[Mailman-Users] Ubuntu release of Mailman

[Mark Sapiro]

Lindsay Haisley wrote:

>I just installed, and just as promptly un-installed mailman on Ubuntu
>server 10.04.4 LTS.  The offered pacakge version of mailman for this
>release, which I used, is 2.1.13-1.


The Ubuntu packages are based on Debian.


>I have a few questions which perhaps someone could answer, if anyone
>knows the thinking behind Canonical's (and the package maintainer's)
>motives/reasons for what was done.
>
>The most awkward change, for me, is the elimination altogether of the
>mailman user.  Mailman native scripts and utilities apparently get run
>as root, which as always brings up a whole kettle of security questions.


They don't eliminate the Mailman user. They just call it 'list' rather
than 'mailman'.


>On top of that, I've written a script package to parse and automatically
>unsubscribe list subscribers based on AOL's "Email feedback reports" for
>all the lists I host, using, among other things, mailman's python
>library and the withlist utility.  These scripts depend on the existence
>of a non-privileged Mailman user account with a home dir
>of /usr/lib/mailman.


I think 'list' satisfies this.


>Yes, I could hack the scripts to make things work,
>but I'm in the process of a major server move between Linux platforms
>from different distributions and my time is budgeted.
>
>Why was this done?


Ask Debian and see the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/OIDD>.


>It looks as if I'm going to have to install mailman from source on
>Ubuntu.  I believe the Gentoo download, installed on my older servers,
>hewed much more closely to the methods and design of the Mailman devs,
>but I'm wondering what I'm missing here, or if the change was just due
>to lazy package design on Canonical's part.


Don't blame Canonical for Debian's decisions.

Personally, I would always install from source on Debian/Ubuntu. Even
though I run Ubuntu on some of my machines, I am not a fan of "The
Debian Way".

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