The esteemed Mike Hughes has said: > > I have a mailing list that has been running under Mailman. Another > fellow has been hosting the mailing list for me. I would like to begin > doing so myself. I have a computer available for the task. What Linux > version will work best? What will I need to do to set up mailman? > > > Mike Hughes - Minister  > Wilmington church of Christ >
I think you need answers to two questions here, and the first is more significant than the second. 1. Are you prepared to set up what is essentially an in-house ISP connected directly to the Internet backbone? 2. Can you do Unix/Linux system administration from the command line? As to which Linux system is best, I'd say that there are several that are, in the end, about equal. As I recall, several of them offer an already-compiled mailman package which you can install. You will also need a Python, a Mail Transfer Agent (Postfix, Qmail, sendmail), an Apache WEB server, and should have at least a local caching DNS server (bind) in addition to Mailman. Services you will need from an upstream internet backbone provider are: 1. At least one fixed IP with an unfiltered feed both ways for at least ports 25 (SMTP mail) and 80 (Web). 2. Registered domain name with DNS A, MX, and PTR records for your IP. Your upstream feed will have to set up the PTR record. You'll need to set up local security. A bare as-installed Linux/Unix system on the Internet backbone is like parking a new Mercedes in Chicago, unlocked, with the keys in it. Easiest solution is to use a hardware firewall between your Linux box and the backbone feed. A major factor in your setup will be dealing with spam mail, which is primarily done in firewall and MTA configuration. You'll also need to consider hardware availability and reliability, and failure recovery. That means having backup resources. Now, to give you a ferinstance, I run an independent Mailman server as a post-retirement "hobby" site from a bedroom in my house. The primary server is a Sun SPARC running Solaris, connected to the backbone through a Fortigate 60 firewall. MTA is sendmail, Web server is Apache and I have a caching DNS on the same box, using program resourced that come in the Solaris distribution. My Python and Mailman installation are local builds from (locally modified) source. Traffic is about 150 e-mails/day to 1500 users. I've been online with this setup for about three years. For backup, I take daily incremental backups onto tape, and have a second Sun box with the same setup which gets refreshed weekly, so that it can be brought online in minutes if the primary server fails. My upstream feed provider is a small local outfit. It's a plus for them to have a pro-adminstered Solaris site on their net, so getting IP's, PTR records, and an unfiltered feed was pretty straightforward and quick. Your Mileage May Vary on that one. I did have to pass what was essentially an employment interview on my administration skills. I figure on spending about an hour a day reading logs, looking for trouble, doing list administration, etc. That's ongoing overhead; any time spent upgrading hardware or software, diagnosing and solving problems, etc. is additional. Hank ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9