[Mailman-Users] mailman installation, How to from source [newbieish]

[Jon Carnes]

Mike you can find more detail in the Archives (or the FAQ), but here it
is in a nutshell:
 - Create a user and a group called "mailman"
 - Version 2.0.13 will use the home directory of the "mailman" user so
make sure that it exists and that the directory belongs to both the user
and group "mailman".  In version 2.1.x you will need to create
/usr/local/mailman and set its owner and group to "mailman".
 - Download the source to a temporary directory (DO NOT download it to
/home/mailman or to /usr/local/mailman)
 - Unpack the source:
     tar -xzf mailman-<version>.tgz
 - This will create a "mailman-<version>" directory in your temporary
directory. Change into this directory
 - Read the file: INSTALL
 - Read the file: README.SENDMAIL (if you use sendmail)

  ./configure
  make install

The "configure" command looks at your system/setup and tries to figure
out a the best way to install Mailman.  It will fail if you are missing
some key prerequisites (like the proper version of python install on
your system)

The "make install" command will modify some of the source files to match
your system and then copy the Mailman files to their proper locations
(/home/mailman -or- /usr/local/mailman, depending on your version)

 - Change to the Mailman directory (which I will hereafter refer to as
~mailman) and look for a subdirectory called cron.  You will need to
load up the cron entries for the mailman user.  The cron entries are
scheduled programs and scripts.  These do various maintenance items like
mail out monthly passwords and do regular check-ups on your Mailman
databases.
    cd cron  
    crontab -u mailman crontab.in

 - To create a new Mailing list:
    ~mailman/bin/newlist <name of new list>

Note: for version 2.1.x you *must* create a list called "mailman" as the
first list.  Add yourself and any other admins as a user of that list. 
It is used for error reporting, and various alerts.

In version 2.0.13 when you run "newlist" it prints out a list of aliases
that *you* must cut and paste into the /etc/aliases file for your system
(after which you must then run "newaliases").

 - Follow the directions of the INSTALL file and modify your Apache
configurations to setup the /mailman and /pipermail CGI's

  #
  #  httpd configuration settings for use with mailman.
  #

  ScriptAlias /mailman/ /var/mailman/cgi-bin/
  Alias /pipermail/ /var/mailman/archives/public/
  <Directory /var/mailman/archives>
        Options +FollowSymlinks
  </Directory>

 - Restart Apache

That should just about do it for you.  The most common problems are:
 - Running the Mail server with some weird or non-existent GroupID
 - Running Apache with no GroupID
 - Manually moving or playing around with the Mailman created
directories which changes their rights and can "accidentally" remove the
sugid settings.

You can fix the group problems by modifying your MTA and/or Apache Group
settings, or by re-running the Mailman installation and choosing some
special switches to include on the "./configure" command.

You can fix the directory rights issues by running:
  ~mailman/bin/check_perms

Good Luck - Jon Carnes

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 12:15, Mike wrote:
> Sorry this seems newbieish, however, i've been having a bit of trouble getting mailman to run.  Currently we use a microsoft exchange server for our main e-mail, but i would like to setup a better system for mailing lists and such so we decided to install redhat 8 on it and use mailman.  I followed the instructions and  on the download page and unpac ked it into  a mailman directory within the home directory.  Unfortunatly i'm not very clear on what to do next.  The documentation says it contains all information about installing it , however, all i notice is a list of the scripts.  is there further directions to help me get mailman running on my system, or ist there anyone who wouldn't mind helping me through it.  I would appriciate it very much.
> 
> Thanks ahead of time,
> Mike
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