Service/lists

Hostnames

• http://lists.sugarlabs.org/
• http://lists.ole.org/

Hosted on

Machine/sunjammer

Administrative contact

• For problems concerning a specific mailing-list, please contact the individual administrator reported on in the mailing-list summary page
• Technical contact for Mailman and general sugarlabs.org email routing: postmaster AT sugarlabs DOT org

Sysadmins

For non-emergency calls, preferably send email to the administrative contact above.

• Bernie Innocenti
• Luke Faraone

Requesting a new mailing list

The best way to start a new mailing list is to begin a discussion on a related list that already exists, and once the discussion becomes active, to ask for a separate list for that topic or that sort of traffic.

When you have a critical mass of people regularly talking about the same topic, request a mailing list by emailing the following information to the administrative contact:

1. The name you want for your mailing list, with alternative names if the first one is taken
2. A description of the list, its purpose, and why it's needed (being able to say "we've been talking on this other list for a while, and the discussion has grown too big - see these archive links" is helpful)
3. The name/email of the list admin, and of at least one other moderator (minimum one admin and one moderator)
4. At least 10 names/emails of people who want to be the initial subscribers

It may take up to 48h to hear a response back, so please be patient!

Sysadmin Recipes

Adding a new a mailing list

• Create the list:

sudo /var/lib/mailman/bin/newlist --urlhost=lists.sugarlabs.org --emailhost=lists.sugarlabs.org LISTNAME

• Send additional instructions to list administrator

I created the new list LISTNAME@lists.sugarlabs.org.

You are the list admin, and should have received a welcome message
with your admin password. You can share this role with others, if
you wish, or nominate one or more moderators.

Feel free to make any configuration changes you need. In particular,
you may want to add a meaningful summary and description of what this
list is about. Please, notify systems@ if you change security or privacy
related settings.

Change virtual host of a list

bin/withlist -l -r fix_url bolivia -u lists2.ole.org

Change a parameter on all lists

echo "nondigestable = True" >bar
for l  in `bin/list_lists  -b`; do  bin/config_list -i bar  -v $l ; done
rm bar

Disabling digests for all users

Create a nodigests.py with this content:

from Mailman import mm_cfg

def nodigests(m):
    for addr in m.getMembers():
        if m.getMemberOption(addr, mm_cfg.Digests) == True:
            print "turning off digests for " + addr
            m.setMemberOption(addr, mm_cfg.Digests, 0)
    m.Save()
    m.Unlock()

Then, execute:

bin/withlist -l -r nodigests -a

Migrating lists from one host to another

To migrate lists from solarsail to sunjammer, I did the following:

• Lower TTL for lists.sugarlabs.org to 30 minutes

• Copy over config before cut-off:

 ssh solarsail
 cd /var/lib/mailman/lists/
 rsync -aP aslo bugs colombia community-news dextrose fourthgrademath gsoc iaep italia marketing slobs soas somosazucar sugar-desarrollo sugar-devel sugar-reports  systems systems-logs root@sunjammer:/var/lib/mailman/lists/
 cd /var/lib/mailman/archives/private
 rsync -aP aslo* bugs* colombia* community-news* dextrose* fourthgrademath* gsoc* iaep* italia* marketing* slobs* soas* somosazucar* sugar-desarrollo* sugar-devel* sugar-reports* systems* systems-logs* root@sunjammer:/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/

• Copy over the lists.sugarlabs.org bits from the Postfix configuration (/etc/postfix/main.cf and /etc/postfix/transport)

• Test admin pages and archives on the new site (hint: set the new IP for lists.sugarlabs.org in /etc/hosts)

• Announce downtime on all affected lists

• Stop mailman on solarsail

• Switch over DNS records (with default TTL values)

• Remove mailman transport map from solarail, leaving the relay, so that anything@lists.sugarlabs.org gets sent to sunjammer

• Restart mailman on solarsail

See Also

• Mailing_Lists