![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I've got a mailing list running successfully in Mailman, formerly on my own server, now being hosted at Dreamhost. A peculiarity of their implementation is that I don't have access to the archive files or any of the other mailman-specific directories; or apparently to the executables either (I haven't looked really hard, or asked; it's not key to my question).
I've also got old archives of the mailing list, both old ezmlm archives, and from a more recent incarnation a large mbox file collected by a user (and a good thing, since I managed to lose my copy in a disk meltdown).
What I think I want to do is leave the new/current mailing list, and its archives, alone, and put up the old archives in my web space. (A more aggressive approach would be to try to attach my old archives to the beginning of the new/current archive, so everything would be in one place. That would require a lot of reliance on Dreamhost tech support, since I don't have access to those files/directories, and they might not even be willing to do it.)
So, what executables and configuration settings are key to this? I need to run "arch", it looks like, and have a mailing list configured that will define where it puts the resulting HTML files. Maybe also stuff to make the page templates match the rest of the website (I did that for the ezmlm-cgi version). And I only have to do this once (just to convert the old archives, static, no more messages).
Might I be better off approaching this via pipermail? I'm not really clear, but I think that's a library for message archive handling, which mailman uses for its archives? So it might have all the parts of what I need, and maybe give me more freedom to write page layouts?
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Answering my own question, on the off-chance somebody else now or in the future cares...
On 8/29/06, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> wrote:
I've made significant progress on this. I built a private copy of mailman, to run under my username (never to actually be connected to incoming email; just so that I can create and configure lists and run arch on them).
The configure command I used was:
./configure --with-username=ddb --with-groupname=ddb --prefix=/home/ddb/mailman
I can create a list with bin/newlist, and I can then run bin/arch and import mbox list archives, and it builds web pages that serve up just fine.
I believe I need to do more to configure the list, so that for example the list name appears somewhere on the archive pages. I'm not yet sure if I should do this via command line tools, or if I need to hook it up so the list admin web pages work on this private copy of mailman.
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
The list's real_name attribute is what will appear in the archive web pages. This is the listname given to bin/newlist with possible capitalization differences. You can modify the capitalization if desired with bin/config_list before running bin/arch. Once you've run bin/arch, it's built in to the web pages (you can run bin/arch --wipe to rebuild them)
You don't need to run the web interface for anything assuming the archive is 'public'. Also, since the archive is static, you don't need the list (or Mailman) at all after the archive is created.
You may wish to write some kind of script to remove the 'more information about this list' links from the contents and index pages.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mark Sapiro wrote:
You may wish to write some kind of script to remove the 'more information about this list' links from the contents and index pages.
Or you can remove them from the templates before running bin/arch.
templates/en/archtoc.html templates/en/archtocnombox.html templates/en/archidxhead.html templates/en/archidxfoot.html
assuming English.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 9/1/06, Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> wrote:
Ah, and the individual article template really doesn't contain any identification of the list. Well, now I know where to fix that.
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 9/1/06, Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> wrote:
Hey, looking at those templates plus article.html, I can put in the CSS stuff I want right there; the code doesn't even have to be touched.
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 9/1/06, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> wrote:
So, here's the sort of thing I meant. This is the article.html template, modified with a lot more structure and ID and CLASS tags. With this I can do remarkable amounts of format control (to make it match the appearance of an existing site) by providing a style sheet.
Now on to do the *other* templates to my satisfaction!
Ways in which this is not a drop-in replacement:
- Adds the list name to the page title line
- Requires that a style sheet file be put in the mailing list archive directory for each list; and I haven't made the changes to list creation to do that automatically.
It should be easy to create a style sheet that, except for #1, makes the results look identical to the old templates, but I haven't done that yet.
Anybody think this is worth working up more thoroughly and contributing? Or is it all going to be rolled over by other work currently ongoing that will do all this in more in a more flexible way?
