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. Local Variables: mode: indented-text indent-tabs-mode: nil End: