original Message ---- From: Brad Knowles <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org> To: Jon Loose <jjloose@yahoo.co.uk>; mailman-users@python.org Sent: Thursday, 27 July, 2006 2:03:29 AM Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Contemplating new installation
At 7:21 PM +0000 2006-07-26, Jon Loose wrote:
The new project is a fedora core based server, purchased on a subscription. It runs qmail by default,
Ouch.
and has plesk running to give some web-basedadmin.
Double ouch.
Given the constraint that we need to keep Plesk running, I'd bemost pleased to be able to run mailman on top of qmail.
Understood.
First off, I've read that there are some unique issues with qmail/mailman.
Yeah, not too many people run with this configuration. Most people using qmail use ezmlm instead of Mailman.
That said, I know that at least some versions of Plesk actually integrate a version of Mailman into their system. Unfortunately, what I've seen is a really ancient version (not even the latest 2.0.x release), and depends on an old version of Python, etc.... It is very difficult to upgrade that version of Python and that version of Mailman, without causing everything else on the system to break.
I think you need to have a talk with your system provider to see what options are available to you.
Does this make installation significantly harder than with a postfix system (it was as much as I could do to get the postfix/mailman system going - but I'm willing to persevere!) What are the main issues?
IMO, postfix and sendmail are the most natural MTAs to use with Mailman, although I believe that postfix tends to work better out-of-the-box as an MTA that handles the kinds of loads that a mailing list may tend to generate.
You can get equal or better performance from sendmail (especially if you're doing a lot of anti-spam/anti-virus processing or other type of filtering on your mail), but it takes more work to get there with sendmail than it does with postfix, and it takes more work to keep the system operating at that level with sendmail than it does with postfix.
But all of this should be covered in the instructions.
Also,is Plesk likely to foul up the installation if it is used post the mailman install?
Generally speaking, my view is that if you're going to use Plesk, then you should stick with whatever they provide, or at least whatever they make easy to integrate. That may very well mean that Mailman is not a part of that picture, at least not anything we would consider to be a reasonably modern version of Mailman.
Second, my previous install of mailman was 2.1.x running under /usr/local/mailman. I note that the fedora installation already seems to have mailman files distributed around the filesystem. Is there a standard installation now as part of fedora, and am I better to use this or stick with a fresh installation into /usr/local/mailman?
They've done whatever they've done and didn't ask for any involvement from us. You need to choose whether you want to stick with their way of doing things, or if you want to do things our way. If you're going to go with doing things their way, you need to be aware that some of your support issues will need to be addressed to them and not us, and you'll need to be able to figure out which types of support issues need to be addressed where.
One final related issue: this system has a greater need for security than the last one. Is it simple to administer the web side of mailman using https so that user login is ecrypted?
My personal belief is that all interactions between any user or admin and the web interface of Mailman should go through an SSL encrypted connection. All. That's not too hard to set up, if you follow the instructions.
Is there much needed for apache tobe able to do this?
It's not too hard to set up, and apache should be able to handle things just fine.
Just make sure to read all the instructions, and to search the FAQ and the archives.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA. See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.
Jon Loose wrote:
First off, I've read that there are some unique issues with qmail/mailman. Does this make installation significantly harder than with a postfix system (it was as much as I could do to get the postfix/mailman system going - but I'm willing to persevere!) What are the main issues? Also, is Plesk likely to foul up the installation if it is used post the mailman install?
I can't answer your qmail/Plesk questions. I have no experience with either.
Second, my previous install of mailman was 2.1.x running under /usr/local/mailman. I note that the fedora installation already seems to have mailman files distributed around the filesystem. Is there a standard installation now as part of fedora, and am I better to use this or stick with a fresh installation into /usr/local/mailman?
RedHat has done this in order to make the installation Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) compliant. So far, this is just RedHat's package. Which way you go I think should be decided on your preference for install from source vs. install from package.
That said, if you need help from this list, we are going to be more familiar with the source install.
One final related issue: this system has a greater need for security than the last one. Is it simple to administer the web side of mailman using https so that user login is ecrypted? Is there much needed for apache to be able to do this?
See <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.027.htp>.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
participants (4)
-
Brad Knowles -
Jon Loose -
Mark Sapiro -
Todd Zullinger