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Running a Community Mailing List Server?

Posted by Cliff on from the searching-for-good-advice dept.

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."

2 of 6 comments (clear)

  1. The biggest problem is *always* the users by agentZ · · Score: 2
    The setup you have described is exactly what I have at home. An old Linux box running Sendmail, Apache, and Mailman and serving up a few mailing lists. Maintaining the computers is the easy part. Sure, there's the occasionaly upgrade (Mailman up to 2.0.3, Python to 2.0, Linux itself up to 2.4.3, etc etc), but those are pretty easy for two reasons. First, there's only one computer to deal with. And secondly, the computer does what it's told.

    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.

  2. Re:make it simple! by agentZ · · Score: 2

    GNU mailman has a web interface for both users and list administrators. But you'd be amazed at just how many people will ask you for things that are easily accessable via the web.