[Mailman-Users] Trying to get mail working

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Steve Matzura writes:
 > I have charge of a very mixed system--current OS (Fedora 20--OK 21's
 > out but I just haven't upgraded yet), current (or nearly so) Mailman
 > (2.1.18-1), Postfix 2.10 with a configuration file sfrom something a
 > lot older which I've run through the upgrade-configuration procedure,
 > and old Dovecot (1.0.15). Is there anything I can do to test each of
 > these components individually,

Dovecot and Mailman should be mostly independent of each other, while
both depend crucially on Postfix.  The first thing to do is to find
the log files for each application, and test that mail works for all
combinations of inside and outside the system (and often "outside" has
to be divided into "your domain" and "the rest of the Internet"), to
and from.  If Dovecot isn't working, you still should be able to see
mail flowing in the Postfix logs, and possibly learn something about
its status using the mailq tool.  Next work on being able to read and
perhaps submit mail via Dovecot.  Finally, do the Mailman
configuration.

Testing Dovecot or Mailman in the absence of a working Postfix is
going to be hard for you, I guess.  It's not impossible, but it
requires some knowledge of internals of each program, and a fair
amount of confidence with Unix tools like pipes and netcat.  Much
easier to learn to read Postfix's logs to determine when the problem
is with one of the (non- ;-) cooperating applications, and when it's
Postfix.

It would help if you describe the symptoms, although perhaps the best
thing we can do is direct you to a Postfix or Dovecot channel.

HTH

Steve