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Is there a preferred flavor of Linux that Mailman seems to work and install the best with? I'm trying Ubuntu, but the apt-get feature is getting hung up on trying to find the repositories and can't, so, until I get that fixed I just thought I'd ask.
Thanks for any ideas and suggestions,
Tim
Tim Ferguson Director of Technology Centralia City Schools Centralia, Illinois 62801 618-532-1907, Ext. 1030
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on 1/27/09 9:07 AM, Tim Ferguson said:
If you're installing from our source, then most any recent version of Linux should work fine. If you're installing from someone else's binary packages, then you are dependent on the person doing the packaging -- they have to keep up with our releases, back-port patches, etc....
On python.org, where we host all the official mailman-* mailing lists, Debian works just fine. But we run the version from our own source, and not the binary packaged version.
On another site I help administer, FreeBSD works just fine. But again, I run the version from our source and not the "ports" version.
Last I heard, the folks at lists.apple.com were running one of the largest Mailman mailing list servers in the world, and they were running just fine with our sources on Mac OS X Server -- not the version that Apple took and modified, and then turned around to ship to their customers.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> If you like Jazz/R&B guitar, check out LinkedIn Profile: my friend bigsbytracks on YouTube at <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> http://preview.tinyurl.com/bigsbytracks
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0968256645feeccb35f88b5ce8af0a2f.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
The esteemed Brad Knowles has said:
I have to put in another "plug" for building Mailman from sources vs. doing a prepackaged install built by somebody else. I have just built and installed Mailman 2.1.11 and 2.1.12rc1 on Solaris 10 following the installation guide at
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/index.html
If you've got an appropriate Python installed and have a compiler on the build machine, actually configuring, building, and installing the Mailman application is the easiest part of the job. The remainder are very straightforward systems administration tasks to get the mailman account set up properly and get correct permissions on everything.
We also built Mailman 2.1.9 on a Debian machine a couple of years ago. Another guy did the work and had problems because he did not follow the Installation Guide completely. I was asked to audit and correct things, which involved no more than correcting group name and permissions as outlined in the Installation Guide.
I have always been an advocate for building from source rather than using prepackaged as the default choice for add-on programs. Only when I trust a pre-built package (as with the sendmail and bind in the Solaris distribution) do I use a prepackaged version.
Hank
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5fb8e5a1596efa01374ffabe734cacec.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Jan 28, 2009, at 1:13 AM, Brad Knowles wrote:
On another site I help administer, FreeBSD works just fine. But
again, I run the version from our source and not the "ports" version.
I have found that using the FreeBSD ports system installation of
Mailman is just fine. When I first started there was a minor problem
with postfix integration, but I sent of a note to the package
maintainer and the problem was fixed very quickly. Anyway, the
maintainer of the FreeBSD "port" for mailman is very good.
It's been a while since I administered mailman on Redhat and SuSE.
But I recall that in those cases I didn't use rpms, but just installed
from the original source.
-j
-- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6766f5ab5d5d14ab3cb302cbe40e7911.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Someone known as Tim Ferguson <Tlf1@ccs135.com> scribed the following at 09:07:02 on Tue, 27 Jan 2009, allegedly:
I've got mine on Ubuntu (8.10, with postfix & apache). All from use of apt-get.
One thing I have noticed, shortly after upgrading to 8.10, was that my repositories stopped working properly and I needed to replace the contents of the file. If that's the case for you ubuntuforums will sort you out with all the info required.
-- James Kemp see Alexander at http://www.ajkemp.org/gallery/ or my games at http://www.full-moon.info/
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/721f472d9cadc8f58cfcaaa1ba901ffd.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 09:07 -0600, Tim Ferguson wrote:
I'm running Mailman on two servers which are running Gentoo Linux, and everything works just fine.
Basically, any distribution worth its salt should be OK. Almost by definition a "Linux distribution" is (among other things) an open source support network. Any package or build which becomes part of the official distribution is, by virtue of its inclusion in the distribution, configured to 'just work'. If it doesn't work, you, or someone, has already, or will soon file a bug against the package and the maintainer of the package will fix it. That's the way these things work.
The requirements for running Mailman aren't particularly strenuous - Python, a few libraries, a standard Linux FSH, and perhaps one or two other pretty standard things. Any dependencies should be handled by the distribution's package management system, which is SOP for all Linux distributions.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "In an open world, | PGP public key FMP Computer Services | who needs Windows | available at 512-259-1190 | or Gates" | http://pubkeys.fmp.com http://www.fmp.com | |
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ae53f995ed2adbaae29203f44bafa5d3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 09:07 -0600, Tim Ferguson wrote:
At the risk of being different... I run a number of small lists on CentOS 5 (based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5) and it just worked out of the box. It's not bleeding edge but then I get security patches into 2014.
-- Henry
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f6cce73fdd01fe843f952a7fa2ec0156.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I had an excellent experience in installing Centos 5.2 yum provided rpm of mailman, took me a while to figure out that i had to turn off selinux for archiving to work properly thou.
