[Mailman-Users] Looking for a Mailman contractor

[Barry Finkel]

Micah Alpern wrote:

>Can someone recommend a contractor who is experienced at customizing
>Mailman? The Interaction Design Association (http://www.ixda.org) is looking
>for assistance modifying the subscribe/unsubscribe process to allow
>synchronization with an external web application.  Please contact me for
>additional details or leads on potential contractors.

I am not sure of the technical details of what you want, but I am
getting ready to implement some Mailman lists where the list is
maintained externally.  I know the schedule when the list file is
updated in a shared file system (in my case AFS), so I have written
a cron script that

    1) compares the AFS file with the last one downloaded from AFS.

    2) If there are changes, then 
 
       a) Download the updated file from AFS
 
       b) remove_members --all --nouserack --noadminack $destfile
          add_members -w n -r $localfile $destfile

       Step 2b) can be replaced with "sync_members ..."

Different files are updated once a day in AFS, and I know the when each
list will be updated.  So for each list, my cron will run a few minutes
after the updated file is stored in AFS.

If you know the schedule when the web-based file will change, then you
can implement something like this.  You could even run such a cron
every five minutes, if you do not know when the list might be updated.
I have other lists that are built on-the-fly at any time, and the list
administrator wants to use them as soon as they are created in AFS.
For these, an every-five-minute cron is not good, as I cannot prevent
the list being used before it is updated.  I currently have no solution
for getting these lists from AFS to the local Mailman machine, as I do
not know when any list will be updated.  And I have not figured out how
to have the list creator (a live person or a script) send some sort of
signal to a root process on the Mailman machine to download the updated
list file from AFS.

Note that I have tested the script on my test Mailman machine, but I
have not yet converted any of these lists from Majordomo to Mailman.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry S. Finkel
Computing and Information Systems Division
Argonne National Laboratory          Phone:    +1 (630) 252-7277
9700 South Cass Avenue               Facsimile:+1 (630) 252-4601
Building 222, Room D209              Internet: BSFinkel at anl.gov
Argonne, IL   60439-4828             IBMMAIL:  I1004994