+1 to Stephen's comments. I too installed and ran MM2 lists for many years, and found the MM3 setup to be challenging. It took me four or five full installations on test VMs before I was comfortable going into production, and even then I ran into several hiccups, well documented on this list.

A few things may help:

• don't install from packages on Debian/Devuan. The package version isn't current and has several issues. For now, use Python/pip installation instead. (I'd much prefer to use the distro package any day, and hope the need for this bullet point goes away soon.)

• start from the venv and web setup docs:

https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/install/virtualenv.html https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/config-web.html

There's some overlap between these but they're the closest thing to an installation manual we have.

• Document every step. For example, I documented around six different config changes needed for MariaDB, which my server runs instead of PostgreSQL. You may have similar experiences with Apache instead of Nginx.

• For web and email setup, note that the above URLs assume MM3's web components (Django, Postorious, Hyperkitty) are accessible through "/" in Apache's DocumentRoot directive. If you have other web services on the same server (e.g., if you're also running Roundcube), you'll need to tweak your Apache config.

• AFAIK there's currently no sysadmin manual for the care and feeding of MM3 and friends once it's up and running. I have some installation and config notes from my setup, and I'd be glad to share them, but they don't cover list management tasks.

Hope all this is useful. MM3 is bigger and more complex and has more stuff to break. Once it's running, though, it's been pretty solid.

/drn

On 1/24/22 4:54 PM, Stephen Daniel wrote:

Nate --

A few months ago I, a total novice with Mailman, set out to install Mailman3 on a Debian server. I used these instructions: DOC/Howto_Install_Mailman3_On_Debian10 <https://wiki.list.org/DOC/Howto_Install_Mailman3_On_Debian10>

It took me several tries, but with some help from people on the list it is now up and running. It was also a *much *bigger investment of my time than I expected.

I cannot say I completely understood what I was doing every step of the way, and some of the steps are like: go edit the config file so that it is right, which can be daunting. However, even for someone who's never touched mailman before, it can be done.

Best of luck

-- Stephen

On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 7:19 PM nate <mailman-list@linuxpowered.net> wrote:

...

Hello mailman users out there -

I have been a casual user of mailman for 21 years now I think it is. Most of my lists were super small (my only current lists have no more than 8 members each), super low volume. It's "just worked" over the years, no issues. I have been using Linux since 1996, not a newbie here. 21 years ago I deployed mailman as part of our corporate email and then there were a lot more users. Since that time I just use mailman on my personal server.

I did a apt-get dist-upgrade on my system and was surprised to see mailman had vanished. Wasn't expecting that.. not a big deal, or so I thought.

I am running Devuan 4, which is based on Debian. Investigating further it seems Debian at some point dropped Mailman 2.1 and started including Mailman 3. OK, not too bad I thought..

I was/am prepared to start my mailing lists from scratch again, manually copy/paste over settings/users/etc. Don't care about archives etc. I setup mailman 2.1 on another Devuan 3.x system and copied my mailman configs over to it, and can view them fine via the mailman cgi scripts through Apache, I was planning on just copy/pasting list settings between the two systems for each list.

Roughly 10-15mins into trying to get mailman3 off the ground I just find myself overwhelmed. That doesn't happen often. I'm honestly completely shocked at how it seems the complexity of the system has increased by orders of magnitude.

I have been browsing around https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/pre-installation-guide.html (and other links on that documentation site)

But as much information as there is, to me there really isn't any information there. If that makes sense. I'm sure it doesn't make sense so let me give an example.

On this page: https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/config-web.html

I assume that would lead me to how do I configure the web interface so I can do stuff with it.

I setup an admin account, then it goes into scheduled tasks(which appear to be handled by the Debian package already but don't know what these tasks would have to do with a web interface). I tried sending a test email but that failed, I looked at the setting up email portion but it does not give any indication where that config would be stored, a recursive grep on /etc for EMAIL_BACKEND turns up nothing (there is a /etc/mailman3 directory with some files in there).

Then it goes into other things like task queues, full text searching, here I am just looking for info on where this web interface is, where is the config, what port does it listen on? Is it a cgi like mailman2? It seems like it could be a standalone service.

Then it shows a bunch of other settings, not indicating what file these are stored in(or what directory the file is in), etc etc etc. Debian's own documentation is severely lacking in this department as well, normally I am used to going to /usr/share/doc/<package>/ and there is some useful stuff. There is stuff for mailman3 but it's minimal at best.

