Mailing lists using usenet newsgroup

[jim]

Consider yourself "part of" for sure.
* the mailing list issue strikes me as deserving
    further conversation and some patience. Let's
    continue general discussion, for sure, but with
    no expectation of immediate action.
* an archive for sf-lug and other lugs and such        <----
    strikes me as a great idea that might be quickly   <----
    adopted. Discussion could begin with the merits   <----
    of Digital Ocean and comparison with other          <----
    more home-brewed efforts (e.g. using a host        <----
    that belongs to one of us, is internet-accessible,   <----
    and allows multiple administrators. <----
* please suggest any other projects and ideas that
    we might share.



On 01/06/2015 04:21 PM, LEdWorldwide!> wrote:
> All of this talk of mailing lists sounds like too much fun to pass up the opportunity to be a part of (and it gives me a chance to put my LPI certification to good use).
>
> I'm enthusiastic about taking on the project and can get the data from Rick.  I also like the idea of using Mailman and I'd like to consider Digital Ocean to host a VPS for us ($5-$10 per month).
>
> I'm certainly open to other ideas/suggestions but I do know that as a group we can pool our resources and knowledge together and create some great projects.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> -Michael Rojas-
>
>
> Rick Moen <rick at deirdre.net> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 2:40 PM, jim <jim at well.com> wrote:
>>> I'm for MailMan. Either we wait until Rick gets to
>>> it or we set up our own (after we get the backups
>>> from Rick).
>> I'm pretty sure I've sent this information to you-plural in the past,
>> but I'll do it now just in case:   This is intended to help your
>> collective memory and improve your process going forward.
>>
>> 1.  GNU Mailman can be trivially configured (by the site admin) to
>> permit public download of the cumulative mbox of any hosted Maliman
>> mailing list.  That is the set of all past postings to date, from
>> which the archives can then be recreated anywhere desired, with a
>> single command (using /var/lib/mailman/bin/arch).  Thus, it is 95% of
>> the important data comprising the mailing list's 'state'.  In the case
>> of SF-LUG's mailing list on linuxmafia.com, the relevant URL was (and
>> will again be) /http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug.mbox/sf-lug.mbox
>> .  Not all Mailman instances are configured to enable that function,
>> but all of the ones that I administer are.
>>
>> If I never brought that matter to Jim's attention (and I'm pretty sure
>> I did), I'm doing so now.  Yr. welcome.
>>
>> It is common sense for you to periodically back up that file, and
>> doing so is greatly in your interest.  Shortly before I started
>> hosting a mailing list for SF-LUG, you guys completely lost all back
>> traffic to a previous iteration of the SF-LUG mailing list somewhere
>> else -- to something like a failed hard drive or such -- and at the
>> time I wondered why you never bothered to back up the mbox, given your
>> then-recent somewhat ignominious loss.  E.g., anyone whatsoever could
>> do that task daily or weekly using a simple 'wget -c' fetch in a cron
>> job.
>>
>> 2.  The other indispensable part of a Mailman mailing list's state is
>> the subscriber roster.  The mailing list admin can arrange to have
>> that information mailed to interested parties periodically using the
>> /var/lib/mailman/bin/list_members utility.   We might call that 4% of
>> the mailing list's 'state'.  The other 1% would be things like any
>> unusual mailing list settings, individual subscriber's subscription
>> passwords, and the like, none of which is a huge loss if you happen to
>> lose it.
>>
>> In the case of my server, all mailing list information is present on
>> both my backups and on the live hard drives of the (down) server.  If
>> you-all decide you wish to get the current data, you can visit my
>> house and bring a Linux machine able to read an ext3 filesystem from a
>> USB device.  I can easily give you the cumulative mbox file during
>> your visit.  For the roster, I can give you Mailman's stored copy,
>> which is in a Python's 'pickle' stored-data format.  You would need to
>> figure out how to extract what you need from that.
>>
>> You have my cellular number.
>>
>> Might I suggest that you guys start showing some basic initiative
>> towards self-preservation?  If you had bothered to do that, you would
>> not have ignominiously lost your entire previous hard drive, and you
>> would not be needing to ask me for 'backups from Rick'.