Alex
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Ferguson" <Tlf1@ccs135.com> To: "Mail Users" <mailman-users@python.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:07 AM Subject: [Mailman-Users] Linux Preferred?
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
on 1/27/09 9:07 AM, Tim Ferguson said:
If you're installing from our source, then most any recent version of Linux should work fine. If you're installing from someone else's binary packages, then you are dependent on the person doing the packaging -- they have to keep up with our releases, back-port patches, etc....
On python.org, where we host all the official mailman-* mailing lists, Debian works just fine. But we run the version from our own source, and not the binary packaged version.
On another site I help administer, FreeBSD works just fine. But again, I run the version from our source and not the "ports" version.
Last I heard, the folks at lists.apple.com were running one of the largest Mailman mailing list servers in the world, and they were running just fine with our sources on Mac OS X Server -- not the version that Apple took and modified, and then turned around to ship to their customers.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> If you like Jazz/R&B guitar, check out LinkedIn Profile: my friend bigsbytracks on YouTube at <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> http://preview.tinyurl.com/bigsbytracks
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0968256645feeccb35f88b5ce8af0a2f.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
The esteemed Brad Knowles has said:
I have to put in another "plug" for building Mailman from sources vs. doing a prepackaged install built by somebody else. I have just built and installed Mailman 2.1.11 and 2.1.12rc1 on Solaris 10 following the installation guide at
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/index.html
If you've got an appropriate Python installed and have a compiler on the build machine, actually configuring, building, and installing the Mailman application is the easiest part of the job. The remainder are very straightforward systems administration tasks to get the mailman account set up properly and get correct permissions on everything.
We also built Mailman 2.1.9 on a Debian machine a couple of years ago. Another guy did the work and had problems because he did not follow the Installation Guide completely. I was asked to audit and correct things, which involved no more than correcting group name and permissions as outlined in the Installation Guide.
I have always been an advocate for building from source rather than using prepackaged as the default choice for add-on programs. Only when I trust a pre-built package (as with the sendmail and bind in the Solaris distribution) do I use a prepackaged version.
Hank
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5fb8e5a1596efa01374ffabe734cacec.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Jan 28, 2009, at 1:13 AM, Brad Knowles wrote:
On another site I help administer, FreeBSD works just fine. But
again, I run the version from our source and not the "ports" version.
I have found that using the FreeBSD ports system installation of
Mailman is just fine. When I first started there was a minor problem
with postfix integration, but I sent of a note to the package
maintainer and the problem was fixed very quickly. Anyway, the
maintainer of the FreeBSD "port" for mailman is very good.
It's been a while since I administered mailman on Redhat and SuSE.
But I recall that in those cases I didn't use rpms, but just installed
from the original source.
-j
-- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6766f5ab5d5d14ab3cb302cbe40e7911.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Someone known as Tim Ferguson <Tlf1@ccs135.com> scribed the following at 09:07:02 on Tue, 27 Jan 2009, allegedly:
I've got mine on Ubuntu (8.10, with postfix & apache). All from use of apt-get.
One thing I have noticed, shortly after upgrading to 8.10, was that my repositories stopped working properly and I needed to replace the contents of the file. If that's the case for you ubuntuforums will sort you out with all the info required.
-- James Kemp see Alexander at http://www.ajkemp.org/gallery/ or my games at http://www.full-moon.info/
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/721f472d9cadc8f58cfcaaa1ba901ffd.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 09:07 -0600, Tim Ferguson wrote:
I'm running Mailman on two servers which are running Gentoo Linux, and everything works just fine.
Basically, any distribution worth its salt should be OK. Almost by definition a "Linux distribution" is (among other things) an open source support network. Any package or build which becomes part of the official distribution is, by virtue of its inclusion in the distribution, configured to 'just work'. If it doesn't work, you, or someone, has already, or will soon file a bug against the package and the maintainer of the package will fix it. That's the way these things work.
The requirements for running Mailman aren't particularly strenuous - Python, a few libraries, a standard Linux FSH, and perhaps one or two other pretty standard things. Any dependencies should be handled by the distribution's package management system, which is SOP for all Linux distributions.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "In an open world, | PGP public key FMP Computer Services | who needs Windows | available at 512-259-1190 | or Gates" | http://pubkeys.fmp.com http://www.fmp.com | |
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f6cce73fdd01fe843f952a7fa2ec0156.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I had an excellent experience in installing Centos 5.2 yum provided rpm of mailman, took me a while to figure out that i had to turn off selinux for archiving to work properly thou.
Alex
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Ferguson" <Tlf1@ccs135.com> To: "Mail Users" <mailman-users@python.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:07 AM Subject: [Mailman-Users] Linux Preferred?
participants (8)
-
Alex
-
Brad Knowles
-
Hank van Cleef
-
Henry Hartley
-
James Kemp
-
Jeffrey Goldberg
-
Lindsay Haisley
-
Tim Ferguson