[Mailman-Users] New to Mailman (and Linux)

[Mark Sapiro]

Neil Carson wrote:
>
>My home ISP (Rogers.com)  does not allow customers to run a 'mailserver' and
>prevents us from doing so by blocking (I believe) certain outgoing/incoming
>ports etc.
>
>Is there some way I can get around this  restriction and actually send msgs
>to/from my test-list via my home set up (for now)? 


For testing only, you can just use local addresses that Postfix can
deliver to on the local box. Likewise, you can post from a client on
the local box directly to the local Postfix.

To send mail outside the box you need one of two approaches. The (IMO)
better approach is to configure the local postfix to relay outgoing
mail via your ISP's SMTP server. The other approach is to configure
Mailman to send directly to the ISP's SMTP server using the mm_cfg.py
settings SMTPHOST and SMTPPORT. The reason this is not as good is the
ISP's server most likely requires authentication unless perhaps it
recognizes your connection as part of it's network. If it doesn't
require authentication, then this approach is at least as good as
using Postfix to relay via the ISP. The issue with authentication if
Mailman is delivering directly to the ISP is this requires patching
Mailman. See <https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/558281>. Postfix
can be configured to do the authentication without patching. See
<http://www.postfix.org/SASL_README.html#client_sasl>.

However, keep in mind that while this will enable Mailman to send via
your ISP, the ISP may impose rate limits and other measures that
prevent this from working well or at all with all but a few small, low
volume lists. See also the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/j4A9>.

The other half of this is delivery of incoming mail to Mailman. If you
can set up lots of addresses with your ISP, you can have every
list at example.com, list-admin at example.com, list-bounces at example.com,
list-confirm at example.com, list-join at example.com,
list-leave at example.com, list-owner at example.com,
list-request at example.com, list-subscribe at example.com and
list-unsubscribe at example.com address go to your ISP and use something
like fetchmail on the local box to get the mail from the ISP and
deliver it to the local Postfix.

See the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/OwHL> for more on both halfs.


>My ultimate goal is to replace a 'list server' (Windows based) at my place
>of work with Mailman running on SLES11.


It will probably be much more straightforward to do that than to set up
incoming and outgoing Mailman mail via your ISP.

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