[Mailman-Users] building a new mailman server

Hank van Cleef vancleef at lostwells.net
Thu Mar 27 16:22:41 CET 2014


The esteemed Mark Sapiro has said:
> 
> On 03/26/2014 02:19 PM, Bruce Harrison wrote:
> > 
> > We are currently running an old mailman instance and am planning to bring up the newest version of mailman and migrate to it.  Current system uses sendmail.  Since I now have a chance to change things, what is the best mail server to run on my mailman box?  It will be talking to an exchange 2010 frontend server (current mailman system is doing that now).  I can install sendmail or go with postfix or ???
> > This is running on a debian box.
> 
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not an MTA expert. This is all personal opinion based
> on possibly limited experience.
> 
> I would go with either Postfix or Exim. Both integrate well with
> Mailman; <http://www.exim.org/howto/mailman21.html> and
> <http://www.list.org/mailman-install/node12.html>.
> 
> I have used both in Mailman environments, but Exim only in a Mailman
> development environment, Postfix both in development and on a production
> server handling both Mailman and other mail.
> 
> I have little experience with sendmail, and while it is possible to
> hijack Mailman's Postfix integration to use with sendmail, on the whole
> it seems 'clunkier' to configure, and I see no reason to chose sendmail
> over Postfix.
> 
I'm not an "MTA expert," either.  However, I've used sendmail ever
since there was a sendmail.  My systems are Solaris, which comes with
a good implementation of sendmail, and my installations are all
configured to do what I want them to do with regular e-mail.  

I found adding Mailman to my existing setups to be quite simple.
You'll need to manually add the Mailman pipes to the aliases, using
the Mailman utility that gives you the list, but with the vi editor,
it's a simply copy-and-paste.  The only issue I had with integrating
Mailman with sendmail was getting the Masquerades set up properly to
host a different domain on my systems.  however, that is covered in 
the O'Reilly "Bat Book," which you should have.  It is not a Mailman
issue, and proper configuration is done through the M4 macro files.  
I haven't had to tamper with the sendmail.cf file separately.

I think that if you're familiar with sendmail, and have a satisfactory
setup, do your upgrade, and integrate it with your current sendmail.
I'm aware that most of the people posting to this list are using other
MTA's on Linux systems, so there's little support here for a sendmail
setup.  

For reference, my links between Mailman and sendmail are through
localhost to a local sendmail, and I also have a caching DNS server,
all on the same box.  

For me, switching to another MTA would mean a lot of work learning how
to integrate all of the spam filtering and other things I already have
integrated and working in sendmail.  

Hank


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