Mark Sapiro writes:
On 8/3/26 6:41 AM, Stephen Daniel wrote:
I'd like advice on how to migrate mailing lists and archives from the old install to the new one. Is there a standard procedure?
Just point the new installation to the existing database(s) and run the django admin migrate command.
You will get a working installation with all your lists in place with this simple approach. There are a few caveats that probably do NOT apply to you:
- You need your config files to be outside of Mailman's installation tree. (Most people have them in /etc/mailman3, so no problem.)
- You may have edited some template files in place in $var_dir. These edits need to be merged into the new ones, which may have changed. (Most people use Postorius to customize email templates, which are saved in the database rather than the file system. More installations have customized Postorius's own templates and CSS for corporate logos and disclaimers, etc., which need merging.)
- You may have customized the code, most likely by using an external text indexer for HyperKitty. Any code to link the indexer to KyperKitty will need to be installed by hand in the new venv. (This is pretty likely, in fact, since Whoosh is very inefficient and no longer recommended for production.)
My current implementation uses the Python venv installation method. I'd prefer a more container-focused installation, but since I don't believe Mailman 3 has official container images yet, I plan to continue with the venv approach. Please let me know your thoughts.
I take it from your (OP's) preference for containers that you're familiar with them. I'm a Docker newbie, and found the documentation confusing. I think because there are aspects (like use of environment variables in config files) that must have been implemented in Mailman but are not commonly used in plain venv installations. There are a number of comments in the docker-compose.yaml(s) and Dockerfile that are bitrotted, and docker itself emits some deprecation warnings. I'd have to say this is not ready to be promoted to "supported" for those reasons, but they're mostly cosmetic.
FWIW, I do think the implementation itself is detailed and solid. It appears to be getting quite a lot of attention from beta testers, including patches.
The only thing I should warn is that mail routing demands a lot of the network admin. The most common complaints I've seen about the package is that trying to integrate with a larger network of containers gets messy. If Mailman suite is isolated in its own network, it should be straightforward,
Steve
-- GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization) Sirius Open Source https://www.siriusopensource.com/ Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan