On 18-Jun-17 13:03, Mark Lindsay wrote:

Thanks for taking the time to write & share your experience! I'll see if I can reproduce your success.

readthedocs is somewhat off-putting since it asserts different Python version dependencies from the main site.

I did understand that the core requires Python 3. What isn't clear is whether the Front end requires Python 2... I do have 2.7.3 installed.

I didn't know about the mailman3-users list; next round will go there.

I've perused the docs, and decided that I will have to get an instance running & do some experimentation to make sense of them. (e.g. the schemas for the REST API's json are sketchy - I haven't found how topics/topic filters are represented - and they're a key item for me. And the "dumps" are less helpful to a non-python person than raw json.) There's noBut it looks like it should be possible to replace what I did with the 2.1 cli utilities with not much code - and a lot of research.

I can live without the archive for a while, but the main reason for converting my new project to MM3 is the new UI.

It's not obvious that I can use a virtual environment when a webserver has to interact - and especially where the host runs SeLinux (extended access controls.)

I use SQLite elsewhere; I planned to stick with it for this. It's the Python default, and the command interface for queries is reasonable. (And it has a -- sorry -- Perl API, which is the implementation language for the main application.)

I do disagree with you on one point - it doesn't take 'a little detective work' to figure this out. It takes a LOT of detective work :-) I've invested several daze, and still don't have a process running.

But I'll (probably) get there. Eventually. Thanks for the tips.

Hi Tlhackque,

I went through a similar battle with installing Mailman 3 but emerged victorious in the end. Here are some tips that might help you out.

• There are several places where you can find Mailman 3 docs. It is confusing. The most complete documentation I found is here: https://mailman.readthedocs.io/en/latest/src/mailman/docs/install.html

• Don't use mailman bundler

• Start with installing just Mailman 3 Core. Core is the part of Mailman 3 that talks to your mail server and controls lists and members of lists. Leave Postorius and Hyperkitty out of it until you have Core running and you understand what it is doing. You can work directly with Mailman 3 using mailman shell or the Mailman 3 Core REST API https://mailman.readthedocs.io/en/latest/src/mailman/rest/docs/rest.html

• Mailman 3 Core indeed requires python 3

• Use Python's virtualenv -p python3 to install Mailman 3 Core. It looks like a lot of the problems you're having are because of dependency/version hell. virtualenv will help with this. Successfully dockerizing Mailman 3 Core will help even more! I read over on the Mailman 3 Users list that an install process using Docker will soon be the canonical way to install Mailman 3, which is great.

• Use a SQL backend with Mailman 3 Core that allows you to inspect its DB tables directly. This is so you can see what it is doing behind the scenes when you interact with it via mailman shell or the REST API. The DB schema is sane and easy to navigate. https://mailman.readthedocs.io/en/latest/src/mailman/docs/database.html

• I really like that I was able to install Mailman 3 Core right in a non-privileged user's home directory. My server is just a stock Ubuntu AWS EC2 instance. My Mailman 3 Core install is in /home/ubuntu/mailman with a configuration file of /home/ubuntu/mailman/var/etc/mailman.cfg. I am running Mailman 3 Core in production from the regular ubuntu user's home directory in a virtualenv. I do not know if this is the recommended way to do it, but the documentation is especially sparse in this area, and it seems to work!

As best I can remember (it's been a couple months), here are the steps I followed to get it up and running:

1. cd ~
2. git clone https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman.git https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman.git%60
3. cd mailman
4. virtualenv -p python3 venv
5. source venv/bin/activate
6. python setup.py develop
7. I am pretty sure this setup command will place a configuration file into ~/mailman/var/etc/mailman.cfg. Edit this file. https://mailman.readthedocs.io/en/latest/src/mailman/config/docs/config.html
8. mailman info can confirm which configuration file is in use
9. mailman start will start up Mailman 3 Core. This is what the parent background process command looks like in ps -ef: /home/ubuntu/mailman/venv/bin/python /home/ubuntu/mailman/venv/bin/master -C /home/ubuntu/mailman/var/etc/mailman.cfg
10. Logs are in ~/mailman/var/logs

It is not a straightforward install process and requires a little detective work based on your environment and mail server. I had the disadvantage of never being a Mailman 2 user, so a big chunk of my learning curve was understanding Mailman terminology and its way of doing things.

I still do not have Postorius or Hyperkitty installed. My use case is a PHP-based CMS which administers Mailman 3 Core via its REST API. I wrote a quick and dirty PHP client and it works surprisingly well. Mailman 3 Core has been solid in production and easy to deal with via the REST API.

Good luck, and you might want to check out the Mailman 3-specific users list here: https://lists.mailman3.org/archives/list/mailman-users@mailman3.org/

On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 5:14 PM, tlhackque via Mailman-Users mailto:mailman-users@python.org> wrote:

I took another look at installing Mailman 3, and ended up lost and
confused.  I'm an experienced software person - but my Python
knowledge
is minimal.

Fedora 25, python 3.5.3, pretty much out of the box.

Mailman version: 3.1.0 (The other bits and pieces are current - 1.1)

I tried to follow the documentation on
http://docs.list.org/en/latest/prodsetup.html
<http://docs.list.org/en/latest/prodsetup.html>,

http://mailman-3-installation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production_install.html
<http://mailman-3-installation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production_install.html>
claims that the backend requires Python 3.4, but the frontend
2.7.  Not
clear if this is credible, but it's out there...

https://wiki.list.org/Mailman3 points to Mark Sapiro's experience on
https://wiki.list.org/DOC/Mailman%203%20installation%20experience
<https://wiki.list.org/DOC/Mailman%203%20installation%20experience> 
This
starts off with "For both installs I started with mailman-bundler."
But https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman-bundler
<https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman-bundler> says "All of this
documentation is obsolete!  Mailman Bundler is no longer
recommended or
supported. "  So...

I have yet to find a step-by-step 'bare OS to running MM3" document.
I've run MM2.1 lists for years, it wasn't this hard to get started.
Just install and edit one config file (plus the webserver.).  I don't
want to learn a zillion other technologies just to get started - e.g.

But, I decided to see how far I could get.  I tried this, based on pip
search mailman:

dnf install python3 python3-devel (gets 3.5.3)
pip3 install mailman postorius mailmanclient HyperKitty
mailman-hyperkitty KittyStore

All went well until KittyStore, which (0.9.3 is what pip found)
died with:
Collecting storm (from KittyStore)
  Downloading storm-0.20.tar.bz2 (213kB)
    100% |################################| 215kB 318kB/s
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/tmp/pip-build-wzs03r_4/storm/setup.py", line 5, in
<module>
        import ez_setup
      File "/tmp/pip-build-wzs03r_4/storm/ez_setup.py", line 106
        except pkg_resources.VersionConflict, e:
                                            ^
    SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Well, set that aside, and install the rest, which seems to work.

Try again with KittyStore, same failure.  So maybe skip the
archive for now.

Try 'mailman info', another syntax error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/xmlconfig.py",
line
272, in endElementNS
    self.context.end()
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/config.py",
line 345, in end
    self.stack.pop().finish()
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/config.py",
line 452, in finish
    args = toargs(context, *self.argdata)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/config.py",
line 794, in toargs
    args[str(name)] = field.fromUnicode(s)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/fields.py",
line 73, in fromUnicode
    value = self.context.resolve(name)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/config.py",
line 151, in resolve
    mod = __import__(mname, *_import_chickens)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/database/factory.py",
line 22, in <module>
    import alembic.command
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/alembic/command.py", line
3, in
<module>
    from .script import ScriptDirectory
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/alembic/script/__init__.py",
line 1, in <module>
    from .base import ScriptDirectory, Script  # noqa
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/alembic/script/base.py", line
2, in <module>
    from dateutil import tz
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/dateutil/tz.py", line 78
    `self._name`,
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/mailman", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('mailman==3.1.0', 'console_scripts', 'mailman')()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/bin/mailman.py", line
97, in main
    initialize(config_path)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/core/initialize.py",
line 184, in initialize
    initialize_1(config_path)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/core/initialize.py",
line 101, in initialize_1
    xmlconfig.string(zcml.decode('utf-8'))
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/xmlconfig.py",
line
513, in string
    processxmlfile(f, context)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/xmlconfig.py",
line
295, in processxmlfile
    parser.parse(src)
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 110, in
parse
    xmlreader.IncrementalParser.parse(self, source)
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/xml/sax/xmlreader.py", line 125, in parse
    self.feed(buffer)
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 210, in
feed
    self._parser.Parse(data, isFinal)
  File "/builddir/build/BUILD/Python-3.5.3/Modules/pyexpat.c",
line 468,
in EndElement
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 370, in
end_element_ns
    self._cont_handler.endElementNS(pair, None)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/xmlconfig.py",
line
281, in endElementNS
    None, sys.exc_info()[2])
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/_compat.py",
line 38, in reraise
    raise value.with_traceback(tb)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/xmlconfig.py",
line
272, in endElementNS
    self.context.end()
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/config.py",
line 345, in end
    self.stack.pop().finish()
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/config.py",
line 452, in finish
    args = toargs(context, *self.argdata)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/config.py",
line 794, in toargs
    args[str(name)] = field.fromUnicode(s)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/fields.py",
line 73, in fromUnicode
    value = self.context.resolve(name)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/configuration/config.py",
line 151, in resolve
    mod = __import__(mname, *_import_chickens)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/database/factory.py",
line 22, in <module>
    import alembic.command
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/alembic/command.py", line
3, in
<module>
    from .script import ScriptDirectory
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/alembic/script/__init__.py",
line 1, in <module>
    from .base import ScriptDirectory, Script  # noqa
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/alembic/script/base.py", line
2, in <module>
    from dateutil import tz
zope.configuration.xmlconfig.ZopeXMLConfigurationError: File
"<string>",
line 65.2-69.6
    SyntaxError: invalid syntax (tz.py, line 78)

