[Mailman-Users] Mailman installation on Solaris 10

[Mark Sapiro]

Hank van Cleef wrote:
>
>I went through the Mailman web page to find a download site.  Going to
>Sourceforge offers only 2.12.rc1 unless you click "stable" on the
>first screen.  I was unable to download either 2.1.11 or 2.1.12 from
>Sourceforge.  That site links to Superb Hosting, which appears to be
>unresponsive.  I had to get the software from the alternative GNU
>site.


It was really slow when I just tried it, but worked eventually, You can
select an alternate mirror on SF.


>Both of the Solaris installs include Python 2.4.4.  Whether the
>Solaris build is something resembling a full build or not, I don't
>know, but will soon find out unless someone has checked this out
>before me.  In the past, getting anything resembling a full build of
>Python on Solaris has been a labor of love (porting the build
>scripts), and I'd prefer not to have to build and install another
>version of Python.  


Configure requires distutils be available. It checks that it can

    import distutils.errors
    import distutils.sysconfig

and also checks for the presence of the Python.h C header file,
normally in /usr/include/pythonx.x/Python.h


>I see Mark Sapiro's mail about incompatibility between 2.1.12rc1 and
>Python 2.4.  


Good. My production server is running 2.1.12rc1 and Python 2.4.3 with
the addition of the one patch to Scrubber.py. It is just by
coincidence that a post that triggered that problem arrived the same
day I upgraded. Just lucky I guess.

I plan to upgrade that server soon to Python 2.6.1. I've done
everything but 'make install'. It's a good thing I didn't do it before
installing 2.1.12rc1 or that issue would have lurked until you found
it <wink>.


>My production installations have to have an archive search (not part
>of Mailman).  In the past, we've used htDig 3.1.6, which is decidedly
>long in tooth, particularly as it requires gcc/g++ 2.95.3 to build
>(will not build with gcc 3 or above).  For one installation, I'll
>filch the already-built binaries.  


I have installed htDig from CVS
<http://htdig.cvs.sourceforge.net/htdig/> with gcc 4.1.1.


>However, I'll reopen the question of a better (and currently-maintained) 
>search engine.  I'm aware of a mail list discussing using Mhonarc and
>Mnogosearch, but nothing since the last posts to that site (early
>2006).   Is there something newer and better, or is doing the porting
>work needed to use Mnogosearch the best alternative available?  One
>issue with the current 2.1.9 installation is performance while
>searching archives with htDig.  We currently have 5gb of archives, and
>archive searches are very popular with our listers. 
>
>I have picked up the patches for htDig->Mailman integration for 2.1.11
>and assume I'm on my own for 2.1.12, for the present.  


The patches will apply with some 'offsets' and one 'fuzz'. If you want
a set that applies clean you can get them at
<http://www.msapiro.net/mm/index.patch.2.1.12> and
<http://www.msapiro.net/mm/htdig.patch.2.1.12> (mirrored at
<http://fog.ccsf.edu/~msapiro/mm/index.patch.2.1.12> and
<http://fog.ccsf.edu/~msapiro/mm/htdig.patch.2.1.12>)

There are also two other patches in that directory named
'nightly_htdig' and 'rundig' which apply after the first two and which
implement updating the htDig database when possible instead of
rebuilding it from scratch every time.


>Unless somebody tells me otherwise, I'll assume that I'm the first
>installing 2.1.12 on Solaris 10.  That will go on the later (current
>rev) machine.  Worth noting that on Solaris 10 10/08, it appears that
>sun has included the Studio 12 development system, with the c compiler
>in /usr/bin/cc.  While our old nemesis, the BSD stub /usr/bin/cc is
>still there, a PATH that has /usr/bin before /usr/ucb should find a
>working cc. 
>
>The config.pck files currently on the production system are for 2.1.9.
>If I build 2.1.11 and 2.1.12 as fresh builds and installs (no upgrade)
>and later copy my 2.1.9 config.pck files into them, will Mailman
>detect and correct the configuration?  


Yes. It will detect that they are old and convert them on the fly. In
theory, it will even convert config.db files from Mailman 1.x, but I
won't guarantee that that one is error free.

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