HOWTO Setup Mailman on Debian wheezy

Followed this to configure basic mail for a single domain without a virtual host (use discuss@example.com, not discuss@lists.examples.com) for mail setup. Ignore list creation and web interface bits:

http://library.linode.com/email/mailman/debian-6-squeeze

Then create actual lists like:

newlist –urlhost=mailman.example.com discuss@example.com

Follow the directions and paste the resulting aliases into /etc/aliases, then run ‘newaliases’.

Archiving does not seem to work by default, until permissions are fixed on the directories and files at ’/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/*’.

In the admin interface, you probably want to edit the description, the footer message (in “Non-digest options”), and subscribe yourself.

thttpd isn’t in wheezy. manually download ‘squeeze’ thttpd package and install with dpkg:

http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/thttpd

Then follow this to configure web interface with nginx; use mailman.example.com vhost:

http://wiki.nginx.org/Mailman

Then set up SPF records in DNS (TXT record: “v=spf1 +a +mx ~all”), confirm with:

http://www.openspf.org/Tools

If using public mailing lists archives, add lines like the following around /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/HyperArch.py:291:

self.author = self.email = 'redacted'

Notes: - run thttpd as list user? - don’t forget to set “nochroot” in /etc/thttpd/thttpd.conf - run newlist as root? - edit DEFAULT_URL_PATTERN, DEFAULT_URL_HOST, DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST in /etc/mailman/mm_cfg.py - after above, to fix “instant logout” problem (no cookies set): while read list stuff; do withlist -l -r fix_url “$list”; done < <(list_lists)

(ignore the error?)

check_perms -f

needed to allow symlinks from nginx to get ‘list’ group-owned archives to work.