Mailman
Mailman
Description
Mailman is free software for managing electronic mail discussion and e-newsletter lists. Mailman is integrated with the web, making it easy for users to manage their accounts and for list owners to administer their lists. Mailman supports built-in archiving, automatic bounce processing, content filtering, digest delivery, spam filters, and more.
Thanks to Gordon Rowell for developing the rpms.
Installation
yum --enablerepo smecontribs install mailman smeserver-mailman
You should now see a Mailman section under the Configuration section of the server-manager. But if you are not running the contribs compiled version, Mailman's management interface shows up with a CGI error message. It complains about group mismatch error between "www" and "apache". Login as root and apply the following workaround, which was suggested in bugzilla:6425:
id -u apache # should yield 48 id -u www # should yield 102 usermod -u 102 -o apache # makes apache user and www user identical groupmod -g 102 -o apache # make apache group and www group identical
Configuration
File locations
Location | Description |
---|---|
/var/lib/mailman | location of mailman lists and archives |
/usr/lib/mailman | location of mailman program files |
/usr/lib/mailman/aliases | location of qmail alias files |
Creating lists
Error: You are not authorized to create new mailing lists
Actually the administrator of SME Server isn't allowed to create Lists (even from the server-manager), here is how obtain the mailman administrator password. see bugzilla:7836
version concerned
[root@sme8dev64 ~]# rpm -qa smeserver-mailman mailman mailman-2.1.9-20.el5.sme smeserver-mailman-1.3.0-42.el5.sme
[root@sme8dev64 ~]# config show mailman mailman=service SitePass=[YOUR_PASSWORD_IS_HERE] status=enabled
You have to use the value of SitePass as your mailman password to create Lists. If you change the password later with /usr/lib/mailman/bin/mmsitepass you *SHOULD* update SitePass using
config setprop mailman SitePass YOUR_PASSWORD
Error: Unknown virtual host: xxxxxx.xx
Go to http://domain.name/mailman to create new lists.
If your SMEServer has multiple domains configured, do not prepend www. before the virtual domain.
For example: go to http:// virtualdomain.name/mailman to create lists for that domain name.
Keep in mind that no list can have the same name as an ibay or an user so choose the name carefully.
Command line options
You can do a lot using the command line scripts located in /usr/lib/mailman/bin
For example
/usr/lib/mailman/bin/mmsitepass | will set the master password for all lists |
/usr/lib/mailman/bin/list_members [listname] | will list the members of [listname] |
/usr/lib/mailman/bin/list_admins [listname] | will list all admins of [listname] |
/usr/lib/mailman/bin/list_lists | will list your mailling lists |
/usr/lib/mailman/bin/list_owners | will list all owners of mailling lists or will list all mailling list |
Running the script with --help will display the options available
Transferring Lists
You can transfer lists from another server and keep everything in tact. It's an easy process but the Mailman FAQ and info seems to be sparse and complicated. This simplifies everything.
OLD SERVER
First stop the mailman service.
/etc/init.d/mailman stop
Next, tar/zip up the lists.
tar -czvf /temp/mailman.tar.gz /var/lib/mailman
Next, transfer it onto the new server using scp or rsync:
scp -P <sshportnumber> /temp/mailman.tar.gz <newserverip>:/var/lib
or
rsync --progress -te "ssh -p <sshportnumber>" /temp/mailman.tar.gz <newserverip>:/var/lib
NEW SERVER
Change to the rpm location.
cd /install
Install the rpms.
yum localinstall mailman-* smeserver-mailman-*
Extract/untar/unzip the tar/zip file.
tar -xvzf /var/lib/mailman.tar.gz
The lists are transferred but the SME SERVER doesn't know about them. Let the server know about the list:
signal-event mailman-addlist <listname>
All your lists and lists' configurations should now be available at: http://domain.name/mailman
Personalization
If you want to enable personalization in mailman (make every mail sent with the name of the recipient in the to: field as example or add the name of the user on the text) you do this:
- Create the custom-templates tree, in case it does not exist already: mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py/
- Copy the hostname file from the templates tree to the templates-custom tree maintaining the directory layout: cp \ /etc/e-smith/templates/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py/30hostname \ /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py/30hostname
- Now we need to add one line to the custom template fragment to enable personalization: echo OWNERS_CAN_ENABLE_PERSONALIZATION = 1 >> \ /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py/30hostname
- To refelct your changes we need to regenerate the file using the following commands: expand-template /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py signal-event reboot
- After the server comes back up again enter your mailing list admin and go to non-digest and in "Should Mailman personalize each non-digest delivery?" choose either yes or full personalization. Test both to see wich one do you like more... Also if you want to add a header with the person name enter in "Header added to mail sent to regular list members" this: Hello dear %(user_name)s and mailman is going to replace the string with the name the person used when he/she subscribed.
For more information
Mailman website http://www.list.org/ Mailman FAQ http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=all
Current Issues
- Check submitted bugs in the bug tracker under the contrib component "smeserver-mailman"
- Current mailman release is 2.1.9
Bugzilla:2411: /usr/lib/mailman/aliases and /var/lib/mailman are not currently backed up