[Mailman-Users] conversion

[Mark Sapiro]

Melinda wrote:

>I could use some pointers in my conversion from Listproc to Mailman.   I am
>also going from a Solaris machine to a Redhat Linux.   I am very very new to
>Unix, Linux and could use some help in my conversion over to the new machine
>with Mailman.   How exactly can I get my old Listproc Lists merged over to
>this new mailman machine.  How does mailman get its address?  What will
>happen to my old address of the old list when created with the new list?
>Can I keep them the same??


This question is so broad as to be almost beyond the scope of this
list. I'll just say a few things.

First, I know nothing about Listproc so I can't comment in how Listproc
settings/configurations map to Mailman.

As far as moving lists is concerned, you have three main areas of
concern - list behavior (configuration), membership and archives. As I
said, I can't speak about mapping behavior as I don't know Listproc.
For membership, you need to be able to export a flat file of members
(or two separate files of regular and digest members) in a standard
format like

  Users Name <user at example.com>
  ...

and this can be easily used to populate the Mailman list.

List archives need to be exported as a flat file in *nix mbox format,
and this can be used to create a Mailman archive.

For list addresses, Mailman works in conjunction with an MTA (Sendmail,
Postfix, Exim, etc.) which receives mail sent to a particular domain
or domains and uses aliases or other methods to determine whether the
local part of the address is a mailman address and if so, delivers the
mail to Mailman by piping it to Mailman's mail wrapper.

Each list has a set of addresses. The list posting address for a list
named test in the example.com domain is test at example.com. Every list
also has 9 other associated addresses, in this example they are
test-bounces at example.com, test-admin at example.com (deprecated),
test-owner at example.com, test-request at example.com,
test-confirm at example.com, test-join at example.com,
test-subscribe at example.com, test-leave at example.com and
test-unsubscribe at example.com for various purposes.

If your old domain is going to map to your new machine, you should be
able to keep the same list addresses.

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