My 2 cents’ worth:
When moving to MM3 from MM2, the latter of which I (relatively) easily installed myself, I read what I could find and went on installing MM3. I soon ran into trouble, namely somewhere around the hooking up of the web server. I ran into a thicket that I could not decipher. Then I asked the person who now hosts the server. He soon ran into trouble at around the same place (as far as I remember). I then asked someone who had been very helpful with MM2 to do the installation. He's a professional. He soon ran into trouble. I don’t know where, but he tried over several weeks to get it going.
The trouble? Finding the correct documentation. Understanding the documentation, which is not exactly clear. Doing what the documentation says, if it says it, and things not working as they should.
I then asked Brian, who has helped a lot of people (like many of you have). He did the installation very quickly and with no trouble. Don’t tell him this, but it was money well spent! :-)
Yours,
Allan Hansen hansen@rc.org
On Feb 25, 2021, at 18:38 , Brian Carpenter <brian_carpenter@emwd.com> wrote:
On 2/25/21 8:28 PM, Abhilash Raj wrote:
Thanks Brian, this looks quite comprehensive in the details. The only thing I am a bit concerned about is granting sudo privileges to the Mailman user. It really shouldn't have sudo given that Mailman and Django are supposed to run as mailman user. Any compromise of the Django application will provide the attacker root on the machine.
Thanks for pointing that out. I have removed that step. It really wasn't needed.
Is there a specific reason that you chose to go with an entirely new doc
Yes. Just from observing the communications on this list, there are multiple ways to install Mailman 3 which produces installation issues, database problems, outdated apps, etc. My document produces a VERY stable installation of Mailman 3 and one that is easy to maintain and update. It is also very comprehensive covering not just Mailman Suite, but the configuration of an entire server environment. Personally I think the choice of Debian, NGINX, Postfix, and PostgreSQL makes for a long and loving relationship with Mailman 3 but I do understand everyone has their own environment that they want to work with. My guide represents a very stable and easily maintained environment for me and hopefully others.
rather than helping to improve the existing one? Several parts of it (at least the ones that official guide covers) seems similar to me and is duplicate information that at least two people are going to spend time writing and maintaining in future.
Is there an official guide? See that is the problem. I did not know there was an official guide. Because every time I tried finding documentation in the past using Google searches, I got fed outdated information. So for me the guide that I came up with, works great for me and if no one else uses it, I certainly will.
Your guide, by nature has to be minimalistic to accommodate all the various server environments out there. My is meant to be narrow but comprehensive.
Is it something about the contribution process to the official documentation that makes it hard for people to contribute? Most of the pages at docs.mailman3.org or come from this1 repo and use Sphinx to build and REsT formatting (.rst).
Well I don't know much about any of the above approach to documentation. So I would say that is a hindrance.
I am just trying to understand how can we lower the barrier for community members to help contribute to existing docs instead of them having to create new ones. Specifically around installation, since that tends to get stale often when depedent packages change or a new dependency is added that breaks the installation.
I had to update my guide twice due to recent changes made to the installation process such as the addition of the Dart Sass section and the problem with the cryptography module when installing Hyperkitty. While my guide covers these new hurdles to a new installation, I don't think yours says anything about them. The Dart Sass section came from Mark's comments on this list.
-- Brian Carpenter Harmonylists.com Emwd.com
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