[Mailman-Users] Help Newbie trying to get working..

[Sullivan, John]

Thanks for your info George.. 

A few more questions. 

1. I installed the MailMan package during the Red Hat Server installation.
It look like it installed MAILMAN in /var/mailman/ 

It seems to have done a few of the steps for me - create a mailman user and
Mailman group. 

It moved some of the jpgs into my apache install - 

The apache installed a little different then I am use to and being a newbie
it has confused the hell out of me. 

In /var I have a www folder - and in /etc/ I have what looks like all of the
configuration files. 

I am assuming I need to edit the httpd.conf as I don't think the redhat
install took it that far. 

What should my httpd.conf file look like considering the information above
as to where my installs are. 

2. Also not sure if this a related issue but http server gui that comes with
RedHat freezes up on me everytime I try to edit the properties - any ideas?

Thanks for your help..

john



-----Original Message-----
From: George [mailto:george at holylandtrust.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 1:12 PM
To: Sullivan, John
Cc: 'mailman-users at python.org'
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Help Newbie trying to get working..

John,

I just set up Mailman on RH 8 -- not an expert, but I can help.  One
important consideration you need to make up front.  The latest, stable
Mailman release is 2.1.1 which requires Python 2.2.2, both not in the
RH 8 release.  2.1.1 has enough changes in it that I decided to make
the update. Here are the keys to complete the installation.

1)  Download the new releases and install them.  I think Mailman had a
RPM available and Python was a GZip .tar.  Installation was
straightforward for both.

2) The mailman install directory had excellent READMEs.  Look at
README, INSTALL, README.LINUX, and README.SENDMAIL  Print out the
INSTALL one and use it as your template.

a)  Conifguring Apache is easy.  Just move the file Httpd-Mailman.conf
from the /etc/httpd/conf directory into the /etc/httpd/conf.d
directory.  Any .conf files in this directory are included in the
apache configuration. Edit the files correspondingly.

b)  We didn't have to make any configuration changes with Sendmail,
but you will have to set up a boatload of aliases.  When you run
Newlist process it will tell you what aliases to include.

c)  Watch you directory permission settings and what groups your
applications run as.  The docs will send you in the right direction,
if you need more help, ask back on this board. In my case, Sendmail
ran as the mail user/group and Apache ran as the apache user/group.
In the configuration I set the --with-mail-gid and the --with-cgi-gid

d)  The most lacking part of the READMEs is the value of the
mailmanctl script.  The readme's still reference cron jobs.  I set
them up, but with 2.1.1 the majority of the cron work is done by
mailmanctl, a continually running daemon and its python sub-processes.
     In my case, my qfiles were backing up and I was getting no
responses from Mailman.  This was fixed when I ran the mailmanctl
script.  See the recent emails titled "Mailman Newbie having set up
problems"

f) Finally, you may want to set up Mailman to run at boot up.  I don't
remember if RH already had a script in init.d or if it came in the
install.  But I did have to add this into the boot sequence.

If this isn't good enough, keep writing the list, and we will try to
help you with individual parts.

Peace,
George Halley