can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM?
Miles Fidelman
I've been doing a lot of looking at replacing my current majordomo
installation with a new list manager. I'd been looking at majordomo2,
mailman, and sympa - none of which seem quite right for my needs (virtual
domains, making it easier for users to set up mailing lists).
Lyris seems to do it all, but it costs serious dollars, and isn't
open-source.
EZMLM seems to do a lot of the right things, but requires switching to
qmail.
Has anybody gone through a transition from majordomo/sendmail to
ezmlm/qmail? Can you comment on how hard it was, things to watch out for,
whether it was worth it?
Thanks very much,
Miles Fidelman
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Peter Losher
> EZMLM seems to do a lot of the right things, but requires switching to
> qmail.
I would also suggest looking at Listar (http://www.listar.org/) It does
what you are looking for in your message, and it's MTA independent (I used
it under Sendmail before going to Postfix and Listar works beautifully
under both MTA's)
And it's open source :)
Best Wishes -Peter
(A satisfied user)
| Peter Losher | SysAdmin - Nominum, Inc. | Peter....@nominum.com |
Miles Fidelman
To which I ask two followup questions:
- it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with the virtual
user and alias databases (at least with sendmail, exim, and postgres) - is
that correct?
- it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with
qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the qmail "global
alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do
everything automagically - again, is this correct?
Thanks,
Miles
Jeremy Blackman
> - it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with the virtual
> user and alias databases (at least with sendmail, exim, and postgres)
> is that correct?
This is true for pretty much anything that is MTA-independent. Listar
does generate the data for you, though, and you can just paste it into the
appropriate file. I have all my Listar aliases in a 'listar.aliases'
file, and so when I make a new list, I just do:
listar -newlist mylist >> listar.aliases
And the new aliases are added properly, and then I just rebuild the
aliases file. This works for qmail using the Sendmail-compatible aliases
module, as well.
> - it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with
> qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the qmail "global
> alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do
> everything automagically - again, is this correct?
Listar does not run as root; in fact, the code checks and actively demotes
itself back down to lose root permissions if you try to run it as root,
logging a warning. As a result, though, the .qmail-<foo> files cannot be
placed in the ~alias directory for qmail, if you tell Listar to create
them. This means you have to become root and copy them over to the qmail
global aliases directory... but that is a matter of a 'cp' command. :)
ezmlm can do everything automagically because it links directly into the
mailserver. Listar, the goal was to not tie it to any one package. :)
The place where ezmlm beats everything else, hands down, is that
individual users can create their own ezmlm lists in their own
directories, since they can create per-user aliases. Listar could
probably be made to work with qmail per-user aliases (or the Postfix
delimited-forward files, for that matter) but would need to be modified to
run as the user; that is something on the todo list already.
--
Jeremy Blackman - lo...@maison-otaku.net / lo...@listar.org / jer...@lith.com
Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com
Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org
Miles Fidelman
> The place where ezmlm beats everything else, hands down, is that
> individual users can create their own ezmlm lists in their own
> directories, since they can create per-user aliases. Listar could
> probably be made to work with qmail per-user aliases (or the Postfix
> delimited-forward files, for that matter) but would need to be modified to
> run as the user; that is something on the todo list already.
this is more along the lines I've been looking for - any idea when this
might make its way into listar?
JT
> - it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with the virtual
> that correct?
Yes, but that could be handled by a wrapper script which when invoked
set up the virtual domain files for the MTA, set up the config file
for the virual host for listar, invoked listar -newlist with that correct
virtual host config file, and then put the output of that in the right
form for the MTA aliases file.
> - it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with
> qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the qmail "global
> alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do
> everything automagically - again, is this correct?
I don't know anything personally about qmail, so I will leave that to
someone else to answer. EZMLM most certainly does some things
automagically, but that's because it's part and parcel with qmail and
unlike listar won't work with anything but (or so I am given
to understand).
--JT
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. ]
[ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Dave Sill
>
>Has anybody gone through a transition from majordomo/sendmail to
>ezmlm/qmail? Can you comment on how hard it was, things to watch out for,
>whether it was worth it?
ezmlm (with the ezmlm-idx add-on) makes Majordomo look like a bad
hack. Likewise for qmail vs. sendmail.
I've used majordomo+sendmail, majordomo+qmail, and ezmlm+qmail. I
think ezmlm+qmail is the best in terms of performance, reliability,
and manageability, and it's well worth the effort to switch.
I recommend installing ezmlm+qmail on your existing list server (just
don't install qmail-smtpd (on port 25) or qmail's "sendmail"). That'll
allow you to play with qmail and ezmlm without interfering with your
majordomo+sendmail setup.
Once you've migrated the lists to ezmlm, you can turn off sendmail and
install qmail-smtpd.
Painless and low risk.
