Looking for a simple, basic, mail-list management solution

Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list manager software,
and would you be willing to give me some advice?
I've recently encountered a situation in which I need a mail-list
distribution system for a very low-volume, very restricted set of
users. I've looked at a number of mail-list solutions (GNU Mailman,
Majordomo, etc) and have found no solution simple enough for my
needs.
I run 64bit Slackware 14.2 on the mail system in question, with the
stock Slackware tools (sendmail 8.15.2, python 2.7.17, perl 5.22.2,
apache 2.4.57, php 5.6.40, mariadb 10.0.38, Berkeley DB 4.2, Berkeley
DB 4.4, Berkeley DB 4.8, sqlite 3.13.0, procmail 3.22, and all the
supplied GNU Compilers), and want to be able to handle less than 10
mail lists, with less than 10 subscribers per list. I'm not looking
for the fancy bells and whistles, just simple mail redistribution and
an offline archive file for each mail list. Volume is expected to be
less than 10 (outbound) emails per month for any group.
My question is: can you suggest an email mail-list manager that fits
the criteria I outlined above? Simple, basic, and installable under
Slackware 14.2?

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/network/mailman/?search=mailman

Mailman is quite reasonably approachable, and there is a slackbuild for
it for 14.2, avoiding much of the need for you to configure/build it
properly.

It should be close to a drop-in install. Worst case you may have a
little configuration to attach it to Apache and to Sendmail.

FWIW I run it (Mailman) on a server I manage for a local org, I
installed via the slackbuild, then just did whatever minimal
configuration was left for Apache and Postfix (once Postfix arrived on
the scene I never ran Sendmail on any of my systems ever again).

Lew Pitcher

2023-07-08 15:40:39 UTC

Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list manager software,
and would you be willing to give me some advice?

[snip]

My question is: can you suggest an email mail-list manager that fits
the criteria I outlined above? Simple, basic, and installable under
Slackware 14.2?

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/network/mailman/?search=mailman
Mailman is quite reasonably approachable, and there is a slackbuild for
it for 14.2, avoiding much of the need for you to configure/build it
properly.
It should be close to a drop-in install. Worst case you may have a
little configuration to attach it to Apache and to Sendmail.
FWIW I run it (Mailman) on a server I manage for a local org, I
installed via the slackbuild, then just did whatever minimal
configuration was left for Apache and Postfix (once Postfix arrived on
the scene I never ran Sendmail on any of my systems ever again).

Thanks, Rich.

I just downloaded mailman (v2.1.39, which uses Python v2), and am
preparing to install it. Mailman should easily manage my needs,
but seems bigger and more "full featured" than I need. I will give
it a try.

Thanks again for the suggestion.

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Rich

2023-07-08 17:40:12 UTC

Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list manager software,
and would you be willing to give me some advice?

[snip]

My question is: can you suggest an email mail-list manager that fits
the criteria I outlined above? Simple, basic, and installable under
Slackware 14.2?

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/network/mailman/?search=mailman
Mailman is quite reasonably approachable, and there is a slackbuild for
it for 14.2, avoiding much of the need for you to configure/build it
properly.
It should be close to a drop-in install. Worst case you may have a
little configuration to attach it to Apache and to Sendmail.
FWIW I run it (Mailman) on a server I manage for a local org, I
installed via the slackbuild, then just did whatever minimal
configuration was left for Apache and Postfix (once Postfix arrived on
the scene I never ran Sendmail on any of my systems ever again).

Thanks, Rich.
I just downloaded mailman (v2.1.39, which uses Python v2), and am
preparing to install it. Mailman should easily manage my needs,
but seems bigger and more "full featured" than I need. I will give
it a try.
Thanks again for the suggestion.

If you are willing to handle subscribing/unsubscribing yourself
manually then a set of group aliases can suffice for a "simple"
mail-list.

I.e., you setup "list-***@example.com" to alias to
"***@yahoo.com" and "***@gmail.com" and
"***@hotmail.com", etc.

But, you then have to manually edit the alias map files (and likely
restart the SMTP server) for any new subscriptions or un-subs.

