[etc] How to set up a mailing list.
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[etc] How to set up a mailing list.

We wanted to set up a mailing list for our multimedia group yesterday, and i was assigned the task of doing this.

I had done this before using majordomo. Hence I decided to use the same. However, after downloading it, i relaized that there was a better mailing list product...

Thats "Mailman".. This is a GNU prodcut and can be downloaded from the web.

I downloaded the RPM and installed it. I found that the rpm does most of the work for me.. so i don't have to do any configuration, as given in the README and INSTALL files provided on the web.

Here are a few things that i had to do.

1. The rpm is installed in directory /usr/share/mailman.

2. I had to edit the httpd.conf.. Apache webserver comes with an Add-in utility called apacheconfig (at least on redhat linux). This is a python powered utility that provides a GUI for configuring htttpd.conf.

However there are several limitation to this utility.. It will first copy the old httpd.conf to httpd.conf.rpmnew and then modify the httpd.conf. The result is that you can no longer directly configure the httpd.conf, as it gets overwritten everytime the apacheconfig is run.. The apche config does not have any mechansim to add some additional configuration options to the httpd.conf.

Hence i decieded to modify this myself.. I had to manually add the
*Include conf/httpd-mailman.conf* to end of this /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. I know that this will get overwrittn once i run apacheconfig.

But i guess i will not use it again,.

3. The next thing to do is add a path to your PATH variable to

/usr/share/mailman/bin/

Now you can create a newlist using the comand

newlist

This will ask you for the list name and some pasword.

Here is an example of my interaction with newlist

********************************************************************

[shashank@mia ~]# cd /usr/share/mailman/bin/
[shashank@mia bin]# newlist
Enter the name of the list: test
Enter the email of the person running the list: shashank@mia.ece.uic.edu
Initial test password:
Entry for aliases file:

## test mailing list
## created: 14-Sep-2002 shashank
test:                    "|/usr/share/mailman/mail/wrapper post test"
test-admin:              "|/usr/share/mailman/mail/wrapper mailowner test"
test-request:            "|/usr/share/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd test"
test-owner:              test-admin

Hit enter to continue with test owner notification...

[shashank@mia bin]#

**********************************************************************\\\

Now in i will be sent a mail .. However one more thing needs to be done,..

From the above output copy the lines

and paste them to /etc/aliases file and run the *newaliases* command. Thats it.. a mail will be sent to you giving you all the futher information.

There are some other good commands in /usr/share/mailman/bin for other administratiove trivias..

rmlist --> for removing a list

list_lists --> for listing all created l;ists

list_members --> list members subscribed to a particular list etc...

Regards

Shashank