[Mailman-Developers] alternate root for mailman

[Marisa Riviere]

I am updating mailman to a new version but until I can test
all the changes I like to run two versions of the program.
I am working in a SuSE Linux 8.0 system.

For the old versions I used the default settings and defined:

ScriptAlias     /mailman/       /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin/
Alias           /pipermail/     /var/lib/mailman/archives/public/

For the new version (2.1.2) I am using user "mail_man" and:

1)  a "configure" command such as:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mail_man --with-var-prefix=/var/mail_man
--with-username=mail_man --with-groupname=mail_man --with-mail-gid=65533
--with-cgi-gid=65534

2) a definition of where the Papermail directory will be in
../Mailman/mm_cfg.py  (I set this before "configure".)
   
PUBLIC_ARCHIVE_URL = 'http://%(hostname)s/piper_mail/%(listname)s'

and

3) an addition to the  Apache httpd configuration for the new
mail_man:

ScriptAlias     /mailman/       /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin/  
Alias           /pipermail/     /var/lib/mailman/archives/public/

<Directory /var/lib/mailman/archives/>
        Options +FollowSymLinks
</Directory>

ScriptAlias     /mail_man/       /usr/local/mail_man/cgi-bin/
Alias           /piper_mail/     /var/mail_man/archives/public/

<Directory /var/mail_man/archives/>
        Options +FollowSymLinks
</Directory>


Things work "up to a certain point"... I can create new lists and the
lists are stored in my new paper_mail root OK.  I also can locate the
lists management entry with the web page entry:
http://stat.umn.edu/mail_man/admin.

The problem is that when I want to access any one of the new lists
that I created to be managed by the new version of the program I can not
access the information on those lists.

If I look at the information on the configuration of the list
by using the unix "strings" command on the binary I see that that 
list points to a web page in the old root:

> strings /var/mail_man/lists/test212b/config.pck
.
.
web_page_urlqNU$http://muskrat.stat.umn.edu/mailman/qOU

.
.

I am so confuse that it is hard to post a question!  But some how I 
wander if

1) I am missing some information for "configure"

or 
 
2) Am I right to assume the the problem may be on the "admin" binary
that has enough information about the new root (paper_mail) to place the
list there but it is not capable of placing that information in the
configuration of the list?

And finally, two different question that I will need to deal with as well
are:

How can I eliminate references to "muskrat.stat.umn.edu" and use
only "stat.umn.edu"? Muskrat is an alias for our system but we may
like to change it to another piece of hardware sometime.  I am not  
telling the name "muskrat" to the configuration files but it seems to   
pick it somewhere.

How do I convert the old lists two the new version of mailman?


Thanks for your help!


-- 
Marisa Riviere
U of M - Statistics
marisa at stat.umn.edu
612-624-5859

"Aun es tarde, si, pero ya vamos" - N. R.