[Mailman-Users] Transfering mailman lists between servers

[James B. Byrne]

In the continuing saga of transferring mailman hosts (and moving 
from mailman mailman-2.1.5-8 to mailman-2.1.5-33) I performed the 
cut-over this morning using the following steps:

1.	Shutdown SMTP service on the old mailman host (service sendmail 
stop)

2.	Clear mqueue of all outstanding mailman deliveries (sendmail -
qRmailman)

3.	Clear data of all outstanding mailman administrative requests 
(as a practical matter there were none).

4.	Shutdown Mailman service on the old mailman host (service 
mailman stop)

5.	# cd /var/lib/mailman

6.	# tar -xvf mailmanArchives.tar /var/lib/mailman/archives

7.	# tar -xvf mailmanLists.tar /var/lib/mailman/lists

8.	# gzip -S .gz mailman*tar

9.	Down and remove mailman IP alias address on old host. (webmin 
Networking module - use ifconfig and edit etc/sysconfig entries if 
done manually)

10.	Log on to new mailman host.

11.	Stop mailman service (service mailman stop).

11.	# cd /var/lib/mailman

12.	# sftp <oldhost>; sftp> get /var/lib/mailman/mailman*.tar.gz; 
sftp> quit

14.	tar -xvzf mailman*.tar.gz

15.	/usr/lib/mailman/bin/check_perms -f -v

16.	Add mailman IP alias address to new host NIC (webmin as above)

17.	Start mailman service on new host (service mailman start)

18.	Make sure that /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf is configured to 
listen on the new IP address.

19.	Restart httpd service on new host (service httpd restart)

20.	Browse to mailman.domain.tld/mailman - mailman Greeting page 
displays! All the public lists are listed! All the list subscriber 
pages are reachable by hyperlink!  Subscriber requests work! All 
list administrative pages are reachable by hyperlink!  
Administrative requests work! 


!!!Archives unreachable??????

The Link to a transferred list's archives gives the following 
error:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /pipermail/transferlist/ on 
this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to 
use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS) Server at mailman.domain.tld Port 80


/var/log/httpd/error_log:

[Tue Mar 29 11:37:55 2005] [error] [client 216.185.xxx.xxx] 
Symbolic link not allowed: 
/var/lib/mailman/archives/public/transferlist

However, a list that was created on the new machine links to its 
own archives without problems.


This is the mailman.conf file contents:

/etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf

#
#  httpd configuration settings for use with mailman.
#

ScriptAlias /mailman/ /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin/
<Directory /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin/>
    AllowOverride None
    Options ExecCGI
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>


Alias /pipermail/ /var/lib/mailman/archives/public/
<Directory /var/lib/mailman/archives/public>
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

# Uncomment the following line, replacing www.example.com with your 
server's
# name, to redirect queries to /mailman to the listinfo page 
(recommended).

RedirectMatch ^/mailman[/]*$ 
http://mailman.domain.tld/mailman/listinfo


Now, the interesting thing is that the locally created lists have 
archive hyperlinks of the form mailman.domain.tld while the 
transferred lists have archive hyperlinks of the form 
<realhostname>.domain.tld.  I am not sure how this can be but it is 
the case none the less.  So, do I run bin/fix_url.py or add an 
additional redirect directive to conf.d/mailman.conf or do 
something else?


Any and all assistance greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Jim

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James B. Byrne                Harte & Lyne Limited
vox: +1 905 561 1241          9 Brockley Drive
fax: +1 905 561 0757          Hamilton, Ontario
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