Running a Community Mailing List Server? 6
WaldoJ asks: "I recently acquired an old Dell P133. So I fixed it up, and now it's got 32MB of RAM and 1.6GB of storage, running Linux and, as of these evening, it's running Sendmail, Apache and Mailman. I've got it plugged in with the rest of my servers, and I intend for this little system to serve as a free mailing list server for local organizations. Technically-speaking, everything is covered. But I can't help but wonder what sort of practical problems that I'll run into, like teaching folks how to administer a list on Mailman, understand what good a mailing list is, obeying mailing list etiquette, etc. Has anybody set up a community mail server like this? I'd like to avoid running into known, documented problems. OTOH, if this hasn't been done, I want to make sure to keep careful notes so that others can set up something similar with a minimum of hassle."
make it simple! (Score:1)
Mailing list server (Score:1)
I administer a mailing list server for a car club. It's on a AMD K6/3+ 350 (I think), 128MB RAM, 3gig hard drive (upgrading to a 10gig RAID1 setup in a week or two) using RedHat 6.2, kernel 2.2.18, Apache, Sendmail, Majordomo, Wilma, MHonArc, Glimpse, and ircd (gotta chat don't ya know?). The server sits in a friend's basement acting as a NAT box for his cable modem as well.
We have 360+ users on the list at last check, around 230 on direct mail, 130 on digest. Searchable archives back 3 years. I do have MajorCool setup for a web interface, but I only use that for doing remote admin stuff, I don't let the subscribers know about it.
The only troubles we have are people that can't figure out how to authenticate their subscription with Majordomo, and those that can't figure out how to unsubscribe from the list (despite the tagline at the bottom saying to go here for how a list faq).
Really no other troubles. There was one big problem a few weeks back when rr.com servers in Texas decided to puke up several weeks worth of messages and they somehow got the header right so that our server thought they were new messages and resent them. Then the occasional virus related to Outlook that generates a few messages from corporate webservers telling us the message was quarantines. Once or twice a month someone will fill their mailbox and go over the quota and bounce messages back to the list owners. No problems with spammers signing on and spamming nonstop.
Really not too much maintance related to the server. It chugs along and keeps quiet. uptime is at 35 days now because we upgraded the processor from a 233.
While not exactly a community server, it does serve our little car community quite well. Less signal to noise ratio than on web forums (UBB, et. al) and less trolls. I'd say teach the individual list admins how to work the list properly and let them deal directly with the users only coming to you when there is some sort of technical trouble. The less work for you the better.
The biggest problem is *always* the users (Score:2)
The same cannot be said about my users. Although they are all good, intelligent people, they are not computer people. I am constantly changing passwords, configuring lists, pointing them toward s documentation, explaining documentation, and otherwise engaging with them to help them do things that are "supposed" to be easy. (What's intuitive to one person is not necessarily so to another...)
It's not impossible, but dealing with people takes a lot more time that I imagined it would.
Re:make it simple! (Score:2)
Consider qmail and ezmlm (Score:1)
Dump sendmail and switch over to qmail. If your users are savvy, you don't even need the ezmlm proggie. Also, ezmlm has some nice 3rd party web interface stuff to make life even easier.
Last post! (Score:1)