[Mailman-Users] NNTP server for "local" newsgroups ?

[Barry Warsaw]

On Dec 22, 2009, at 5:35 PM, John Fitzsimons wrote:

> Would you mind explaining that a bit more please ? Would the end 
> user need to install Twisted first to get NNTP access to Mailman
> archives ?

The end user wouldn't but the system administrator for the Mailman site would.  It would be optional of course.

> When you say "archives" do you mean "old posts" ? Or would this
> provide the "live" NNTP < > email list mirroring that I am looking 
> for ?

Yes, old posts.  Of course, three seconds after the message is approved and being sent to the list membership, it's "old" :)

> As you appear to have already provided email to NNTP mirroring ability
> eg. Gmane would your version 3 provide the install of an NNTP server
> with the Mailman install ?

Well, there's a lot to work out with respect to packaging, but the idea is that you could run a local NNTP server that people could connect to with their newsreaders.  It would work very much like Gmane (though we'd have to work out posting via NNTP issues).

> "you can also make some changes to the way your web server is set up
> so that your users can access your newsgroups through the same URL as
> your web site. There is no need to include unsightly port numbers in
> the URL. This can also overcome problems of people not being able
> to read your newsgroups because of their firewall settings.
> 
> < snip >
> 
> we use the Apache web server with the mod_proxy module. Similar
> approaches are available with most other web servers. For IIS, you
> will either need Microsoft Proxy Server, Microsoft Internet
> Acceleration Server, or a third-party ISAPI module (such as
> http://www.isapirewrite.com/) to have the same effect.
> 
> < snip >
> 
> For details on how to set this up on your own web server, see the
> Apache mod_proxy documentation or the documentation for whatever web
> server or proxy server you are using, and look for details on how to
> set up a "reverse proxy".
> 
> Don't know whether that helps, or is relevant to the discussion.

Hmm, I'm not sure how it is relevant to NNTP access to the mailing lists.

-Barry