Location of Mailman Files ? (Python)

[Frank Hagan]

Where are the MailMan databases kept? The documentation talks about a "mailman" directory, but I cannot find it. I have a python script that will auto-delete the spam email directed to the list, but need to know where the file "request.db" is kept.

[BrianP]

I have a couple of related questions:

1) Are the Mailman files backed up? How?

2) Where are the Mailman files so that I can make backups of them myself?

Backups are important because it would be impossible to recreate the Mailman email lists if they are lost.

Thanks in advance.

[AndrewT]

You do not have access to the mailman files. These are stored in a system directory much like MySQL databases.

[BrianP]

Thanks for the note. How often are the Mailman files backed up? If they are not, can you recommend a script to scrap the addresses from the web interface?

Brian

[AndrewT]

Please see http://forums.dathorn.com/showthread.php?t=19

Nothing on your accounts is backed up unless you are paying for our backup service.

I'm not familiar with any script to do this via the web interface, sorry.

[J-G]

Frank et al,

I am curious: how does spam get *IN* to your MailMan system?
Do you not make it "Members-only" posting?
Or is it your webhosting customer's?

[Frank Hagan]

Mailman holds any post to the list from a non-member for the Admin to review. So any stray spam email has to be reviewed before it can be deleted. On their forums, the Mailman developers state that they don't want to have a configuration option to automatically discard non-member posts. There is the "hack" that requires getting at the files that are not accessible to us.

I did find a work-around, and that is to set the configuration item "Discard held messages older than this number of days. Use 0 for no automatic discarding." to 1 (its found as the last item under "General Options" when you access the Admin interface). You still get the message that says a non-member post has been received, and then (usually) 1 - 2 days later you get the notice that it has been deleted. But that's better than having to surf to the Admin interface and delete them manually.