See:
http://Web.InfoAve.Net/~dsill/lwq.html
For help installing qmail.
-Dave
JT
> installation with a new list manager. I'd been looking at majordomo2,
> mailman, and sympa - none of which seem quite right for my needs
> (virtual domains, making it easier for users to set up mailing lists).
You might consider looking at Listar as well (http://www.listar.org/)
It would take a little work by the site admin to get it set up so that
users could set up their own lists, but it should be doable.
--JT
--
Miles Fidelman
Thanks very much for the reply. It's sounding more and more like a switch
to qmail and ezmlm is in the cards.
A few followup questions:
> First, the switch to qmail - it alone is well worth it, even if you stick
> with majordomo.
Are there any gotchas I should watch out for, and/or any suggestions for a
smooth transition - first from sendmail to qmail (while keeping my
majordomo lists functional) and then from majordomo to ezmlm?
Unfortunately, I have to do this on a single, leased host that's
supporting ongoing operations - ideally, I'd like to figure out a way to
run both systems in parallel and do a rolling cutover domain-by-domain.
Thanks again,
Russ Allbery
> Are there any gotchas I should watch out for, and/or any suggestions for
> a smooth transition - first from sendmail to qmail (while keeping my
> majordomo lists functional) and then from majordomo to ezmlm?
For help on running majordomo under qmail, see my FAQ:
<URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/mjqmail.html>
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Russ Allbery
> I've used majordomo+sendmail, majordomo+qmail, and ezmlm+qmail. I think
> ezmlm+qmail is the best in terms of performance, reliability, and
> manageability, and it's well worth the effort to switch.
The sendmail vs. qmail switch depends a lot on both how experienced you
are with setting up mail systems and how much you think like qmail. qmail
is a package which seems to be highly intuitive for some people (far more
intuitive than any other MTA) and at the same time highly unintuitive for
other people. Dave's Life With qmail document is highly recommended.
qmail is very much unlike sendmail.
As for ezmlm vs. majordomo, well, I'm currently maintaining the majordomo
with qmail FAQ and I'm considering switching to ezmlm instead. :) You
want the -idx version so that the old majordomo commands still work as
your users expect them to, and there are definitely some interesting
differences in how ezmlm does things, but the automatic bounce management
all by itself is probably worth the price of admission.
I don't have experience with mailing list software other than majordomo
and ezmlm, so I'll leave the additional recommendations to other folks.
Miles Fidelman
A followup question:
On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Dave Sill wrote:
> I recommend installing ezmlm+qmail on your existing list server (just
> don't install qmail-smtpd (on port 25) or qmail's "sendmail"). That'll
> allow you to play with qmail and ezmlm without interfering with your
> majordomo+sendmail setup.
>
> Once you've migrated the lists to ezmlm, you can turn off sendmail and
> install qmail-smtpd.
any thoughts on how to get sendmail/majordomo and qmail/ezmlm to run at
the same time - each serving some lists
as far as I can tell, I can't configure both sendmail and qmail to listen
on port 25 - each listening for different things
so.. it seems like what I'd have to do is have either sendmail or qmail do
the smtp listening, and hand off a range of addresses to the other
program's queue -- any thoughts on how to do this?
Thanks,
Miles Fidelman
John R Levine
> on port 25 - each listening for different things
Right.
> so.. it seems like what I'd have to do is have either sendmail or qmail do
> the smtp listening, and hand off a range of addresses to the other
> program's queue -- any thoughts on how to do this?
It's not hard. Assuming that you have sendmail listening on port 25, just
set up the alias file to call qmail-queue for the addresses that you want
qmail to handle.
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
Dave Sill
>
>I've used majordomo+sendmail, majordomo+qmail, and ezmlm+qmail. I
And by that I mean both speed of delivery of a message to a list and
speed of updating a list. The former is largely a function of MTA
(qmail), the latter of the MLM (ezmlm).
Here's a sample of the delivery speed you can get with qmail. My list
server is an old Alphaserver 2100 that is also ORNL's netnews server
and internal anonymous FTP server. One list I host is
tru64-unix-managers, with ~1900 subscribers around the world. Here's
how one delivery this afternoon went:
13:31:55: message received for list
13:31:59: message resent to list
13:32:01: qmail has spawned 400 qmail-remote processes (config'd max)
13:33:20: qmail-remotes drop below 400, i.e., all subscribers'
systems have been contacted
13:33:22: qmail-remotes drop below 300
13:33:29: qmail-remotes drop below 200
13:34:18: qmail-remotes drop below 100
13:36:35: qmail-remotes drop to 0, i.e., message has been delivered
to all subscribers whose systems were reachable on the
first try
Not too shabby, and I haven't even tried max'ing the remote
concurrency.
This is a Majordomo list with automatic bounce handling.
-Dave