[Mailman-Users] Backing up Mailman list installations

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001 02:09:17 -0500 
Jon Carnes <jonc at haht.com> wrote:

> Cool scripts.  

Hacks really.

> I used to do something similar, and then I moved over to using
> "ncftp" to drop the tarball off on my backup-server.  A matter of
> preference, but I like that better than mailing myself the
> tarball.

Originally I kept the tarballs as versioned files in a ZOO archive.
I didn't like this as ZOO suffers as a tool and there was no
distribution.

Then I used to SSH/scp the tarballs to myself on another system.  I
didn't like this as it required that the tool that did the file copy
must be able to authenticate itself on the other system (ie SSH
public key authentication).  I didn't like that as compromise of the
local system thereby implied compromise of the the other system as
well (or at least questions of untrusted shell access).  Not good.

No I mail them.  No trust models required other than the fact that
I'm implicitly exposing the tarballs en-route to interception, and
thus the password/membership base as well.  Well, that would be a
problem except that the root account on that box delivers to a local
mbox which I collect over an IMAP-SSL connection (the wonders of
fetchmail).

So, I get a decent trust model *and* distribution.

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.