[Mailman-Users] Managing lists as a non-root/Mailman user

[Brad Knowles]

At 4:10 PM +0100 4/17/07, Martyn Drake wrote:

>  For the purposes of automation, I need to be able to run the various
>  management scripts neither as root or Mailman (primarily because the
>  script will be run by a network account not local to the Mailman
>  machine).  What would be the easiest way of doing this?  Create a
>  network group called Mailman and add the user to that?

In terms of running the command-line scripts, you really have no 
option -- they have to be run as root or the Mailman user, and on the 
local box.  The files that they would be operating on simply don't 
exist anywhere else.

Now, if your Mailman server is operating on files that are mounted 
via NFS, then the command-line scripts would need to be executed as 
root or the Mailman user on the remote system where the files are 
visible, but keep in mind that NFS causes a lot of problems for file 
locking which would typically be required for proper use of the 
administration tools, especially anything that would be opening and 
working with Python "pickle" files for internal list configuration, 
list membership, messages that are currently being processed by 
Mailman, etc....


In terms of scripting the web-based GUI administration of the list, 
see FAQ 3.53.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>, Consultant & Author
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4>