Mailman

A guide to installing GNU Mailman and getting it working with an Apache web server and a Postfix Mail Server.

Installation

You can download mailman from here: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/download.html

To verify the download using the signature, add the public keys of the developers listed on the download page, and visit Verifying a File using a Detached Signature at my GnuPG page for the verification process.

Pre-Configure Process

You must first create a group named "mailman" on your system, and create a user named "mailman" in the group "mailman".

# groupadd mailman
# useradd --shell /no/shell --home-dir /no/home --gid mailman mailman

Configuration

For my configuration of mailman, I wanted to make a self-contained installation, including moving the /var/mailman directory (which contains mutable mailman data) into the mailman installation directory. This is the reason for the --with-var-prefix option.

#!/bin/sh

./configure \
    --prefix=${HOME}/pkg/mailman/2.1.14 \
    --with-var-prefix=${HOME}/pkg/mailman/var \
    --with-cgi-gid=503

where the number coming after --with-cgi-gid is the gid for the Apache (or whichever web server) group. In your Apache config file, there is a User and Group listed, which is the user and group that Apache is run as. A corresponding entry can be found in /etc/group, something like:

apache:x:503: 

This number is the gid for Apache, and in order to run cgi scripts, Mailman must run these scripts with this gid.

Before I ran configure, I had to run

$ mkdir -p ${HOME}/pkg/mailman/var
$ /usr/bin/sudo -R chown mailman ${HOME}/pkg/mailman
$ /usr/bin/sudo -R chgrp mailman ${HOME}/pkg/mailman
$ /usr/bin/sudo -R chmod 02775 ${HOME}/pkg/mailman    # <-- the "02" sets UID and GID permissions

(for more info on setting UID and GID permissions, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid)

NOTE: I acknowledge that using --with-var-prefix is more complicated, but the advantages are, (1) this keeps mailman self-contained, and (2) it is easy to upgrade mailman by installing the new version to ${HOME}/pkg/mailman/X.Y.Z.

Once you've created this directory with the correct permissions, do the usual thing:

$ ./runconfigure.sh
$ make -j2
$ /usr/bin/sudo -u mailman make install # <-- must be run as sudo because
                                        #     creating/modifying directories 
                                        #     owned by "mailman" user

Checking/Fixing Permissions

It is likely you'll run into problems with the permissions, even if you're careful. However, this can be easily fixed using a mailman script:

# cd ${HOME}/pkg/mailman/2.1.14
# bin/check_perms

(any permissions problems will be displayed here)

# bin/check_perms -f

(any permissions problems will be fixed)

(note that this must be run as the superuser, hence the #'s).

Connecting Mailman with Web Server

I'm using an Apache web server. To get Mailman working with Apache, I had to add the following to the httpd.conf file to allow the mailman program to run cgi scripts:

# Add a script alias for mailman to run required cgi-scripts
ScriptAlias /mailman/ "/path/to/mailman/cgi-bin/"

<Directory "/path/to/mailman/cgi-bin">
    AllowOverride None
    Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

To add GNU icons, Python-Powered icons, and mailman icons, copy the mailman-provided icons into Apache's icons directory (usually in /path/to/apache/icons):

$ cp /path/to/mailman/icons/*.{jpg,png} /path/to/apache/icons/.

Then you can point to these in the Mailman config file:

$ sudo vim /path/to/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py

by adding the following line:

IMAGE_LOGOS = '/images/'

(default values for most stuff is defined in Defaults.py).

Setting Up Pipermail

Pipermail is a feature of Mailman that archives all of the mailing list's activity and makes it available to users. This is basically what's being put in /var/mailman (or, in case you used the --with-var-prefix configure option above, /path/to/mailman/var).

This can be set up to be accessed via the web:

Alias  /pipermail/ /path/to/mailman/var/archives/public/

<Directory /pipermail/>
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AddDefaultCharset Off     # <-- if your list archives will 
                              #     contain international characters
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Connecting Mailman with Mail Server

See Mail Server for details on how to set up a mail server.

