HOWTOlabs Mailman
Email list manager installation

Mailman has become the defacto standard open source email list processor. It now handles creating links to file attachments.

The install has not changed that much since earlier versions. Administrating mailman is now quite doable without every having to go to the command line, unlike earlier versions.
 
  
Elsewhere
Tips

Preventing nested lists from munging MIME attachments so message body do not show correctly.

Go to Non-digest options and delete the text in the message-footer box. Otherwise Mailman wraps each message with another MIME wrapper layer to attach footer. This extra layer can make down stream mail processors freak out and not show message body contents properly.

Legacy Tips
Following is an account of a Mailman install. Due to idiosyncharcies in how Mailman behaves, it prefers to be installed on a system with publically addressable email and web server ports (i.e. a email/webserver not behind a firewall).
Administration Commands 
Login as mailman

$ su -

# su - mailman

Change master password

$ bin/mmsitepass <your-site-password>

Create new list

$ bin/newlist
  [ add names to mail server aliases ]

Remove list

bin/rmlist -a <listname>
Installation - from source 
download as non-root to your user development folder
(as of this writing I'm doing this with mailman-2.0.11)

download, gzip -d, tar xvf ...

$ cd mailman-2.0.11

$ su -

Optional, tweak, DR mail.zaptech.com, DH mail.zaptech.com, DM zaptech.com
this may be more entailed depending on how you route mail at your site

# vi sendmail.cf

  /etc/mail/mailertable (forwards mail without reformating it, necessary?)
  mailman.zaptech.com             esmtp:[jabber.zaptech.com]

  mail.zaptech.com
  public.zaptech.com
  mailman.zaptech.com
  tester.local.zaptech.org
  sendmail.cf - DS mail.zaptech.com DM mail.zaptech.com
  access mailman.zaptech.com
  local-host-names]

service sendmail restart

Add mailman user, set user folder permissions, mailman aliases

# useradd mailman

# cd /home/mailman

# chmod a+rx,g+ws .

#  vi /etc/aliases
   [ mailman: fred@zaptech.com
     mailman-owner: mailman  ]

# newaliases

Apache/httpd installation (if not already present)

# rpm -ivh mm-1.1.3-1.i386.rpm

# rpm -ivh apache-1.3.20-16.i386.rpm

Apache/httpd Custmomization

# rcsdiff /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
    ServerName tester.local.zaptech.org
 -  ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"
 +  ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"
    # MailMan things ...
    Alias /pipermail/ /home/mailman/archives/public/
    ScriptAlias /mailman/ "/home/mailman/cgi-bin/"

    <Directory "/home/mailman/archives/public/">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
    </Directory>]

# service httpd restart

# cp /home/mailman/icons/* /var/www/icons

# exit

Now build mailman executbles from source ...

$ cat /etc/passwd | grep -i apache
  apache:x:48:48:Apache:/var/www:/bin/false

$ ./configure --with-cgi-gid=48

$ make

$ su

$ make install

$ cd /home/mailman

$ bin/check_perms

$ vi Mailman/mm_cfg.py
  [override Default.py settings as necessary]

$ exit

--------------------
$ su - mailman
$ cd /home/mailman
$ cd cron
$ crontab -l
OK, now your ready to create and manage mail lists

Miscellanious 
http://mailman.zaptech.com/mailman/listinfo
from there you may need to tweak settings from the web interface


Alas, mailman appears to require hand editing of mail server aliases
file/list created.  It also expects to shell escape to mailman scripts
upon each email it receives, which means dedicated IP address must
be used from running sendmail 21, apache 80, and mailman scripts.

RedHat 7.X ...
cd /etc/smrsh
ln -s /home/mailman/mail/wrapper wrapper


http://www.redhat.com/support/resources/gotchas/7.2/
dnl This changes sendmail to only listen on the loopback device 127.0.0.1
dnl and not on any other network devices. Comment this out if you want
dnl to accept email over the network.
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
!!!!!!! ->
dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')