!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>%(listname)s: %(title)s
</TITLE>
<LINK REL="Index" HREF="index.html" >
<LINK REL="made"
HREF="mailto:%(email_url)s?Subject=%(subject_url)s;In-Reply-To=%(in_reply_to_
url)s">
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index,nofollow">
<LINK REL="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../liststyle.css" />
<LINK REL="shortcut icon" href="../listfavicon.ico" />
%(encoding)s
%(prev)s
%(next)s
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">
<DIV ID="wholepage">
<DIV ID="artlisthead">%(listname)s</DIV>
<DIV ID="pagebody">
<H1 ID="arthead">%(subject_html)s</H1>
<DIV ID="artsend">
<DIV ID="artsender"><SPAN CLASS="artauthname">%(author_html)s</SPAN>
<A HREF="mailto:%(email_url)s?Subject=%(subject_url)s;In-Reply-To=%(in_reply_to_url)s"
TITLE="%(subject_html)s" class="artauthmailto">%(email_html)s
</A></DIV>
<DIV ID="artsendtime"><SPAN
CLASS="artdatestr">%(datestr_html)s</SPAN></DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV ID="artprenav">
<DIV class="artnav"><UL CLASS="artnav">
%(prev_wsubj)s
%(next_wsubj)s
<LI> <SPAN CLASS="artnavhd">Messages sorted by:</SPAN>
<a href="date.html#%(sequence)s">[ date ]</a>
<a href="thread.html#%(sequence)s">[ thread ]</a>
<a href="subject.html#%(sequence)s">[ subject ]</a>
<a href="author.html#%(sequence)s">[ author ]</a>
</LI>
</UL></DIV>
</DIV>
<HR ID="artabove">
<DIV ID="artbody">
<!--beginarticle-->
%(body)s
<!--endarticle-->
</DIV>
<HR ID="artbelow">
<DIV ID="artpostnav">
<DIV class="artnav"><UL CLASS="artnav">
%(prev_wsubj)s
%(next_wsubj)s
<LI> <SPAN CLASS="artnavhd">Messages sorted by:</SPAN>
<a href="date.html#%(sequence)s">[ date ]</a>
<a href="thread.html#%(sequence)s">[ thread ]</a>
<a href="subject.html#%(sequence)s">[ subject ]</a>
<a href="author.html#%(sequence)s">[ author ]</a>
</LI>
</UL></DIV>
</DIV>
<hr ID="artbot">
<DIV ID="artlistinfo"><a href="%(listurl)s">More information about
the %(listname)s
mailing list</a></DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
</body></html>
And here's a stylesheet to work with it:
/* Dragaera list style sheet, as modifications to default mail archive style sheet. */ @import url(http://dev.dragaera.info/d2.css); /* @impurt url(/mailmanarchive.css); */ /* Local overrides */ /* For now put everything here */
div#pagebody { margin: 25px; }
div#artlisthead { position: relative; overflow: hidden; text-align: center; height: 64px; font-size: 260%; font-weight: 900; font-family: garamond, "times new roman", times, serif; background-color: black; background-image: url(http://dev.dragaera.info/images/imperialorb.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: top left; color: rgb(167,243,239); } span.artauthname { font-weight: bold; } span.artdatestr { font-style: italic; } span.artnavhd { font-weight: bold; } hr#artabove { display: none } hr#artbelow { display: none } h1#arthead:first-letter { font-size: 6ex; color: rgb(255,131,63) ; } div#artbody { border: rgb(255,131,63) solid thin; margin: 25px; padding: 15px; } div#artbody pre { font-family: "courier new" courier "lucida console" mono; display: block; overflow: auto; }
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 9/1/06, Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> wrote:
Ah, config_list is what I'm looking for I'm sure. Thanks!
I've looked at the output of the tests, of course, so I know the archives are all static; that's one reason I'm taking this approach, it's a do-once-and-back-up scenario, it won't need any future effort once it's done.
I'm hoping arch doesn't choke on the 43MB mbox file.
Since I'm running everything as user ddb and user ddb owns everything, even private archives should be accessible. Doesn't matter, for this purpose I'm setting them up as public (I'm not even doing this on the destination system, they'll be tared up and moved when I get them right).
