[Mageia-sysadm] sympa testing deployment

Michael Scherer misc at zarb.org
Thu Dec 9 01:44:21 CET 2010


Hi,

after putting the final touch to the work done by dmorgan on sympa, and
setting up the various antispam stuff, I am about to deploy it, for
testing purposes.

So here is a few remarks :

Postfix + puppet
----------------
- due to the way that puppet work, we cannot have postfix as a default
server to relay mail, and postfix as a regular mail server. So either we
remove postfix from the class default_mageia_server, or we use another
MTA. I have added small configuration for ssmtp, but this doesn't
satisfy me ( because postfix is indeed doing well ). So if someone has a
idea, do not hesitate. I have tried various thing with tags, etc.

Layout :
--------

sympa will be installed on alamut, and postfix ( as primary smtp ) will
be on alamut and krampouiz, as secondary server.

sympa web interface will be on alamut, on http://ml.mageia.org. We need
to find a ay to force ssl for authenticated request. Simplest would be
to put force ssl by default, but maybe that's 


Puppet type, and ml type :
--------------------------
I have written a simple puppet type for sympa ml ( not yet committed ),
but there is only basic settings of mailling list ( ie, subject,
profile, language, name ) and it just take care of the initial creation.
I do not expect us needing anything else than theses profiles :

- announce ml ( free to subscribe, no one post except few account )
=> announce, changelog, svn commit, bugs

- discussion ml ( free to subscribe, everybody can post )
=> anything else 

- restricted ml ( restricted subscribe, maybe ldap based, restricted
archive, only subscribers can post ) ( or maybe anybody can post ).
=> contact@  press@ 

- non archived ml ( free to subscribe, restricted archive )
=> blog comments.

And I also do not expect us to change various settings on a per-list
basis ( like digest or not, password reminder or not, etc ). But I may
be wrong, so if you think there is a type of list that would not fall in
any of this, just propose them. Or a setting that would need to be
tweaked, see 
http://www.sympa.org/manual_6.0/list-parameters#list_configuration_parameters for the list.

The only issue is owners, and moderation. A group of ml moderator is
planned, but nothing is done yet. So once we have that team, I propose
we use ldap to get their names/email, and set the owner on sysadmin
group, using ldap. 

This mean that we will need to create a new group mga-ml_moderators,
something like that.

And that, in the mean time, we share the load of moderating ( mostly hit
delete, delete, delete for spam ).

Migration
----------

- in order to migrate people from zarb.org mls, we will need to have
them subscribed to catdap. But the software is still in beta for now. As
said in the meeting, I will try to work a little on it with Olivier T. I
also expect that we will need to ask people to subscribe, and then open
the gate of each mls.

- migration of archives would requires to migrate the website as well.
So this will be deferred until this happens. But that's static html, so
nothing fancy or complex ( we can even do some proxying ).

List policy creation
---------------------

I am not keen on adding bureaucracy for nothing, but I do not think we
should open ml without good reasons. Too much ml will be a mess, and
requires more work from us. So for this, some kind of guidelines should
be written. And someone need to do it, ask the others in the community
what are their needs, etc.


Templating
-----------

Sympa interface should be a little bit cleaned before being labeled as
production. Not that the interface is not good, but it offer various
things that would not make sense in our infrastructure, like "resetting
password" and "changing email", that would wreck our setup. So I think
that we should fully try to break sympa before sending it live, and then
remove unneeded part, and then add a basic theme. The templates will be
handled like bugzilla, I have contacted webteam this afternoon at the
meeting.



Gmane and other subscriptions
------------------------------

I do not remind what did we decide for this ( I will dig later the
archives ). But a automated subscription to gmane and others service as
part as the ml creation would be good ( for the public one ,
obviously ). But again, someone should work on this.



So, I will likely deploy this tomorrow for testing, between the 2 I18N
meeting ( as I was asked to be there by Oliver Burger this afternoon,
and Marianne Lombard, but do not hesitate to be there too, if I do not
manage to wake up in time ). 

For testing, I suggest to create 2/3 mailling lists, let people post cat
pictures, etc, try to break the system, and note everything that should
be changed on the wiki. 

Any questions, remarks ( like "please, stop posting long emails" ) ?
-- 
Michael Scherer



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