Mailman - The GNU Mailing List Management System
Copyright (C) 1998-2003 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
INTRODUCTION
This is GNU Mailman, a mailing list management system distributed
under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The name
of this software is spelled "Mailman" with a leading capital `M'
but with a lower case second `m'. Any other spelling is
incorrect.
Mailman is written primarily in Python, a free object-oriented
scripting language. There is some ANSI C code for security
purposes.
Mailman was originally developed by John Viega. Subsequent
development (through version 1.0b3) was by Ken Manheimer. Further
work towards the 1.0 final release was a group effort, with the
core contributors being: Barry Warsaw, Ken Manheimer, Scott
Cotton, Harald Meland, and John Viega. Version 1.0 and beyond
have been primarily maintained by Barry Warsaw with contributions
from many; see the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS file for details. Jeremy
Hylton helped considerably with the Pipermail code in Mailman 2.0.
The Mailman home page is
http://www.list.org
with mirrors at
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman
http://mailman.sf.net
Mailman 2.1 requires Python 2.1.3 or greater, which can be
downloaded from
http://www.python.org
It is recommended that you use Python 2.3.3, the latest release as
of this writing (31-Dec-2003). Mailman will work with Python
2.2.3 as well, which is the latest release on the Python 2.2 branch.
Mailman 2.1 is not compatible with Python 2.0 or any earlier
version.
You will also need an ANSI C compiler to build both Python and
Mailman; gcc (the GNU C compiler) works just fine. Mailman
currently works only on GNU/Linux and other Unix-like operating
systems (e.g. Solaris, *BSD, MacOSX, etc.). It does not run on
Windows, although web and mail clients on any platform should be
able to interact with Mailman just fine.
See the INSTALL file for installation instructions. If you are
upgrading from a previous version of Mailman, you need to read the
UPGRADING file for important information.
FEATURES
Read the NEWS file for a list of changes since version 0.9. Read
the TODO file for our (extensive) wish list. You can see Mailman
2.1 in action at
http://mail.python.org/mailman-21/listinfo
Mailman has most of the standard features you'd expect in a
mailing list manager, and more:
- Web based list administration for nearly all tasks. Web based
subscriptions and user configuration management. A customizable
"home page" for each mailing list.
- Privacy features such as moderation, open and closed list
subscription policies, private membership rosters, and
sender-based filters.
- Automatic web based archiving built-in with support for private
and public archives, and hooks for external archivers.
- Per-user configuration optional digest delivery for either
MIME-compliant or RFC 1153 style "plain text" digests.
- Integrated mail/Usenet gateways.
- Integrated auto-replies.
- Majordomo-style email based commands.
- Integrated bounce detection within an extensible framework.
- Integrated spam detection, and MIME-based content filtering.
- An extensible mail delivery pipeline.
- Support for virtual domains.
REQUIREMENTS
The default mail delivery mechanism uses a direct SMTP connection
to whatever mail transport agent you have running on port 25. You
can thus use Mailman with any such MTA, however with certain MTAs
(e.g. Exim and Postfix), Mailman will support thru-the-web
creation and removal of mailing lists.
Mailman works with any web server that supports CGI/1.1. The HTML
it generates is quite pedestrian and stingy on the graphics so it
should be friendly to most web browsers and network connections.
It is regularly tested with IE 5.5, Netscape 4.7x, and Mozilla on
Windows and Netscape 4.7x and Mozilla on Linux (and occasionally
Lynx on Linux and Netscape and Mozilla on MacOS too!).
You will need root access on the machine hosting your Mailman
installation in order to complete some of the configuration
steps. See the INSTALL file for details.
Mailman's web and email user interface should be compatible with
just about any mail reader or web browser, although a mail reader
that is MIME aware will be a big help. You do not need Java,
JavaScript, or any other fancy plugins.
CREATE YOUR FIRST LIST
These instructions assume that you've installed and configured
Mailman according to the instructions in the INSTALL file. To
create and test your first list, try the following:
- First, initialize the site administrator's password by cd'ing to
the install directory (by default /usr/local/mailman) and typing
% bin/mmsitepass
New site password: [yourpassword]
Again to confirm password: [yourpassword]
Password changed.
- Visit the url
http://my.dom.ain/mailman/create
Fill out the form as described in the on-screen instructions, and
in the "List creator's password" field, type the password you
entered above. Type your own email address for the "Initial
list owner address", and select "Yes" to notify the list
administrator.
- Hit "Create List"
- Check your email for a message from Mailman informing you that
your new mailing list was created.
- NOTE: If you are using an MTA other than Exim or Postfix
(e.g. Sendmail or qmail), then you'll need to do the extra step
of installing the mailing list aliases manually. Follow the
instructions in an email message that you should have received
(you'll need to know how to do this for your particular MTA, see
the README for your MTA for more information).
- Now visit the list's admin page (either by following the link on
the web page or entering the link from the email Mailman just
sent you). Typically the url will be something like
http://my.dom.ain/mailman/admin/mysitelist
Type in the list's password and click on "Let me in..."
- Click on "Membership Management" and then on "Mass Subscription".
- Enter your email address in the big text field, and click on
"Submit Your Changes"
- Now go to your email and send a message to yourlist@my.dom.ain.
Within a minute or two you should see your message reflected
back to you via Mailman.
Congratulations! You've just set up and tested your first Mailman
mailing list. If you had any problems along the way, please see
the section below on FOR MORE INFORMATION.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
The online documentation can be found in
file:admin/www/index.html
in the directory in which you unpacked Mailman.
Chris Kolar has made a list owner-oriented manual available from
the following URL
http://www.imsa.edu/~ckolar/mailman/
There are also several mailing lists that can be used as resources
to help you get going with Mailman.
Mailman-Users
An list for users of Mailman, for posting questions or
problems related to installation, use, etc. We'll try to keep
the deep technical discussions off this list.
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Listowners
This mailing list with a non-technical focus, specifically for
discussions from the perspective of listowners and moderators
who do not have "shell access" to the mailing list server
where the Mailman software runs.
http://listowner.org
Mailman-Announce
A read-only list for release announcements an other important
news.
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-announce
Mailman-Developers
A list for those of you interested in helping develop
Mailman's future direction. This list will contain in-depth
technical discussions.
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers
Mailman-I18N
A list for the discussion of the Mailman internationalization
effort. Mailman 2.1 will be fully multi-lingual.
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-i18n
Mailman-Checkins
A read-only list which is an adjunct to the public anonymous
CVS repository. You can stay on the bleeding edge of Mailman
development by subscribing to this list.
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-checkins
The Mailman project is coordinated on SourceForge at
http://sf.net/projects/mailman
You should use SourceForge to report bugs and to upload patches.
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