[Mailman-Users] 6 questions

[Menega Sabidussi]

hello people,

please forgive me for asking quesions 
that i am sure have been repeated over and over. 
if there is a collection of faq somewhere that 
answer mine please direct me there. 
if not i would be grateful indeed for whatever you can tell me.

currently i am still in the phase where i have 
to decide if mailman is the program of choice and 
if it is if i will be requiring a dedicated server 
or if i could make do with a virtual account 
that has mailman pre-installed.

if some of my questions seem very ignorant programming- and
installationwise then that is the case 
but i learn very fast and have no fear of going into delicate server
areas. just throw info at me and i'll figure it from there.

1. do i need root access to do such things as 
bugpatch the program (for instance not letting attachments through)
and collect my archives  if and when i would like to change providers?

2. can i plug-in a decent "search archives" feature?
i saw a link to a perl script posted here, does that go into the cgi-bin
or must it be placed in installation specific directories or rather do i
have to enter a configuration file not normally accessable in a virtual
account?

3. what must one do to enable "posting from the web"?

4. i've gathered that when moving my list to mailman i can
mass-subscribe users. in what form and when in the procedure are they
issued the random passwords i have seen mentioned here?

5. where is the password file stored?
i would like to hitch it together with ftp access permissions.

6. who knows of a provider offering virtual accounts where one could set
up mailman in an accessable and flexible way?????????

thank you for any help.

kind regards
menega sabidussi