Migration of mailing lists for PROJ, tiff, libgeotiff, shapelib from maptools.org

[rouault]

maptools.org hosts a number of mailing lists that are OSGeo-related. The issue is that maptools.org is more than an aging server using an outdated Linux distribution. Its SMTP port has being blocked by the ISP due apparently to spam circulating (although I didn't see any spam circulating on the lists I'm subscribed to), so the mailing lists currently are unable to deliver emails to the subscribers since a couple of days, which is annoying. I would want those mailing lists (using mailman) to be migrated away from maptools.org to lists.osgeo.org. Ideally with their message archives and subscriber lists. I have access to maptools.org to do any needed backup for the migration (the backup itself shouldn't be made public since I see mailman store subscriber password unencrypted), with some guidance since I'm not much knowledgable about mailman.

[neteler]

Note sure how relevant but here some notes from the migration of the GRASS GIS mailman lists off our server in Italy to OSGeo back in 2006. It was done by FrankW with me lurking in IRC:

Migrate ML to other server:

​http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Mailing_Lists#Migrate

[rouault]

Thanks Markus. I've now got the result of "tar cvzf out.tar.gz /var/lib/mailman/lists" from the maptools.org server. So I guess I need someone from SAC to hand it over. The mailman version on maptools.org is 2.1.9

[neteler]

It should not be an issue to migrate subscribers and archives, we have done that in the past with many lists. Happy to support but I'm traveling till tomorrow.

[rouault]

Gentle ping to check if someone from SAC would be willing to help for the migration of those lists

[jsanz]

ey @rouault, please let me know where I can get the archives and subscriber lists and I'll recreate them at our mailman.

To generate users lists (normal delivery and digest mode) you have instructions at the "Renaming Lists" section.

You can contact me privately at jsanz@….

[rouault]

Thanks a lot jsanz@ . Things to work fine. There's just one "detail"

​https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/tiff/ says there's no archive. Would there be a way of removing this page, similarly to the old maptools server where ​http://lists.maptools.org/pipermail/ doesn't show a tiff directory at all.

And related, ​https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/tiff points to this dummy archive ("To see the collection of prior postings to the list, visit the Tiff Archives"). So if we remove ​https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/tiff/, it would be good to remove this link as well.

Basically, I'd want to replicate the settings from the old maptools server where ​http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/tiff managed to make the "Searchable archive" (you have to scroll down a bit since I added a lot of new lines to show this is a legacy link) point to ​https://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tml.html

[rouault]

Regarding customization of the link to the awaresystems.be hosted archives, Joris Van Damme just indicated to me : "I seem to remember Frank had some difficulty doing this, too, but then it turned out to be obvious. I seem to remember it was something along the lines of editing the actually generated page rather then fiddling with generation options"

[jsanz]

@rouault you were perfectly on the track, I've just edited /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/tiff/index.html to redirect to the correct address so now if you visit ​http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/tiff/ the browser redirects to the awaresystems page.

Going to close the issue but please reopen if there's further work we can do here.

[rouault]

I got a comment from a subscriber that messages he receives from the new PROJ mailing list are prefixed with [SPAM] whereas it was fine on the maptools list. Looks like some mail server wouldn't like emails sent by osgeo servers. Any idea ?

[Jeff McKenna]

This happens all the time with all lists (not just OSGeo lists) for me. Please inform the user to 'whitelist' the mailing list address, through their email provider (I do this constantly for mailing lists through my email provider).