[Mailman-Users] Mailman and cpanel - opinions?

[Mark Sapiro]

Mailman Admin wrote:
>
>On 2012-04-24 03:21, David wrote:
>> We just switched to a new VPS host for our mailing lists. I was expecting a
>> standard Mailman installation. Instead, we got a cpanel installation. All
>> the Mailman stuff is moved around. Is it much different administering
>> Mailman in the cpanel installation? I have never used cpanel. Normally, I
>> just SSH into a server and do what needs to be done on the command line. I
>> prefer that.


If I had root access to the VPS (isn't that what it means to have a
VPS?), I might be inclined to try to bypass cPanel altogether and
install Mailman from source. It's not that the cPanel mods are all
that extensive or odious, but I don't happen to care for the fact that
the list name everywhere but in the list posting address (i.e. in
command line tools and the web UI) of the list at example.com list is
list_example.com. In order for cPanel to be happy, you also need to
use cPanel to create lists. Using bin/newlist tends to be a hassle or
not work as you intend.

Further, there are things (sibling lists in particular come to mind,
I'm not immediately aware of others) that just don't work in cPanel
because the listname in the list's posting address is not the same as
the cPanel list name, i.e. list vs. list_example.com in the example in
the previous paragraph, and cPanel's patches don't address this
everywhere.


>> Should we expect any problems in the future if we want to migrate to a
>> "normal" Mailman installation without cpanel (e.g., apt-get install mailman
>> on Ubuntu)? Can anyone who has experience in this area offer some opinions?
>> Should we stick with this unexpected cpanel version of Mailman or will we
>> regret it later?


I think a cPanel list's config.pck file can be migrated to a non cPanel
installation, but I'm not certain that a small amount of manual
fiddling wouldn't be required.


>> I'm guessing that cpanel uses exim instead of postfix. I'm not sure how to
>> find out (other than ask the host), but that is unexpected too. I was
>> expecting postfix.


Yes, they use Exim. This is not all bad. Exim interfaces very well with
Mailman, but the Mailman routers and transports in cPanel Exim are
designed for cPanel's Mailman, i.e. they know to take mail to
list at example.com and pipe it to Mailman's incoming mail command with
list name list_example.com, so if you wanted to use an installed from
source Mailman with Exim under cPanel, you'd have to tweak these. It's
not difficult, just something to be aware of.


>Did you read:
>http://wiki.list.org/display/DOC/Mailman+and+CPanel
>http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030604



There's good information in those.

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