[buug] Reviving CalLUG

[Mark Lu]

To be honest, the CalMail mailing lists are an absolute nightmare to
use. The only real advantage is that you get an @lists.berkeley.edu
mailing list address, but in terms of transitioning (at least with the
less-technical people I've worked with), it's near impossible to do
successfully. I've seen several groups create multiple new mailing
lists because they failed to transition the old ones.

The real advantage to brining back CalLUG is the ability to reserve
rooms on-campus for free. It'll also help the less adventurous
students get started with Linux as it'll consist of lots of
(hopefully) helpful peers.

I have experience with running my own Mailman, though, to be honest, I
think we should just look at registering a domain name and leeching
off Google Groups if we just want a list that works, is easily (and
publicly) searchable, and is reliable.

On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 11:25 AM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> I was just poking around a little more, and notice something possibly
> worth mentioning:
>
>> I say 'vetted' because lists.berkeley.edu appears to (nowadays) run GNU
>> Mailman (with which I'm intimately familiar), replacing the antique
>> majordomo setup originally present.  Unless configured not to do so,
>> Mailman checks the deliverability (using VERP) of all subscribed addresses
>> periodically.
>>
>> FYI, the original mailing list host was brain.cs.berkeley.edu.  Then, it
>> was callug.cs.berkeley.edu, and finally the current lists.berkeley.edu
>> (which is of course no longer CalLUG-specific).
>
> One of GNU Mailman's built-in features -- and one of the reasons for
> mass-migration to it away from majordomo in the '90s -- is its
> automatic maintenance of Web archives of back postings, which by default
> are public.
>
> For example, the Menlo Park LUG 'CABAL' operates general discussion
> mailing list 'conspire' (silly joke, I know), which has this Mailman
> 'listinfo' page automatically generated by a Mailman CGI:
>
> http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire
> ...and that, in turn, gives direct access to the mailing list's public
> archives of all postings going back to December 2000, when I converted
> all my mailing lists from majordomo to Mailman.
> http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/
>
> In the process of being moded from CalLUG's own server (brain, callug)
> to UCB's Campuswide IT Services's 'CalMail' site (lists.berkeley.edu),
> _apparently_ the feature of public archiving has been lost.  I cannot
> find any entry point to archives -- although it's possible that one is
> available NONpublicly to persons after CalNet login.
>
> I also cannot find Mailman-type listinfo pages.  Instead, we see
> something seemingly generated by Campuswide IT Services' bespoke
> software:
>
> https://calmail.berkeley.edu/manage/list/listinfo/callug_discuss@lists.berkeley.edu
> https://calmail.berkeley.edu/manage/list/listinfo/callug_announce@lists.berkeley.edu
>
> In short, it seems like they've used the SMTP functionality from
> GNU Mailman, but gone out of their way to disable its CGI Web interface
> completely.  That's a shame, I guess, but on the bright side it's
> preserved the two mailing lists to the present day.
>
> Paul and Mark:  If you ever get to the point of wanting to do so, I
> can show you how to migrate the full mailing lists (including
> full back-postings archives) away from CalMail to a real Mailman
> installation under your control.  OTOH, you might decide that letting
> Campuswide IT Services be the sysadmins is kinda nice despite the
> feature disabling.
>
>
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>



-- 
Mark Lu