[Mailman-Users] Mailman3 administration

[Mark Sapiro]

On 06/17/2016 12:16 PM, Bill wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for some information on Mailman3 administration. I've found
> that it's not yet packaged by any of the common Linux distros - Debian,
> Ubuntu, Mint, RedHat, Centos, Fedora, Suse, Arch etc so I have some
> concerns about the amount of upkeep that running Mailman3 will entail.
> 
> I know that Mailman2 is available as a package on the above distros, but
> we would really like to take advantage of the kludge-free, virtual
> domains feature on Mailman3.
> 
> I've been asked by a local non-profit provider to assist them in moving
> their 200+ mailing lists from an outdated Sympa list server to
> Debian8/Postfix/Mailman. One of their chief concerns is the amount of
> extra administration, over and above normal list administration, that
> Mailman3 will require in the form of manual updates and maintenance.
> 
> We are in the evaluation and design stage right now, but could use any
> pertinent advice about supportive distros, available packages, the
> amount of extra administration involved or perhaps, in a worst case
> scenario, alternate list managers supporting a virtual domains feature
> similar to Mailman3.
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> 
> Bill McGrath
> President, Vancouver Linux Users Group
> https://vanlug.bc.ca


I've copied this post and set Reply-To: to the Mailman 3 users list
<mailman-users at mailman3.org>. Please join at
<https://lists.mailman3.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users@mailman3.org/>
before replying there.

That said, we are working on packaging for a more turn-key installation,
but we aren't there yet. I've installed a couple of instances including
the one at lists.mailman3.org, and it does require extra work. Some of
the work in my case is because I want to run all the Mailman pieces from
the heads of their branches rather than what's in PyPI, but even without
that, installation is significantly more work than installing a distro's
package.

I will be writing up my experiences, but that's not done yet either.

I will say that once you have Mailman 3 installed and running, updating
(which I do frequently, but which doesn't need to be done unless you
want specific updates/fixes) is pretty easy.

As far as alternatives are concerned There is an up to date Mailman 2.1
branch with better virtual domain support at
<https://code.launchpad.net/~msapiro/mailman/vhost>, but I think in the
long run, you'd be better off with Mailman 3.

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