So I'm thinking mailman3 is not the package for me. I've really appreciated mailman 2.1 (and earlier versions) as I said they always just worked, never had to think about them. I'm sure a lot of good hard work has been put into 3, I just don't recall the last time I looked at a project and just honestly didn't even know where to begin which surprised me so much given my 20+ year history of mailman as a user and as an admin.

Is there some document(s) out there that would be more beneficial to me in setting up mailman3? I see that mailman 2 looks like it's still being maintained, I assume mailman3 is the result of python3 code and mailman2 perhaps uses python 2.7? I am unsure on the ability to run mailman2 on a modern Debian-based distro since of course Python 2.7 is pretty obsolete at this point (or maybe Mailman 2.1 doesn't use python I don't recall). I could try to install the older mailman 2.1 package on Devuan 4 and see what happens I don't know if it would be that simple or not.

Or is there a better MLM for simple use cases? I used Majordomo back in the 90s and was happy to get onto Mailman from that. Something similar to Mailman 2.1 in features/functionality. Worst case I could just use aliases in my postfix config at the end of the day that is all that is really needed, though I do like some level of access control on who can email the lists(even if nobody outside the list knows the list exists), I've had some of these lists for 2 decades, old habits die hard right?

I did some searches for mailing list software on the Debian package archives and saw a few options, nothing really stood out at me as something super interesting yet though.

I don't mean to come across as harsh or complaining or anything I'm just here in shock kind of. Thinking about what the best solution for me would be. My mailing lists have been broken for a couple of weeks but that's really not a big deal.

thanks

nate

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nate writes:

It's "just worked" over the years, no issues. I have been using Linux since 1996, not a newbie here.

If so, and you're familiar with Docker (obviously not the same thing, but maybe? ;-), you might find the containerized version provided by Abhilash (which is usually quite up to date) closer to a turnkey installation. I use the venv approach myself (more because developer than out of principle), so I'm not really familiar with the container distribution, but from traffic on the list I get the impression that most of the troubles have to do with networking in containers, rather than configuring Django and WSGI hosts.

I appreciate the detailed description of what you did and didn't find in the docs. The docs are weak on administration, we admit, and we we get some of those round tuits ....

Or is there a better MLM for simple use cases? I used Majordomo back in the 90s and was happy to get onto Mailman from that. Something similar to Mailman 2.1 in features/functionality.

It's been years since we had an answer to that question. Mark might have more to say, but the last time we were challenged on this, the rival was Sympa, and the conclusion I came to was that the use cases are different.

Depending on your Linux distro, and your attitude to risk, Python 2 plus Mailman 2 in a container, VM, or even a dedicated host in the DMZ or outside the firewall might be a reasonable solution.

Steve

On Jan 25, 2022, at 06:56, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephenjturnbull@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Or is there a better MLM for simple use cases? I used Majordomo back in the 90s and was happy to get onto Mailman from that. Something similar to Mailman 2.1 in features/functionality.

It's been years since we had an answer to that question. Mark might have more to say, but the last time we were challenged on this, the rival was Sympa, and the conclusion I came to was that the use cases are different.

I prototyped Sympa and mlmmj along with MM3, and found the latter was the closest match to MM2’s feature set. It also provided some features not available with the others, at least not available by default.

Depending on your Linux distro, and your attitude to risk, Python 2 plus Mailman 2 in a container, VM, or even a dedicated host in the DMZ or outside the firewall might be a reasonable solution.

Yes, this is possible. The IETF, the body that defines Internet technical standards, is still on MM2. I’m with them; given my druthers I’d run MM2 forever because it Just Works.

Then again, I put a high priority on keeping the base OS and applications patched against current security vulnerabilities. That’s getting harder to do with MM2.

Debian and FreeBSD have deprecated Python 2. MM2 still has maintenance releases but no new development. MM2 also has some archaic design decisions such as sending user passwords in plaintext email.

Like it or not, MM3 and related components are current, and currently maintained. I wasn’t crazy about the learning curve to get MM3 working, but I pressed on because it will provide a platform I can keep running much farther into the future.

dn

On 1/26/22 08:49, nate wrote:

(In case the list admin/moderator sees this message I sent this email again from the wrong FROM: address a few minutes ago, re-sending with the right one now, please discard that bad message(have not gotten confirmation it was held for moderation)

Posts to this list from non-members are discarded without notice.