You may wish to write some kind of script to remove the 'more information about this list' links from the contents and index pages.
Or change the template, as someone suggested.
For the couple of extinct lists I should do something like that (or point it to the page explaining what the list *was* and that it's extinct).
For the big list, it's still active, so I'm pointing to it's live page. I'm just getting old archives together to put online. I'm not merging them into the new archives because of peculiarities in Dreamhosts support of mailman -- while I control evertyhing through the mailman web pages, I don't actually have filesystem visibility into any of it, not even readonly. So the old archives will be separate from the new archives.
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Answering my own question, on the off-chance somebody else now or in the future cares...
On 8/29/06, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> wrote:
I've made significant progress on this. I built a private copy of mailman, to run under my username (never to actually be connected to incoming email; just so that I can create and configure lists and run arch on them).
The configure command I used was:
./configure --with-username=ddb --with-groupname=ddb --prefix=/home/ddb/mailman
I can create a list with bin/newlist, and I can then run bin/arch and import mbox list archives, and it builds web pages that serve up just fine.
I believe I need to do more to configure the list, so that for example the list name appears somewhere on the archive pages. I'm not yet sure if I should do this via command line tools, or if I need to hook it up so the list admin web pages work on this private copy of mailman.
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
The list's real_name attribute is what will appear in the archive web pages. This is the listname given to bin/newlist with possible capitalization differences. You can modify the capitalization if desired with bin/config_list before running bin/arch. Once you've run bin/arch, it's built in to the web pages (you can run bin/arch --wipe to rebuild them)
You don't need to run the web interface for anything assuming the archive is 'public'. Also, since the archive is static, you don't need the list (or Mailman) at all after the archive is created.
You may wish to write some kind of script to remove the 'more information about this list' links from the contents and index pages.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mark Sapiro wrote:
You may wish to write some kind of script to remove the 'more information about this list' links from the contents and index pages.
Or you can remove them from the templates before running bin/arch.
templates/en/archtoc.html templates/en/archtocnombox.html templates/en/archidxhead.html templates/en/archidxfoot.html
assuming English.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 9/1/06, Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> wrote:
Ah, and the individual article template really doesn't contain any identification of the list. Well, now I know where to fix that.
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 9/1/06, Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> wrote:
Hey, looking at those templates plus article.html, I can put in the CSS stuff I want right there; the code doesn't even have to be touched.
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 9/1/06, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> wrote:
So, here's the sort of thing I meant. This is the article.html template, modified with a lot more structure and ID and CLASS tags. With this I can do remarkable amounts of format control (to make it match the appearance of an existing site) by providing a style sheet.
Now on to do the *other* templates to my satisfaction!
Ways in which this is not a drop-in replacement:
- Adds the list name to the page title line
- Requires that a style sheet file be put in the mailing list archive directory for each list; and I haven't made the changes to list creation to do that automatically.
It should be easy to create a style sheet that, except for #1, makes the results look identical to the old templates, but I haven't done that yet.
Anybody think this is worth working up more thoroughly and contributing? Or is it all going to be rolled over by other work currently ongoing that will do all this in more in a more flexible way?
