[Mailman-Users] separate mailman and web servers

[Peter]

Le Samedi 3 Février 2007 22:50, Mark Sapiro a écrit :
> Peter wrote:
> > Le Samedi 3 Février 2007 15:37, Patrick Bogen a écrit :
> >> On 1/31/07, Peter Matulis <pmatulis at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> >>> Can someone explain to me how mailman and the web server can
> >>> exist on separate machines?  I am new to mailman and I'm having a
> >>> hard time understanding how mailman communicates with its web
> >>> server.  I have a new client that connects to an external web
> >>> server to add list members but mailman (and postfix) runs on a
> >>> local system.
> >>
> >> I believe this would have to work with Mailman acting upon and
> >> reading from files that are stored in such a way that the external
> >> web server can access them. This means:
> >>
> >> (a) The files are stored on the Mailman server, and the web server
> >> accesses them through something like NFS.
> >> (b) The files are stored on the web server, and the mailman server
> >> accesses them through something like NFS.
> >> (c) The files are stored in a third server, and both the web
> >> server and the mailman server access them through something like
> >> NFS.
> >
> > No, the web server is on the internet and the mailman server is on
> > the lan.

Thank you for this informative reply.

> I'm not sure how the fact that one machine is 'on the internet' and
> the other is 'on the lan' relates to Patrick's answer, so let's go
> back to your original question.

Well he is mentioning NFS so it sounded like he presumed both servers 
were on the internal lan.

> Mailman's web pages are built by CGIs which access basic Mailman
> classes, methods and functions defined in a set of Mailman modules.
> These classes, methods and functions access various Mailman data.
> Most of this is the list's configuration and membership which is
> normally a Mailman list object saved as a Python pickle in
> /some/path/to/lists/<listname>/config.pck.

Ok.

> Mailman's email processing is done by a set of qrunner processes
> accessing the same Modules and data as above. There is one (or
> possibly more) qrunner process for each queue - in, out, archive,
> commands, bounces, news, retry and virgin.

Ok.

> Incoming mail is normally piped by the incoming MTA to a wrapper
> which invokes a script to store the message in a queue to be
> processed by one of the qrunners.

Somehow Postfix on my lan must have this wrapper configured to talk to 
the Mailman also running on the localhost.

> If both the web pages and the lists are accessing and updating 'live'
> data, and the web server and the qrunners are not on the same
> machine, they must be accessing the same list data via some file
> sharing scheme. Normally, they would also access the same Mailman
> modules, but this isn't necessary.

There must be some synchronization happening somewhere because changes 
are being made on the web server.

> If the web is used only for inquiry and not update, it could be
> operating on copies which are updated periodically, but if the web
> interface is used to make any changes, both it and the qrunners must
> access the same data and queues.

The client has told me that they access the web server to make changes.

PM