[Mailman-Users] moving mailman...

[Jon Carnes]

On Mon, 2003-05-05 at 10:01, Douglas King wrote:
> Greetings all....
> 
> OK, the move was completed last night, however got the following error 
> message when running the permissions thing:
> 
> The only problem was I cannot run check_perms.  It craters out with an error.
> 
> [root at e-maillist lists]# ../bin/check_perms
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "../bin/check_perms", line 51, in ?
>      MAILMAN_GID = grp.getgrnam(MAILMAN_GROUP)[2]
> KeyError: getgrnam(): name not found
> 
> I don't know if that is a bug in check_perms or if it is a real problem.
> 
This is telling you that it cannot find the local group "mailman" (or if
you compiled Mailman to use some other group, it can't find that
specific group on this system).

Mailman uses group rights to control it's access.  The "mailman" user
must belong to the "mailman" group, and all files in ~mailman must
belong to the group "mailman" (and most of them must be set GID).  Most
important right now is that the Group actually exists!


> 
> Also, would it be possible, in future upgrades to MM, to ADD a scheduled 
> message functionality to the server?  I host some notice mail lists...and 
> this function would be a great help (trying to compete with Yahoo Groups).
> 
If you mean periodic sendings of mailings like FAQ's then you do this
via cron.  It works well.  Take a look at Mailman's cron and you will
see many process that are already kicked off at various times.

If you mean sending a note early and then scheduling when it will be
sent out - that is not a part of Mailman.  This is a function built-in
to many Email clients (as an example Evolution has this functionality).

That functionality could easily be built-into Mailman.  But you would
need some cue to indicate to Mailman the earliest date/time that the
message should be dropped into the queue.  The cue could be a header (if
your email client allows for mysterious headers to be added), or it
could be something added to the Subject in special parenthesis:
  [5/5 @ 4:00am]

I would prefer to add a secondary alias like "<listname>-delay at foo.com"
Then the first line of the message would be the date/time for the
scheduled delivery.  The setup of this could easily be a stand-alone
program which simply queues the message and then drops it into the Mail
queue at the specified data/time.  I already have a similar program
which does this for turning Vacation messages on/off.

> Also....in your upgrades...can an UPGRADE RPM be done as well?  I use Red 
> Hat as the OS, but not really "savvy" yet on Linux.
> 
You will have to talk directly with the maintainer of the RPM that you
use.  There are a couple of folks who voluntarily make rpms for Mailman
- of course Red Hat does it internally as well (Mailman is included with
their distro).

If you drop it into their Bugzilla database, you might get some
response.

> Thanks again for the adding the "real user name" in this version!
> 
> 
> 
> At 07:42 AM 5/5/2003 -0500, Mitchell Marks wrote:
> 
> >Jon and the group,
> >
> >May I add two detail questions?
> >
> >         -- You didn't mention fix_url.py.  Is that needed if the new 
> > server is at a different URL?

You are correct!  that was my bad assumption.  I assumed from the
question that the new server was going to be named the same as the old
server (less confusion to the users of the lists!).

If the server name changes or the url to access the server pages change,
then he will have to run fix_url.py after modifying the default settings
in ~mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py

> >
> >         -- In my case the MM versions on the old and new hosts are 2.1.1 
> > and 2.1.2.  Do I still need check_db?

I'm not aware of any database changes from 2.1.1 to 2.1.2, so you should
just be able to copy the lists over and be done (as long as the url is
correct for each copied list).

> >
> >Thanks!
> >
> >   -- Mitch Marks
> >
> >
> >At 01:36 PM 5/4/03, Jon Carnes wrote:
> >>On Thu, 2003-05-01 at 11:58, Douglas King wrote:
> >> > I am wanting to move the machines I am running Mailman on.  I currently am
> >> > running Mailman version 2.0.10 along with our mail server.  I have built
> >> > another box with Red Hat 9.0 on it with MM version 2.1 on it.  HOW can I
> >> > export all the mail lists from one machine to the other.  Can it be done
> >> > easily?  If so, please advise exactly what directories, files, etc. 
> >> need to
> >> > be moved to successfully accomplish this.
> >> >
> >> > Thanks
> >>
> >>copy the ~mailman/lists/.. directory from the old machine to the new
> >>machine.  Grab the archives as well if you wish (~mailman/archives/..).
> >>
> >>Do a "~mailman/bin/check_perms" to make sure your rights didn't get
> >>mucked up during the copy.
> >>
> >>Do a "~mailman/bin/check_db <listname>" for each of the lists you just
> >>moved over.  Mailman will update each list as you go and you will now
> >>find a .pck file in each lists directory.
> >>
> >>That should be all you need to do.
> >>
> >>Good Luck - Jon Carnes
> >
> >--
> >Mitchell Marks
> >CUIP Tech Coordinator    http://cuip.uchicago.edu
> >CUIP: Chicago Public Schools / Univ. of Chicago Internet Project
> >5640 S Ellis Ave  AAC-045, Univ of Chgo, Chgo IL 60637
> >
> >Telephone:  Ofc 773-702-6041
> >         Fax 702-8212
> >         Home (v.m. only, ok any time) 241-7166
> >Email: Primary address: mitch at cuip.uchicago.edu
> >         Alternate UofC addresses (use especially to report problems with 
> > cuip.uchicago.edu): mitchell at cs.uchicago.edu and mmar at midway.uchicago.edu
> >         Off-campus (ISP) address: mmarks at pobox.com
> >
> >Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary parts.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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