I use postfix mail server.

In the Postfix configuration file main.cf, the recipient_delimiter setting should be:

recipient_delimiter = +

In /path/to/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py, add the following line:

MTA = 'Postfix'

MTA is a directory containing instructions for Mailman when lists are created/removed.

Next, Defaults.py should contain the following:

POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD = '/usr/sbin/postalias'
POSTFIX_MAP_CMD = '/usr/sbin/postmap'

or, wherever your postalias and postmap binaries are located. If they are not, re-define them in mm_cfg.py.

Generate alias files by running the genaliases program:

$ cd /path/to/mailman
$ bin/genaliases

This will create files in the var directory. These should be owned by mailman:

$ cd /path/to/mailman/var/data

$ sudo chown mailman:mailman aliases*

$ sudo chmod g+w aliases*

$ ls -l
-rw-rw---- 1 mailman mailman   368 2011-04-07 18:17 aliases
-rw-rw---- 1 mailman mailman 12288 2011-04-07 18:17 aliases.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 mailman mailman    10 2011-04-07 15:00 last_mailman_version
-rw-r--r-- 1 mailman mailman 14100 2011-04-07 14:59 sitelist.cfg

Then the Postfix main.cf file should contain the following line to point to these aliases:

alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases, hash:/home/charles/pkg/mailman/var/data/aliases

(/etc/aliases is included because this was the value of alias_maps before pointing it to mailman's aliases).

Mailman Cron Jobs

Mailman uses cron jobs to do routine tasks; these can be added by running

$ /usr/bin/sudo -u mailman crontab /path/to/mailman/cron/crontab.in

Mailing List Basics

Every new list will have a set of email addresses that can be used to interface with the mailing list.

For a list called mylist@example.com, you have these addresses:

• mylist@example.com - this is the email address people should use for new postings to the list.

• mylist-join@example.com - by sending a message to this address, a new member can request subscription to the list (both the subject and body of the message are ignored)

• mylist-subscribe@exmaple.com - alias for the -join address

• mylist-leave@example.com - request unsubscription from the list (both hte subject and the body are ignored)

• mylist-unsubscribe@example.com - alias for the -leave address

• mylist-owner@example.com - email the list owners and moderators directly

• mylist-request@example.com - emails the mail robot, which processes email commands that can be used to set member subscription options, as well as process other commands

• mylist-bounces@example.com - receives bounces from members whose addresses have become either temporarily or permanently inactive; the -bounces address is also a mail robot that processes bounces and automatically disables or removes members as configured in the bounce processing settings; any bounce messages that are either unrecognized, or do not seem to contain member addresses, are forwarded to the list administrators

• mylist-confirm@example.com - another email robot, which processes confirmation messages for subscription and unsubscription requests

New Mailing Lists

Creating New Mailing Lists

Web Interface

You can navigate to

http://www.website.com/mailman/listinfo

to view the available mailing lists, or

http://www.website.com/mailman/admin

to administer/create mailing lists.

Command-Line Interface

New mailing lists can be created from the command line by running:

/path/to/mailman/bin/newlist YourListNameHere

First Mailing List: The Site-Wide Mailing List

The first mailing list you create should be a site-wide mailing list, which is necessary for normal Mailman operations [1]. The name of this mailing list can be specified in mm_cfg.py; it is mailman by default.

/path/to/mailman/bin/newlist --urlhost=www.mywebsite.com --emailhost=mywebsite.com mailman

--url-host and --email-host can be set explicitly as above, or they can be defined using the variables DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST and DEFAULT_URL.

Next, you can configure the site-wide mailing list using a template file; there is a generic template file for the site-wide mailing list in /path/to/mailman/var/data/sitelist.cfg. These configuration options include things like whether recipients can get emails in daily batches or as-they-happen, whether the list is private or public, subscribe/unsubscribe options, etc.

This config file can be applied to an existing list by running

$ /path/to/mailman/bin/config_list -i /path/to/mailman/var/data/sitelist.cfg mailman