And the same traceback from 'mailman start'

https://pythonhosted.org/mailman/src/mailman/docs/START.html
<https://pythonhosted.org/mailman/src/mailman/docs/START.html>
refers to
src/mailman/config/schema.cfg,
/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/config/schema.cfg exists.

http://docs.list.org/en/latest/prodsetup.html
<http://docs.list.org/en/latest/prodsetup.html> refers to "Your Django
Site's settings.py".  I don't have any (other) Django sites.  "locate"
turns up
/usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/conf/global_settings.py,
but it
looks to me as if Mailman needs one (or maybe one/list) Django site.

Bottom line - I'd like to try Mailman 3 for a new project - especially
since I pre-process inbound mail, and will have to speak LMTP. 
But I'm
lost trying to follow the scattered docs that try to explain how to
bring it up.

Any pointers, or efforts to record a from-scratch install would be
appreciated.

Also, is version 3 supplying equivalents to the Mailman 2.1 list_lists
and config_list utilities, or do I have to interface to the new REST
API?  (For the latter, I only really need to import and export the
topics definitions....)




------------------------------------------------------
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org
<mailto:Mailman-Users@python.org>
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
<https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users>
Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3
Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9
Searchable Archives:
http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/
<http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/>
Unsubscribe:
https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/mark%40nervous.org
<https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/mark%40nervous.org>

-- This communication may not represent my employer's views, if any, on the matters discussed.

From: Mailman-Users [mailto:mailman-users- bounces+rosenbaumlm=ornl.gov@python.org] On Behalf Of Mark Sapiro

At the moment it actually says "The backend requires Python 3.4 or newer while the frontend requires Python 2.7"

What that means is the Mailman core (mailman) and and the Mailman - HyperKitty plugin (mailman-hyperkitty) require Python 3 (3.4, 3.5 and 3.6 are supported).

Postorius (postorius), HyperKitty (mailman-hyperkitty) and therefore the supporting project modules they import, mailmanclient and django-mailman3 all require Python 2.7.

Does that mean _at_least_ 2.7, or does it mean I need two different versions of Python on the same box, or does it mean I need two boxes?

On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 06:53:37PM -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:

It means Postorius (postorius), HyperKitty (mailman-hyperkitty) and therefore the supporting project modules they import, mailmanclient and django-mailman3 all require Python 2.7. Not 'at least' Python 2.7, but some 2.7.x.

Python 2.7 and Python 3 are significantly different. Programs can be bilingual, but not all of Postorius, HyperKitty and their dependencies are fully Python 3 compatible yet.

This means you need Python 3.4 or later for Mailman core and Python 2.7.x for Postorius and HyperKitty. These are quite capable of coexisting on the same box and that is probably what you want, but it is possible to run Postorius and HyperKitty on a separate box, but there are potential security issues involved in exposing the core's REST interface beyond 'localhost'.

This is all true, but personally I can't see any likelihood of any noticeable uptake of Mailman 3 until it will all run on one version of Python.

Having said that, if there's any specific help needed to achieve that then I'm potentially willing to put some work in.

Hi Larry,

Does that mean _at_least_ 2.7, or does it mean I need two different

versions of Python on the same box, or does it mean I need two boxes?

The virtualenv tool will solve this problem for you. From http://python-guide-pt-br.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev/virtualenvs/ :

A Virtual Environment is a tool to keep the dependencies required by different projects in separate places, by creating virtual Python environments for them. It solves the “Project X depends on version 1.x but, Project Y needs 4.x” dilemma, and keeps your global site-packages directory clean and manageable.

It allows you to have application-specific versions of the python interpreter and python packages on the same machine. The global (server default) version of python will no longer be relevant.

virtualenv -p python3 will give you python 3 for Mailman 3 Core. virtualenv will give you python 2 for the other apps.

Mark