[Mailman-Users] Question about restoring a mailman list or two

[Mark Sapiro]

Maish Saidel-Keesing wrote:

>Someone approached me and asked if I can help them restore two lists that
>they have.
>
>The mailman package was installed through CPanel (I know I am going to get a
>lot of answers to go to cpanel for support but I will ask it anyway)
>
>In the tar package that was backed up on cpanel I have some of the files
>that I think will be able to help me
>
>I just don't know how to put them back into the lists.
>
>What I have is the following:
>
>A directory called "mm" and within that directory are two more directories
>for each of the lists For examples sakes we will call them A & B In each of
>those directories I have 4 files
>
>Config.pck
>Config.pck.lst
>Pending.pck
>Request.pck
>
>In the config.pck file I see (with a lot of garbage - when I opened it up in
>notepad) the email addresses and names of the subscribers to the list (at
>least I think so).
>
>To restore it I was thinking of extracting the emails and then recreating
>the list and mass subscribing them again.
>Is there a simpler way to do it??

Yes.

Assume $prefix is the path to the current Mailman installation.

Just restore the "A" and "B" directories with their files to the
directory $prefix/lists/

If the backups were created under the same mailman version, that should
be it, but see
 $prefix/bin/check_perms --help
and
 $prefix/bin/update --help
in case you might need them.

>Second thing is the archives...
>
>I have a folder called "mma" from the cpanel backup that has the archives
>saved nicely in html format. How am I supposed to retrieve that back into
>the list current archives?

The archives for a list go into the $prefix/archives/private/list-name/
directory. If the archives are public there is also a symlink from
$prefix/archives/public/list-name to $prefix/archives/private/list-name

There is a global .mbox file in
$prefix/archives/private/list-name.mbox/list-name.mbox

If you have that, you can rebuild the archive without the other stuff.
See:
 $prefix/bin/arch --help

--
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan