[Mailman-Users] a policy question about setting up mailman

[Robert P. J. Day]

  as a followup to a previous post of mine asking about setting a host 
name when configuring mailman, i have a question not about actual setup, 
but about *how* i should set it up.

  to review, let's say i work at yoyodyne.com, at which there are lots of 
internal systems, including one called internal.yoyodyne.com.  it's a 
fairly stable system, so i want to use it to host one or more mailing 
lists, starting with just internal users but with the option to expand to 
allow external users access to the same lists.

  the first issue: "internal" is not visible to the outside world, 
certainly not by that name.  in any case, for both internal and external 
users, i don't want *anyone* to have to use or see the name "internal",
i want to base all mailman usage on the host name "lists.yoyodyne.com".
(at the very least, this gives me the option of moving the lists to 
another host some day transparently).  so "lists" is just going to be a 
hostname alias for the "internal" system.

  the above is easy -- the sys admin at yoyodyne can add the appropriate 
entry in the DNS tables to route incoming mail addressed to "lists" to the 
"internal" machine.  so far, so good.

  but here's the rub.  all email addresses of people at yoyodyne are of
the form fred at yoyodyne.com -- no specific host name is used as part of the 
address, all mail just goes to the central mail server and is fetched from 
there.  but what does this do to my mailman configuration?

  i can see that, when i'm configuring mailman, i'd set my 
DEFAULT_URL_HOST to "lists.yoyodyne.com", since that's how i want everyone 
to see the alleged mail host.  but what about DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST?

  if i set that to "lists.yoyodyne.com", that sort of violates the 
longtime usage of not putting a specific hostname on the domain name when 
mailing to an account at yoyodyne (as in, mailman at lists.yoyodyne.com).

  but if i leave the hostname off, to get mailman at yoyodyne.com, i run the 
risk of someone else at yoyodyne saying, "hey, mailing lists!  cool!  i 
think i'll set some up as well", and clashing with my already-existing
mailman at yoyodyne.com address, even if they use a different URL.  sort of,
pooched if i do, pooched if i don't.

  so what's the general solution?  or am i describing a situation that's a 
bit weird that most people wouldn't run into?  a pointer to a URL would be
just ducky.

rday