Mailman (and maybe the other package you found) allow the subscribers
to subscribe/unsubscribe themselves at will. Although you will still
encounter some, no matter how many headers and footers of the emails
say "do this to unsubscribe" who will email the list itself asking to
be unsubscribed.

Lew Pitcher

2023-07-08 17:57:27 UTC

Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list manager software,
and would you be willing to give me some advice?

[snip]

My question is: can you suggest an email mail-list manager that fits
the criteria I outlined above? Simple, basic, and installable under
Slackware 14.2?

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/network/mailman/?search=mailman
Mailman is quite reasonably approachable, and there is a slackbuild for
it for 14.2, avoiding much of the need for you to configure/build it
properly.
It should be close to a drop-in install. Worst case you may have a
little configuration to attach it to Apache and to Sendmail.
FWIW I run it (Mailman) on a server I manage for a local org, I
installed via the slackbuild, then just did whatever minimal
configuration was left for Apache and Postfix (once Postfix arrived on
the scene I never ran Sendmail on any of my systems ever again).

Thanks, Rich.
I just downloaded mailman (v2.1.39, which uses Python v2), and am
preparing to install it. Mailman should easily manage my needs,
but seems bigger and more "full featured" than I need. I will give
it a try.
Thanks again for the suggestion.

If you are willing to handle subscribing/unsubscribing yourself
manually then a set of group aliases can suffice for a "simple"
mail-list.
But, you then have to manually edit the alias map files (and likely
restart the SMTP server) for any new subscriptions or un-subs.

For the moment, that's more-or-less how I am handling things. And,
that's why I'm looking at mail-list managers :-)

Post by Rich
Mailman (and maybe the other package you found) allow the subscribers
to subscribe/unsubscribe themselves at will. Although you will still
encounter some, no matter how many headers and footers of the emails
say "do this to unsubscribe" who will email the list itself asking to
be unsubscribed.

My lists are few and simple, and I know all the recipients personally.
I'm hopeful that I can catch those few "please take me off this list"
emails before they cascade into an avalanche of email fluff.

Thanks again

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Lew Pitcher

2023-07-08 16:48:12 UTC

Post by Lew Pitcher
Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list
manager software, and would you be willing to give me
some advice?

[snip]

Post by Lew Pitcher
My question is: can you suggest an email mail-list manager
that fits the criteria I outlined above? Simple, basic, and
installable under Slackware 14.2?

For what it's worth, I've encountered references to "SmartList",
a simple mail-list management utility written by the author of
procmail (Stephen R. van den Berg) and meant to work with procmail
to provide a simple, basic, email mail-list manager.

I tracked down the source code (last updated in 2000) from
https://github.com/procmail-org/SmartList and will evaluate it
along with any other mail list management packages I encounter.
(First impressions: the source code certainly shows it's age: the
supplied utility programs are written in K&R C).

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Rich

2023-07-08 17:35:26 UTC

Post by Lew Pitcher
Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list
manager software, and would you be willing to give me
some advice?

[snip]

Post by Lew Pitcher
My question is: can you suggest an email mail-list manager
that fits the criteria I outlined above? Simple, basic, and
installable under Slackware 14.2?

For what it's worth, I've encountered references to "SmartList",
a simple mail-list management utility written by the author of
procmail (Stephen R. van den Berg) and meant to work with procmail
to provide a simple, basic, email mail-list manager.
I tracked down the source code (last updated in 2000) from
https://github.com/procmail-org/SmartList and will evaluate it
along with any other mail list management packages I encounter.
(First impressions: the source code certainly shows it's age: the
supplied utility programs are written in K&R C).

From 2000 I'd not be the least bit surprised. C99 the standard would
have only been out for at most a year or so, and it is doubtful any C
compiler in 2000 had even begun to consider writing any of the patches
necessary to support the C99 standard.

Lew Pitcher

2023-07-08 18:02:11 UTC

Post by Lew Pitcher
Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list
manager software, and would you be willing to give me
some advice?