!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>%(listname)s: %(title)s
</TITLE>
<LINK REL="Index" HREF="index.html" >
<LINK REL="made"
HREF="mailto:%(email_url)s?Subject=%(subject_url)s;In-Reply-To=%(in_reply_to_
url)s">
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index,nofollow">
<LINK REL="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../liststyle.css" />
<LINK REL="shortcut icon" href="../listfavicon.ico" />
%(encoding)s
%(prev)s
%(next)s
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">
<DIV ID="wholepage">
<DIV ID="artlisthead">%(listname)s</DIV>
<DIV ID="pagebody">
<H1 ID="arthead">%(subject_html)s</H1>
<DIV ID="artsend">
<DIV ID="artsender"><SPAN CLASS="artauthname">%(author_html)s</SPAN>
<A HREF="mailto:%(email_url)s?Subject=%(subject_url)s;In-Reply-To=%(in_reply_to_url)s"
TITLE="%(subject_html)s" class="artauthmailto">%(email_html)s
</A></DIV>
<DIV ID="artsendtime"><SPAN
CLASS="artdatestr">%(datestr_html)s</SPAN></DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV ID="artprenav">
<DIV class="artnav"><UL CLASS="artnav">
%(prev_wsubj)s
%(next_wsubj)s
<LI> <SPAN CLASS="artnavhd">Messages sorted by:</SPAN>
<a href="date.html#%(sequence)s">[ date ]</a>
<a href="thread.html#%(sequence)s">[ thread ]</a>
<a href="subject.html#%(sequence)s">[ subject ]</a>
<a href="author.html#%(sequence)s">[ author ]</a>
</LI>
</UL></DIV>
</DIV>
<HR ID="artabove">
<DIV ID="artbody">
<!--beginarticle-->
%(body)s
<!--endarticle-->
</DIV>
<HR ID="artbelow">
<DIV ID="artpostnav">
<DIV class="artnav"><UL CLASS="artnav">
%(prev_wsubj)s
%(next_wsubj)s
<LI> <SPAN CLASS="artnavhd">Messages sorted by:</SPAN>
<a href="date.html#%(sequence)s">[ date ]</a>
<a href="thread.html#%(sequence)s">[ thread ]</a>
<a href="subject.html#%(sequence)s">[ subject ]</a>
<a href="author.html#%(sequence)s">[ author ]</a>
</LI>
</UL></DIV>
</DIV>
<hr ID="artbot">
<DIV ID="artlistinfo"><a href="%(listurl)s">More information about
the %(listname)s
mailing list</a></DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
</body></html>
And here's a stylesheet to work with it:
/* Dragaera list style sheet, as modifications to default mail archive style sheet. */ @import url(http://dev.dragaera.info/d2.css); /* @impurt url(/mailmanarchive.css); */ /* Local overrides */ /* For now put everything here */
div#pagebody { margin: 25px; }
div#artlisthead { position: relative; overflow: hidden; text-align: center; height: 64px; font-size: 260%; font-weight: 900; font-family: garamond, "times new roman", times, serif; background-color: black; background-image: url(http://dev.dragaera.info/images/imperialorb.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: top left; color: rgb(167,243,239); } span.artauthname { font-weight: bold; } span.artdatestr { font-style: italic; } span.artnavhd { font-weight: bold; } hr#artabove { display: none } hr#artbelow { display: none } h1#arthead:first-letter { font-size: 6ex; color: rgb(255,131,63) ; } div#artbody { border: rgb(255,131,63) solid thin; margin: 25px; padding: 15px; } div#artbody pre { font-family: "courier new" courier "lucida console" mono; display: block; overflow: auto; }
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4a0fd87f4c35e51fdabe7a3ade1147b3.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 9/1/06, Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> wrote:
Ah, config_list is what I'm looking for I'm sure. Thanks!
I've looked at the output of the tests, of course, so I know the archives are all static; that's one reason I'm taking this approach, it's a do-once-and-back-up scenario, it won't need any future effort once it's done.
I'm hoping arch doesn't choke on the 43MB mbox file.
Since I'm running everything as user ddb and user ddb owns everything, even private archives should be accessible. Doesn't matter, for this purpose I'm setting them up as public (I'm not even doing this on the destination system, they'll be tared up and moved when I get them right).
You may wish to write some kind of script to remove the 'more information about this list' links from the contents and index pages.
Or change the template, as someone suggested.
For the couple of extinct lists I should do something like that (or point it to the page explaining what the list *was* and that it's extinct).
For the big list, it's still active, so I'm pointing to it's live page. I'm just getting old archives together to put online. I'm not merging them into the new archives because of peculiarities in Dreamhosts support of mailman -- while I control evertyhing through the mailman web pages, I don't actually have filesystem visibility into any of it, not even readonly. So the old archives will be separate from the new archives.
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
participants (2)
-
David Dyer-Bennet
-
Mark Sapiro