[Mailman-Users] virtual hosting

[Dan Langille]

On 24 Apr 2003 at 21:42, admin2 wrote:

> OS:  FreeBSD 4.7
> Mailman:  2.1.1

I am using the same.

> Okay I am getting a little confused here.  Is there a good link out there that
> steps an admin through setting up mailman for virtual hosting?

Not that I've found.  I've been trying to write one, but I've not 
been able to solve two basic problems.

I've been attempting to migrate freebsddiary.org and freshports.org 
mailing lists from majordomo to mailman.  I've found the 
administration interface and the the user interface to be much 
better, but it seems much more difficult to do things that are fairly 
well documented for majordomo. The two main blocks I've encountered 
are:

1 - You cannot have two mailing lists with the same name in two 
different domains and obtain satisfactory results:

  * The two lists do not actually have the same name.  Externally
     they can have the same name through the use of email aliases, 
     but you must create the lists with names such as 
     mylist-example.com and mylist.example.org

  * The URL for the home pages for these lists must used the long
     form of the name.  e.g.

            http://example.org/mailman/listinfo/mylist-example.org

     instead of the desired:

            http://example.org/mailman/listinfo/mylist

     Yes, it is possible to get around this using web server tricks,
     but even that trick won't affect the webpage contents which will
     still refer to the long version of the list name (e.g. 
     mylist-example.org instead of mylist).

I asked about this issue recently[1] but have not had any suggestions 
for resolution yet.

2 - The install instructions for mailman indicate that you must 
create a "site wide" mailing list titled 'mailman'.  It's unclear 
whether or not you need just one per mailman installation or per 
domain.  If you need one per domain, then you're back at issue #1.  
If it's one per mailman installation, then users subscribed to 
mylist at example.org will be getting reminder messages from 
mailman at example.com.  That too is not desireable.  Nothing like 
getting messages from confused users wondering why they're getting 
messages from a project they are not associated with.

I think perhaps I could give up my requirement for item #1, but I 
don't think I should have to invent new names for existing lists nor 
should it be necessary.  It's a pretty basic issue.  Most projects 
have an announce list.  If you're running 8 lists, coming up with a 
uniqe name for each announcement list is a ridiculous situation.

With luck, someone will have some clever solutions for the above 
issues because my queries[2] have not found anything.

Here's are a few highlights of the to virtual hosting set up process:

~mailman/Mailman/Defaults.py:

Set the following, before you create your first list, to something 
you want to use for your first list:

DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'freebsddiary.org'
DEFAULT_URL_HOST = 'freebsddiary.org'

~mainman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py:

I am using Postfix, so I add this entry:

MTA = 'Postfix'

For each virtual host, add the URL host and the email host:

add_virtualhost('freebsddiary.org', 'freebsddiary.org')
add_virtualhost('freshports.org',   'freshports.org')
add_virtualhost('bh3.ca',           'bh3.ca')
add_virtualhost('racingsystem.com', 'racingsystem.com')

When creating your lists, specify the domain part of the mailing list 
name. For example: ~mailman/bin/newlist announce at example.org.

For others using Postfix, you should read README.POSTFIX[3].  
Contained within that document is a reference to 
http://listes.rezo.net/how.php.  I do not recommend that approach as 
it requires the global use of procmail (i.e. for every message 
delivered by Postfix, procmail is invoked).  At that URL is a 
reference to http://www.gurulabs.com/files/postfix-to-mailman.py, 
which is now a stale URL.  Look at 
http://www.gurulabs.com/files/postfix-to-mailman-2.0.py or 
http://www.gurulabs.com/files/postfix-to-mailman-2.1.py.  I found 
this script to be quite useful, but again did not cater for two 
mailing lists with the same name in two different domains so I 
abandoned that idea.

If anyone has ideas, suggestions[4], URLs, etc, they will be 
welcomed.

Thanks.

[1] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2003-
April/028243.html

[2] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2003-
April/028244.html

[3] If you installed mailman from the FreeBSD ports tree, this file 
is at /usr/local/share/doc/mailman/README.POSTFIX.

[4] Suggestions to change to another MTA will be disregarded.
-- 
Dan Langille : http://www.langille.org/