[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#396537: mailman: Bug is bogus? README.Exim4.Debian needs to be updated

[Tomas Pospisek]

Package: mailman
Tags: patch
Followup-For: Bug #396537

IMHO the bug reported in #396537 some 2 years ago doesn't apply any more.
I've followed the instructions in /usr/share/doc/mailman/README.Exim4.Debian
but they are - as far as I can see - bogus as well.

The only thing I need to do to the mailman config file (mm_cfg.py) when using
mailman with Exim4 is to set the MTA to None like this:

	MTA=None

And that's it. Creating new groups through the web interface, subscribing to
them, posting to them. Everything works perfectly. No need to set the absurd
looking MTA='Postfix' and all the other addendum.

Next thing needed is to configure Exim4's router for mailman, as described in
the README.Exim4.Debian, however - again as far as I can see - there is no
need for the "condition" line:

	# Mailman lists
	mailman_router:
	  domains = +local_domains
	  condition = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{MAILMAN_HOME/data/aliases}{1}{0}}
	  require_files = MAILMAN_HOME/lists/$local_part/config.pck

because the next line "require_files" will check for the existence of the mailing
list anyway. So this here is sufficient IMHO:

        # Mailman lists
        mailman_router:
          domains = +local_domains
          require_files = MAILMAN_HOME/lists/$local_part/config.pck

Everything described in this post corresponds to the mailman-exim4 howto by Exim4's
author Nigel Metheringham [1].

My own mailing list setup successfully runs with the above mentioned divergences to
the README.Exim4.Debian.

Considered, that Exim4 is still Debian's default MTA, would it be possible to ship
mailman in lenny with all the confusion removed from the README? Possibly even a
setup that corresponds 1:1 to Nigel's in order to be in sync with upstream's idea
how to run things?

Attached is a patch to README.Exim4.Debian which changes the text as described above.

Thanks,
*t

[1] http://www.exim.org/howto/mailman21.html

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-6-vserver-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=de_CH, LC_CTYPE=de_CH (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  adduser                 3.110            add and remove users and groups
ii  apache [httpd]          1.3.34-4.1+etch1 versatile, high-performance HTTP s
ii  cron                    3.0pl1-105       management of regular background p
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.24           Debian configuration management sy
ii  exim4                   4.69-9           metapackage to ease Exim MTA (v4) 
ii  exim4-daemon-light [mai 4.69-9           lightweight Exim MTA (v4) daemon
ii  libc6                   2.7-16           GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  logrotate               3.7.1-5          Log rotation utility
ii  lsb-base                3.2-20           Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  pwgen                   2.06-1           Automatic Password generation
ii  python                  2.5.2-3          An interactive high-level object-o
ii  python-support          0.8.4            automated rebuilding support for P
ii  ucf                     3.0011           Update Configuration File: preserv

mailman recommends no packages.

Versions of packages mailman suggests:
pn  listadmin                  <none>        (no description available)
ii  lynx                       2.8.7dev9-2.1 Text-mode WWW Browser (transitiona
ii  spamassassin               3.2.5-2       Perl-based spam filter using text 

-- debconf information excluded