Virtual Mailman

Introduction

This page tells how I installed side by side mailmans with postfix and apache2 on a Debian Etch system (well only one is installed as I write this but more will be soon). It is put here so that I remember how to add more mailmans and in hopes it might help someone else with a similar setup. There are two parts. Part one tells how to download and get mailman ready to be install. Part two installs one mailman system. You can repeat part two for every domain name you want to install mailman on.

Part One

1. Make the mailman directory, also make a directory called install where we will be putting all the install files for mailman.

   mkdir /usr/local/mailman
   mkdir /usr/local/mailman/install

2. Get the mailman source package, unpack it and go into the directory.

   cd /usr/local/mailman/install
   wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mailman/mailman-2.1.11.tgz
   tar -xf mailman-2.1.11.tgz
   cd mailman-2.1.11

3. Edit Mailman/MTA/Postfix.py in your favorite editor.
   Change line 112 from

   print >> fp, k + ':', ((fieldsz - len(k)) * ' ') + v

   To

   print >> fp, k + '_'+mlist.host_name+':', ((fieldsz - len(k)) * ' ') + v

   Now go to line 150 and change it from

   print >> fp, fqdnaddr, ((fieldsz - len(k)) * ' '), k

   To

   print >> fp, fqdnaddr, ((fieldsz - len(k)) * ' '), k+'_'+hostname+'@localhost'

   Why? Because the maps turn out wrong without it. The virtual-mailman would look like

   mailman@example.com mailman

   This does not even seem to work as it needs to be

   mailman@example.com mailman@localhost

   I am not sure how it works for anyone without the localhost. But even more for my setup it needs to look like

   mailman@example.com mailman_example.com@localhost

   Without the extra example.com, mail from mailman@example1.com and mailman@example2.com would collide. The first edit makes the aliases map match with mailman_example.com rather then mailman.

Part Two

1. Make a dir to hold our new mailman install, own mailman:mailman, and set the correct permissions.

   mkdir /usr/local/mailman/skagitattic
   chown mailman:mailman /usr/local/mailman/skagitattic
   chmod 02775 /usr/local/mailman/skagitattic

2. Next we run configure and make install. Be sure to set prefix urlhost and mailhost right. I also ran into some things I needed to install like the python dev package.

   ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mailman/skagitattic --with-mailhost=skagitattic.com --with-urlhost=skagitattic.com
   make install
   cd /usr/local/mailman/skagitattic

3. Do some permission setting to make sure no one else on the system can view private data, but www-data can. I guess pretty much anyone who can run cgi scripts on the system can get to private archives. That needs fixing sometime.

   chmod 770 archives/private
   chown www-data archives/private
   chmod o-x archives/private

4. Configure the web server add

   ScriptAlias /mailman/ /usr/local/mailman/skagitattic/cgi-bin/
   Alias /pipermail/ /usr/local/mailman/skagitattic/archives/public/
   <Directory /usr/local/mailman/skagitattic/archives/public/>
     Options FollowSymLinks
   </Directory>

   to apache`s config for the site.
5. Edit Mailman/mm_cfg.py in your favorite editor. Add

   POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = ['skagitattic.com']
   MTA = 'Postfix'

   to the end of the file(replacing skagitattic.com with your domain).
6. Configure postfix to read the aliases for the new list. Open up main.cf and add

   virtual_alias_maps = Whatever_Maps_you_are_already_using,hash:/usr/local/mailman/skagitattic/data/virtual-mailman
   alias_maps = Whatever_Maps_you_are_already_using,hash:/usr/local/mailman/skagitattic/data/aliases

7. Set up mailman mailing list.

   bin/newlist mailman
   bin/config_list -i data/sitelist.cfg mailman

8. Set up cron.

   cd cron
   crontab -u mailman crontab.in
   cd ..

9. Set up a site wide password and if you feel like it a list creator one.

   bin/mmsitepass
   bin/mmsitepass -c

10. Fix any permission problems.

    ./bin/check_perms -f

11. Start mailman

    bin/mailmanctl start

12. Set mailman to start up on computer reboot.

    cp scripts/mailman /etc/init.d/mailman-skagitattic
    update-rc.d mailman-skagitattic defaults

13. Enjoy!

Send me, Keelan@skagitattic.com comments or questions. Much of this comes from the mailman install manual at http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/. Also a big thanks to my brother for helping me with my little python edit, the fine people at the mailman mailing list and irc chanel, and the postfix people over on freenode for helping me get this setup working.