[snip]

Post by Lew Pitcher
I tracked down the source code (last updated in 2000) from
https://github.com/procmail-org/SmartList and will evaluate it
along with any other mail list management packages I encounter.
(First impressions: the source code certainly shows it's age: the
supplied utility programs are written in K&R C).

Yah. The initial "standard C" standard came out in 1989, and I imagine
that it took more than a decade for compiler writers and C coders to
catch up. Anyway, as I have time on my hands, and skills to practice,
I might just try converting the K&R C code into C99(-ish) code.

:-)

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Henrik Carlqvist

2023-07-09 08:25:42 UTC

Post by Lew Pitcher
The initial "standard C" standard came out in 1989,

Yes, that was the one called C89 or C90 or "ansi C".

Before that, there was a language called "B" which Ritche started to
improve and 1971 called "NB". In 1972 the language was renamed "C" and in
1978 the language was described in the book "The C programming Language"
by Kernigan and Ritchie.

10 years later, 1988, a second edition of that book was released,
describing C as defined by the ANSI standard.

The oldest entry in the HISTORY file of SmartList is from 1993, and you
would expect that most would choose ansi C rather than K&R C by then.
However, the version number for that entry is v2.80, so SmartList was
probably initiated long before that.

regards Henrik

Eli the Bearded

2023-07-09 02:52:51 UTC

Post by Lew Pitcher
For what it's worth, I've encountered references to "SmartList",
a simple mail-list management utility written by the author of
procmail (Stephen R. van den Berg) and meant to work with procmail
to provide a simple, basic, email mail-list manager.
I tracked down the source code (last updated in 2000) from
https://github.com/procmail-org/SmartList and will evaluate it
along with any other mail list management packages I encounter.
(First impressions: the source code certainly shows it's age: the
supplied utility programs are written in K&R C).

I've used smartlist in the past. It's functional, but not very full
featured. There's every chance it hasn't aged well in the age of
agressive spam filtering from the big email providers (Gmail/Outlook and
I don't knowm who else). The entire procmail ecosystem is written in the
most obtuse C you are ever likely to encounter, so fixing any bug or
adding any feature that needs to be in C is a misery. If you don't have
an actual mailbox configured in your MTA, you'll need to use
sophisticated procmail delivery rules to get smartlist to work. When I
was using smartlist, my MTA was sendmail, and I was using the m4
procmail as MDA ruleset. That's sophisticated enough.

(MTA: mail transfer agent, sends mail between systems;
MDA: mail delivery agent, run by the MTA to handle "last mile" delivery;
MUA: mail user agent, something like mutt or Thunderbird to read mail.)

I've added MIME word decoding capabilities to `formail` but haven't
worked up the stomache to put them in `procmail` (so, you know, you could
match on "专业办" in the Subject instead of the 5LiT5Lia5YqeC part of:
Subject: =?utf-8?B?5LiT5Lia5Yqe55CG6aaZ5riv5bqn5py6LS0t5oyJ5pyI5pS2?=
(just pulling some random thing from today's spam log).

https://github.com/Eli-the-Bearded/procmail-formail

I've never configured a newer mailing list tool like Mailman, but that's
probably the best option at this point in time.

Elijah
------
still using procmail as an MDA

Lew Pitcher

2023-07-09 14:56:55 UTC

Hi, Elijah

Post by Eli the Bearded

[snip]

Post by Eli the Bearded
I've used smartlist in the past. It's functional, but not very full
featured. There's every chance it hasn't aged well in the age of
agressive spam filtering from the big email providers (Gmail/Outlook and
I don't knowm who else). The entire procmail ecosystem is written in the
most obtuse C you are ever likely to encounter, so fixing any bug or
adding any feature that needs to be in C is a misery. If you don't have
an actual mailbox configured in your MTA, you'll need to use
sophisticated procmail delivery rules to get smartlist to work.

I've never read the procmail sources. and if the smartlist source is
anything like the procmail source, I never will read the procmail source.