-- side note with MM2 it gave the user the option to discard their own message if it was held for moderation if I recall right. My very first post to this list was held for moderation (sent from correct FROM: address), not sure why it was held(it got through eventually), was assuming that perhaps I triggered a bug in that the fact I am using the text mailman in my email address maybe tripped something I don't know, but I was seemingly unable to view the status/discard that message.)

Your initial post was held because all new members are moderated by default. This is an anti-spam measure. If you post on topic, we clear your moderation.

And yes, Mailman 3 doesn't (yet?) have a way for ordinary users to delete their own held posts.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

On 1/26/22 11:05, nate wrote:

Can I suggest the messaging to new users be improved to communicate this situation as it is not clear.

The automated message I got said this was the reason my message was held: The message comes from a moderated member.

Which makes sense if I REALLY think about it(I was a moderated member at first), but then the next question is why was I moderated. Your explanation makes sense.

It would be nice if it had more info along the lines of what you said, or even better adjust the messaging for the "Welcome" email to indicate your first message(s) will be held for moderation(I checked both emails I got back from the list just now to verify this info is not there). I was confused for a while(again 21 year veteran of mailman) thinking I sent my message using the wrong email address, after confirming I sent with the right one I just decided to wait to see what would happen.

The situation is no different in Mailman 2.1. The issue is that what may be appropriate in the held message to the user or the list welcome message depends on list configuration and the policies of the particular list. Thus, we can't really modify the default message templates in this way. It requires making list specific templates or possibly domain or site specific templates where all the lists in a domain or site have the same policies. This can be done by list, domain or site admins, but doing or suggesting this on a site like, e.g., mail.python.org which has 232 Mailman 2.1 lists with a total of 243 unique owners and 182 Mailman 3 lists with a total of 212 unique owners is a daunting prospect.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

Am 27. Jänner 2022 14:06:31 MEZ schrieb "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephenjturnbull@gmail.com>:

nate writes:

...

The automated message I got said this was the reason my message was held: The message comes from a moderated member.

TBH, I would rather not have this message be more clear. If the

Just to chime in. As a user who subscribed to *this* list yesterday I was *mildly* irritated that my message was held for approval. However, after a bit of thinking (with my 20 years of mailinglist administration hat on) I convinced myself that this was an anti spam measure to protect the list against new malicious users - which has been confirmed by now.

So, at least for me I think the current state of policy documentation is enough.

message makes it clear that a malicious mail will get through if the first one is benign,

OTOH, I'm sure one could come up with a sufficiently vague sentence along the lines of "new subscribers are held for moderation until we have build up enough trust that they won't abuse our list"'.

So people are prepared for initial moderation but there's no promise of being unmoderated after the *first* post.

mfg.sfg.jfd IOhannes

On 2022-01-24 15:33, nate wrote:

Hello mailman users out there -

I have been a casual user of mailman for 21 years now I think it is. Most of my lists were super small (my only current lists have no more than 8 members each),

Hello just wanted to give one last update, and I am leaving this list after, I appreciate everyone's feedback.

The solution I finished deploying was I built a new Devuan 3.x VM on my colo VM server, and installed apache/postfix/mailman there, I copied what was left over of my /var/lib/mailman from my main system to the new system. I updated alias/virtual files on the new system to go to mailman, and updated the alias files on my external/main server to route email for the lists to this internal server.

Then I configured apache ProxyPass rules to route the cgis to the internal system, then I sent a test email, and another..and another.. nothing was being processed.

Mailman 2.x has just worked so I was confused. I thought maybe there was a daemon but I didn't see one running. Fast forward a bit and I saw Mailman 2.x installed a systemd unit file (I guess a package Devuan forgot to "fix"), no systemd on the system though. I managed to find the old sysv init script for mailman on my original system copied it over, and bam the test emails went through.

So peace in my world again haha. I could of finished this a week ago just got lazy.

Perhaps in my next upgrade cycle Mailman 3 in Devuan/Debian will be more bullet/idiot proof for another try. In the meantime, for my lists that average 1 message/month and a grand total of maybe 6 people subscribed this is more than adequate.

thanks again for the help have a good weekend.

nate