[Mailman-Users] How can I get an ascii dump of the mailman users list for a backup?

[Brad Knowles]

on 11/28/08 2:30 PM, Robin McCain said:

> I need to backup my mailman database and do some user maintenance - how 
> can I get a .csv file or something similar so I can compare the present 
> list to the list I entered 6 months ago?

You won't get a .csv file.  Mailman does not generate files that would 
be suitable for importing into anything remotely resembling a spreadsheet.

If you read FAQ 4.9 (see 
<http://wiki.list.org/display/DOC/4.09+Summary+of+the+mailman+bin+commands>), 
you'll note a number of commands related to user membership, and the 
specific command "list_members" will show you who all is subscribed to 
whatever list you specify.  That's probably the closest you're going to get.

>                                           I tried to install Mailman 
> using MySQL so this would be easy to do, but it ignored MySQL and 
> created its own database.

Mailman 2.x does not properly understand any kind of real database, like 
MySQL.  There are *unsupported* MySQL member adapters that you can 
install, but you're pretty much completely on your own with regards to 
anything related to them -- if you have any questions with regards to 
them, you should contact the member adapter authors, not us.

We hope to fix this properly in Mailman3, but we can't give you any kind 
of timeframe for when that will be delivered.

> Are there any tools to extract statistical data out of the mailman 
> database?

Searching the Mailman FAQ wiki for "statistic", the most obvious hit is 
FAQ 1.30 "Does Mailman have a statistics/log analysis module, or any 
marketing-related modules?", at 
<http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030678>.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>