[Mailman-Users] mailman cron gets uppity

[James Aylett]

On Thu, Nov 09, 2000 at 09:33:17AM -0600, Jim Fannin wrote:

> I must confess I need help with some of the abbreviations used here.  I
> think I know what some of them are, but others are not familiar.
> 
> Please explain:  What is CVS, MTA?

CVS = Concurrent Version Systems. It's a system used to track the changes as
Mailman (and a large number of other projects) are developed. "Upgrading to
CVS" (and similar phrases) means to get the bleeding edge versions straight
out of the CVS system. These are potentially far less stable than the
release versions that have been vetted for serious problems.

MTA = Mail Transfer Agent. It's the software that receives email from the
outside world via SMTP, and delivers it somewhere useful for users to be
able to get to it. The other way round, it also handles sending outgoing
email out to the world. Examples in the UNIX world include sendmail, exim,
qmail and smail. (Most commercial Unixes will come with a sendmail variant,
I think.)

> Also, I inherited the administration of our Mailman lists, and thus am not
> intimately familiar with the installation and inner workings.  As a result,
> I am not sure what version we are running nor exactly how to find out.  We
> are running 11 lists ranging in size from about 12 to 350 users.  Everything
> seems to be running fine.  Some guidance on how to find out what version we
> are running would also be appreciated.

I seem to remember that early versions of Mailman didn't announce their
version numbers. Certainly from v1.1 onwards, and probably from earlier,
most webpages in the Mailman configuration system contain the version number
at the bottom of the page. For instance, on
<http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users> we see, right at the
bottom, the following:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailman-Users list run by barry at wooz.org
Mailman-Users administrative interface (requires authorization)


["Delivered by Mailman" logo]
 version 2.0beta6
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

which gives you the version number being run for the Mailman lists. (The
Mailman pages may also have some other logos alongside. This only exists in
recent Mailman installations - my 2.0 one has it, but not my earlier 1.1
system.)

In theory you can find this version in the files that make up the mailman
installation, but since which files exist changes between versions that
isn't terribly helpful. Easier to look at a webpage :)

James

-- 
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
  james aylett                                   chief technical architect
  http://www.tangozebra.com/                                    tangozebra

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