While I grabbed the smartlist source, I probably won't proceed with
evaluating it as a maillist MDA. Apparently, you have to merge the
smartlist source with the procmail source, and compile them as one
package. Given the state of the source code, I don't think that this
is worth my time.

[snip]

Post by Eli the Bearded
I've added MIME word decoding capabilities to `formail` but haven't
worked up the stomache to put them in `procmail`

[snip]

Post by Eli the Bearded
https://github.com/Eli-the-Bearded/procmail-formail

That change looks interesting. I'll check it out more thoroughly later.
Thanks for the pointer.

Post by Eli the Bearded
I've never configured a newer mailing list tool like Mailman, but that's
probably the best option at this point in time.

That's the impression I get as well.

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

noel

2023-07-11 08:11:37 UTC

google "ecartis" (formerly listar), it hasn't been touched in 20 years,
but doesnt really need to be, doesnt have an archiver, we used hypermail
for that, but for simple quick installs that runs as a normal user and
goes nowhere near root it might suite you better, although, this along
with the other older list software around will be a problem with DMARC,
mailman has workarounds, I only wish all mailman installs would use it.

Also mailman 3 is installable through python directly IIRC, not sure on
the affects that has on slackware, and its very new, so if DMARC
compliance is important, get the latest mailman v2 (2.1.39 is on our gear
from Christmas '21 might be a later version now)

Lew Pitcher

2023-07-11 16:03:31 UTC

Post by noel

google "ecartis" (formerly listar),

Thanks, noel.

I found the homepage, but the download links are dead. There seems
to be an "unofficial mirror" on github that I've now retrieved and
will evaluate.

The lack of an archive file is a show stopper for me, but I might
just be able to add that functionality into the package myself.

[snip]

Post by noel
Also mailman 3 is installable through python directly IIRC, not sure on
the affects that has on slackware, and its very new, so if DMARC
compliance is important, get the latest mailman v2 (2.1.39 is on our gear
from Christmas '21 might be a later version now)

Mailman 3 requires a version of python not "officially" released for
Slackware 14.2 (the Slackware release I run on the machine in question),
but Mailman 2 can use the python that 14.2 comes with. I haven't got to
Mailman yet, but when I do, I'll use version 2.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Henrik Carlqvist

2023-07-12 05:23:50 UTC

The lack of an archive file is a show stopper for me, but I might just
be able to add that functionality into the package myself.

Wouldn't it be a solution to simply add an extra subscriber to the
mailing list and not delete any mails from that "mail archive" account?

regards Henrik

noel

2023-07-12 07:51:47 UTC

Post by Henrik Carlqvist

The lack of an archive file is a show stopper for me, but I might just
be able to add that functionality into the package myself.

Wouldn't it be a solution to simply add an extra subscriber to the
mailing list and not delete any mails from that "mail archive" account?
regards Henrik

I'm strectching the memory but I think it does archive itself, just not
accessible by web which is why we used hypermail, I'll look at a tape...

...taps foot for a looooooong time...

ahh yes, ecartis has list archives under /home/ecartis/archives/list_name/
in there it creates monthly files list_name.year.number_of_month
(thr files appear to be regular mbox format.

To get web archives, we created a virtual host and used hypermail which
was configured per list.

Joseph Rosevear

2023-07-12 17:55:52 UTC

Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list manager software,
and would you be willing to give me some advice?

Hi Lew,

Are you comfortable writing a little code?

Let me tell you about my journey down the *programming* path to a
solution of this problem.

There are two shortcomings with canned solutions: 1. They come with a
burden of obscurity and complexity. 2. They often don't do what you
need.

I had a job in a finance office at a large church, and I needed to send
emails regularly to the staff credit card holders. The emails could be
identical except for the name and email address of the recipients, but
each needed a unique attachment.

I discovered that with a small amount of bash and python I could make a
collection of tools that did what I needed.

I combined a one-shot, email-sending python script (called dupe) that
took six arguments:

# $1 To
# $2 Cc or "-"
# $3 file containing Subject
# $4 file containg the message Body
# $5 file--optional first attachment
# $6 file--optional second attachment

with a sourced bash function (called dribble) which used a list (email)
of the above arguments, one line for each email to be sent.

