[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#999861: mailman3-web: Please include instructions for migrating from mailman 2.1

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Hi,

Alex King <alex at king.net.nz> wrote on 17/11/2021 at 21:34:44+0100:

> Package: mailman3-web
> Version: 0+20200530-2
> Severity: normal
> Tags: newcomer patch
>
> Dear Maintainer,
>
> I had an install running on mailman 2.1, which was working (mostly) fine.
> Mailman 2.1 is no longer available, so I upgraded to mailman 3.
>
> I followed the instructions in /usr/share/doc/mailman3/README.Debian which
> worked, but there were no instructions for migrating the old archives to
> hyperkitty.  I googled and found several sites purporting to say how to do
> this but none of the ones I found was specific to Debian.
>
> In the end, this site (https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/migration.html)
> combined with some information from
> https://lists.mailman3.org/archives/list/mailman-users@mailman3.org/thread/75BSXEULXUJ7XXJX5AYLDE3OD7RLNYYM/
> allowed me to import the archives, using the following 2 commands per list:
>
> sudo -u www-data /usr/share/mailman3-web/manage.py hyperkitty_import -l mylist at list.king.net.nz /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/mylist.mbox/mylist.mbox
> sudo -u www-data /usr/share/mailman3-web/manage.py update_index_one_list mylist at list.king.net.nz
>
> This was successful.  However, it took some hours of research and trial and
> error to find it.  The important information that would have helped me a
> great deal was 1. to run the import as the www-data user, and 2. that
> manage.py is located in /usr/share/mailman3-web/ in Debian.
>
> Since I'm moving my production list server on a Debian install, I expect
> sufficient notes in README.Debian to upgrade from previous releases without
> having to do extensive searches and trial and error.

I'm sorry that you had to work a lot to find your way. I agree we should
have done something about it quite earlier.

> I suggest the follwing is added at the end of
> /usr/share/doc/mailman3-web/README.Debian.gz:
>
> Migrating archives to mailman 3 and HyperKitty
> ==============================================
>
> To migrate list archives from Mailman 2.1 to mailman3 and the HyperKitty
> archiver, follow the instructions at
> https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/migration.html.
>
> The mailman command should be run as mailman_wrapper on Debian systems.  A
> new empty list needs to be created with the name you want in mailman3, then
> the following command will import the list from mailman 2.1:
>
> mailman-wrapper import21 foo-list at example.com /var/lib/mailman/lists/foo-list/config.pck
>
> The manage.py script is installed at /usr/share/mailman3-web/manage.py.  The
> script should be run as the user www-data, so (given the caveate that your
> existing mbox file is in good shape per note 2 on the migration
> instructions,) the commands required to migrate the archives are:
>
> sudo -u www-data /usr/share/mailman3-web/manage.py hyperkitty_import -l foo-list at example.com /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/foo-list.mbox/foo-list.mbox
> sudo -u www-data /usr/share/mailman3-web/manage.py update_index_one_list foo-list at example.com

Thanks a lot for offering this documentation. I'm currently waiting on
some dependencies that are missing to have mailman updated in
unstable. I'll include your suggestion in this release and then try to
have it included in bullseye's version.

With best regards,
--
PEB
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