[Mailman-Users] File placement during installation...

[Mark Sapiro]

On 03/04/2015 05:24 PM, Bill.Costa at unh.edu wrote:
> 
> As to where to install Mailman, the installation manual says...
> 
>> The default is to install all of Mailman to `/usr/local/mailman`.
> 
> But the Wiki document "DOC/ RHEL file changes after version
> 2.1.5-20" says...
> 
>> As of mailman-2.1.5-21, mailman file locations were changed to
>> conform to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS)...
> 
> http://wiki.list.org/DOC/RHEL%20file%20changes%20after%20version%202.1.5-20
> 
> The thing is, in the table provided, I don't see any mention of
> the `/usr/local/mailman` directory, so I'm a bit confused.  For
> an installation from source on RHEL, is the suggested default
> location best, or should I change it?


It depends. If you use SELinux, it is definitely best to follow the Red
Hat locations, but this requires the patch attached to the post linked
from the above FAQ article. Note that the 'old' locations in the FAQ
article refer to older Red Hat package locations where it was mostly
configured with --prefix=/var/mailman

You can get close by configuring with --prefix=/usr/lib/mailman and
--with-var-prefix=/var/lib/mailman, but to go all the way requires the
patch and maybe configure options. Read John Dennis' post.

Also note the patch is against the 2.1.5 base and may need tweaking.

Finally, you could probably accomplish the end result by moving things
after installation and overriding directory locations in mm_cfg.py, but
if strict FHS compliance is not a requirement, I'd recommend just
configuring with --prefix=/usr/lib/mailman and
--with-var-prefix=/var/lib/mailman and going with that.

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