I could send all the emails in the list with a single command line
invocation:

cat email | dribble eval dupe

Yes, it really worked. Yes, you can send emails using python. No, it
wasn't easy. But it was worth the trouble, and once I got it working I
had a good method that worked well and saved me time.

What was really neat about this solution was how *little* code was
required!

Anyway, that's my story. It may be completely of no interest to you, but
I wanted to put it out there as it was topical.

-Joe

Lew Pitcher

2023-07-12 19:57:51 UTC

Post by Joseph Rosevear

Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list manager software,
and would you be willing to give me some advice?

Hi Lew,

Hi, Joe

Post by Joseph Rosevear
Are you comfortable writing a little code?

More than comfortable :-) I'm a retired programmer
with plenty of time and an insatiable curiosity :-)

Post by Joseph Rosevear
Let me tell you about my journey down the *programming* path to a
solution of this problem.

[snip]

Post by Joseph Rosevear
Yes, it really worked. Yes, you can send emails using python. No, it
wasn't easy. But it was worth the trouble, and once I got it working I
had a good method that worked well and saved me time.
What was really neat about this solution was how *little* code was
required!

Thanks, Joe, for your experience. With that encouragement, I may just
try my hand at building a tiny mail list manager, if the available
packages don't pan out.

Post by Joseph Rosevear
Anyway, that's my story. It may be completely of no interest to you, but
I wanted to put it out there as it was topical.

Indeed, it was topical. Glad to see that you found a good solution to
your email distribution problem.

And, thanks again for your input. It does help.

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Joseph Rosevear

2023-07-14 20:37:23 UTC

Post by Joseph Rosevear

Has anyone here had experience with email mail-list manager software,
and would you be willing to give me some advice?

Hi Lew,

Hi, Joe

Post by Joseph Rosevear
Are you comfortable writing a little code?

More than comfortable :-) I'm a retired programmer with plenty of time
and an insatiable curiosity :-)

And we both hang out in a.o.l.s.

I was only once a professional programmer, and that didn't go well. My
programming has always been an adjunct to my other work, although I did
study a little Fortran in college and C++ many years later.

If you want to peek at what I did, here is a link to my dupe:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/dupe/files/

Note that although it *is* my code, it borrows much from code I found
online.

Post by Lew Pitcher
Thanks, Joe, for your experience. With that encouragement, I may just
try my hand at building a tiny mail list manager, if the available
packages don't pan out.

You're welcome!

-Joe

Joseph Rosevear

2023-07-15 02:02:26 UTC

Post by Lew Pitcher
More than comfortable :-) I'm a retired programmer with plenty of time
and an insatiable curiosity :-)

Cool!

What sort of programming did you do?

I wonder sometimes what a career in programming would have been like.

-Joe

Lew Pitcher

2023-07-15 12:07:04 UTC

Post by Joseph Rosevear

Post by Lew Pitcher
More than comfortable :-) I'm a retired programmer with plenty of time
and an insatiable curiosity :-)

Cool!
What sort of programming did you do?

Mostly, I designed, wrote, and maintained banking application software
for a large Canadian bank, but in part of my career, I also wrote and
maintained system-level code for some of the bank's smaller mainframes.

I worked primarily in S390 Assembler and COBOL, and was expected to have
a working knowledge of any of the other languages that the bank used
at the time.

In the middle years of my career, I installed Slackware on a spare
system, and used it for a number of pilot projects, including a
mainframe "print to email" test solution, a bridge between a Novell
Netware network and a TCP/IP network (part of a WfH support task),
and an ODBC-based database query support for one of our internal
applications.

Post by Joseph Rosevear
I wonder sometimes what a career in programming would have been like.

I'm sure that the programming path would have had as many challenges
and rewards as the path you took. For the most part, we "work" in the
fields that we enjoy working in.

Luck be with you, Joe

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Joseph Rosevear

2023-07-15 17:39:57 UTC