[Mailman-Users] Setting up lists on a replacement list server w/different name

Mark Sapiro msapiro at value.net
Fri Nov 18 06:02:20 CET 2005


Greg Earle wrote:
>
>When the introductory e-mail went out, one (important) user quickly
>pointed out that he didn't like the idea of the new machine's name
>being used - he'd rather use "list at rushmore" than "list at rushmorex".
>I have to say, I agree with him.  It seems like Mailman is very
>"machine name-sensitive" - for example, if I try to create a list
>using
>
>	http://rushmorex/cgi-bin/create
>
>it rejects it with "No such virtual host", but if I use the FQHN
>
>	http://rushmorex.my.do.main/cgi-bin/create
>
>it works.  (I should note here that I am using Postfix on the new
>"rushmorex" host, but I am not using Virtual Domains anywhere in
>this setup - either in Postfix or in Mailman.  It's a very simple
>setup at present.)


Since you are not using virtual domains, you can set
VIRTUAL_HOST_OVERVIEW = Off in mm_cfg.py. This will cause mailman to
ignore lots of host name discrepancies, but it won't really solve your
problem.

For example, it would allow you to create a list from
<http://rushmorex/cgi-bin/create>, and such a list wiil have it's
email host set to DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST, but its web page url will be
something like <http://rushmorex/mailman/> (or whatever results from
substituting 'rushmorex' into DEFAULT_URL_PATTERN) which wouldn't work
from outside your local domain.


>I'm pretty new to Mailman and Postfix (I'm more familiar with
>Sendmail and Courier on Solaris) so I'm not really sure how to
>address this - I suppose one answer is to simply turn the old
>box off and rename the new one "rushmore" and *then* mass-create
>the lists on the new one so they all have "rushmore" tagged in
>them (from "list at rushmore" to any embedded references to "rushmore"
>in the Mailman files), but that's a bit touchy - some of the
>lists on the old one are still used daily, and some are rather
>important (like our Section mailing list, used every day).


If you were to do this, you wouldn't need to create lists on the new
box. Just stop incoming mail on the old Machine, allow the queues to
drain, copy the lists/ and archives/ directories from the old machine
to the new and start mailman on the new machine and switch the DNS.


>I
>suppose another method would be to be sneaky and sneak in an MX
>change to send all mail intended for "rushmore" over to "rushmorex"
>instead and let it handle it that way, but then there's the race
>condition to get the new lists up and running so that it'll work
>as soon as the new MX kicks in.
>
>Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can best deal with this
>scenario?

As above.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan




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