[Mailman-Users] Contemplating new installation

[Brad Knowles]

At 7:21 PM +0000 2006-07-26, Jon Loose wrote:

>  The new project is a fedora core based server, purchased on a subscription.
>  It runs qmail by default,

Ouch.

>                            and has plesk running to give some web-based
>  admin.

Double ouch.

>          Given the constraint that we need to keep Plesk running, I'd be
>  most pleased to be able to run mailman on top of qmail.

Understood.

>  First off, I've read that there are some unique issues with qmail/mailman.

Yeah, not too many people run with this configuration.  Most people 
using qmail use ezmlm instead of Mailman.

That said, I know that at least some versions of Plesk actually 
integrate a version of Mailman into their system.  Unfortunately, 
what I've seen is a really ancient version (not even the latest 2.0.x 
release), and depends on an old version of Python, etc....  It is 
very difficult to upgrade that version of Python and that version of 
Mailman, without causing everything else on the system to break.


I think you need to have a talk with your system provider to see what 
options are available to you.

>  Does this make installation significantly harder than with a postfix
>  system (it was as much as I could do to get the postfix/mailman system
>  going - but I'm willing to persevere!)  What are the main issues?

IMO, postfix and sendmail are the most natural MTAs to use with 
Mailman, although I believe that postfix tends to work better 
out-of-the-box as an MTA that handles the kinds of loads that a 
mailing list may tend to generate.

You can get equal or better performance from sendmail (especially if 
you're doing a lot of anti-spam/anti-virus processing or other type 
of filtering on your mail), but it takes more work to get there with 
sendmail than it does with postfix, and it takes more work to keep 
the system operating at that level with sendmail than it does with 
postfix.

But all of this should be covered in the instructions.

>                                                                     Also,
>  is Plesk likely to foul up the installation if it is used post the
>  mailman install?

Generally speaking, my view is that if you're going to use Plesk, 
then you should stick with whatever they provide, or at least 
whatever they make easy to integrate.  That may very well mean that 
Mailman is not a part of that picture, at least not anything we would 
consider to be a reasonably modern version of Mailman.

>  Second, my previous install of mailman was 2.1.x running under
>  /usr/local/mailman.  I note that the fedora installation already seems to
>  have mailman files distributed around the filesystem.  Is there a standard
>  installation now as part of fedora, and am I better to use this or stick
>  with a fresh installation into /usr/local/mailman?

They've done whatever they've done and didn't ask for any involvement 
from us.  You need to choose whether you want to stick with their way 
of doing things, or if you want to do things our way.  If you're 
going to go with doing things their way, you need to be aware that 
some of your support issues will need to be addressed to them and not 
us, and you'll need to be able to figure out which types of support 
issues need to be addressed where.

>  One final related issue:  this system has a greater need for security than
>  the last one.  Is it simple to administer the web side of mailman using
>  https so that user login is ecrypted?

My personal belief is that all interactions between any user or admin 
and the web interface of Mailman should go through an SSL encrypted 
connection.  All.  That's not too hard to set up, if you follow the 
instructions.

>                                         Is there much needed for apache to
>  be able to do this?

It's not too hard to set up, and apache should be able to handle 
things just fine.

Just make sure to read all the instructions, and to search the FAQ 
and the archives.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.