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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1><font color="maroon">Setting Up a Web-based Archive for a Mailing List</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:%6C%61%77%72%65%6E%63%65%74%65%6F%40%6C%79%63%6F%73%2E%63%6F%6D">Lawrence Teo</a></H4>
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<H2>1. Introduction</H2>
<P>
In this article, I'll describe how to set up a web-based archive for
a mailing list. This article picks up from where I left off in my previous
article, <A HREF="teo.html">"A Quick and Easy Way to Set Up a Mailing List"</A>,
also in this issue
of Linux Gazette. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend that
you read that article first before reading this one. A lot of the context and
content in here are derived from the methods described in that article.
</P>
<H3>1.1 The mailing list setup</H3>
<P>
First, I'll briefly describe the mailing list setup that we'll be using in
this article. If you have read the previous article, this setup will be
familiar to you.
</P>
<P>
Let's say that we have a mailing list called theproject@mybox.example.com,
running on a Linux system called mybox.example.com. The e-mail addresses
subscribed to this list are linus@mybox.example.com, alan@example.net, and
esr@example.org. We set this up using our Mail Transfer Agent's aliases file
(usually /etc/mail/aliases or /etc/aliases, depending on your distribution).
Our mailing list has been set up like this in the aliases file:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
theproject:
linus,
alan@example.net,
esr@example.org
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
So when e-mails are sent to theproject@mybox.example.com, those e-mails will
be automatically propagated to linus@mybox.example.com, alan@example.net,
and esr@example.org.
</P>
<H2>2. Setting up the web-based archive</H2>
<P>
Before we get started with the instructions for setting up the web-based
archive, I'll first explain what we plan to achieve. What we want to do is
allow your workgroup members to access a website that will host your mailing
list archive. For example, you can host your mailing list archive on
http://mybox.example.com/theproject/ and make it accessible to all your
workgroup members.
</P>
<P>
Having a web-based archive makes it easier and more
convenient to check out what has been discussed. Also, it can act as a central
location to store documents and other attachments. You can also use it as
a backup in the unfortunate event that you lose your e-mails (which I hope
will never happen!).
</P>
<P>
If you want to set up a web-based archive for your mailing list, you'll need:
</P>
<P>
<UL>
<LI> <B>The Apache webserver.</B> Of course, you can use some other
webserver. However, Apache is the most common webserver installed by
default on almost all Linux distributions (to my knowledge), and it's
also the one that I'm most familiar with. In this article, I'll use
Apache 1.3.20 as the example.
<LI> <B>Hypermail.</B> Hypermail is a nifty program that you can use
to generate web-based mail archives from a UNIX mailbox file. You can
grab it from
<A HREF="http://www.hypermail.org/">http://www.hypermail.org/</A>.
I'll use hypermail 2.1.2 for the purposes of this article.
<LI> <B>cron.</B> cron is a program that you can use to run tasks
at scheduled times. It should be installed by default in all
Linux distributions (I'll be shocked if I find a distribution that
doesn't include cron!). In this article, we'll use cron to update
our web-based archive periodically.
</UL>
</P>
<P>
You'll first need to check if the webserver is running. Again, you can
use the netstat command to do this:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
lteo@mybox:~$ <B>netstat -a | grep www</B>
tcp 0 0 *:www *:* LISTEN
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
If the system responds with that line, it is likely that your webserver is
already running. If it is not, you can start it by issuing the command
"/etc/init.d/apache start" on Debian, the same or "/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd
start" on Red Hat, etc. In Slackware, issue the command "/etc/rc.d/rc.httpd
start".
</P>
<H3>2.1 Installing hypermail</H3>
<P>
After you've downloaded hypermail, proceed to install it using the instructions
in its README file. The installation steps should be pretty standard. If
you're in a hurry, the following commands should work for you (they're
meant for hypermail 2.1.2; substitute the version number for the hypermail
version you downloaded):
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
root@mybox:~# <B>tar zxf hypermail-2.1.2.tgz</B>
root@mybox:~# <B>cd hypermail-2.1.2</B>
root@mybox:~/hypermail-2.1.2# <B>./configure</B>
root@mybox:~/hypermail-2.1.2# <B>make</B>
root@mybox:~/hypermail-2.1.2# <B>make install</B>
</PRE>
</P>
<H3>2.2 Creating a dummy account</H3>
<P>
The next thing you need to do is to set up a dummy user account on your
system. We will register this account on the mailing list, and use it
exclusively for collecting all mails sent to the mailing list. We will then
generate the mailing list archive using this dummy user account's mailbox.
</P>
<P>
Let's call our dummy account "projarc". You can create it in the same way
you create a normal user account on your Linux distribution. I personally use
the adduser command on my Debian GNU/Linux system:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
root@mybox:~# <B>adduser</B>
Enter a username to add: <B>projarc</B>
Adding user projarc...
Adding new group projarc (1004).
Adding new user projarc (1004) with group projarc.
Creating home directory /home/projarc.
Copying files from /etc/skel
Enter new UNIX password: <B>&lt;password&gt;</B>
Retype new UNIX password: <B>&lt;password&gt;</B>
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for projarc
Enter the new value, or press return for the default
Full Name []: <B>Dummy user</B>
Room Number []:
Work Phone []:
Home Phone []:
Other []:
Is the information correct? [y/n] <B>y</B>
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
You will need to add this user to your the aliases file (/etc/mail/aliases
or /etc/aliases) to get it registered as a member of the mailing list. To do
this, just edit the file and add the username to the list. The section that
describes your mailing list members in the aliases file should look like
this:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
# The Project mailing list
theproject:
projarc,
linus,
alan@example.net,
esr@example.org
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
Remember to run that command to inform your MTA about the changes after
you've done this.
</P>
<P>
We will be using projarc's public webspace to host our mailing list archive.
To do that, create a public_html directory in the projarc's home directory:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
lteo@mybox:~$ <B>su - projarc</B>
Password: <B>&lt;password&gt;</B>
projarc@mybox:~$ <B>mkdir public_html</B>
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
Note that the user's public webspace may be represented by another name instead
of public_html. It depends on your webserver setup. You also need to ensure
that your webserver allows users to host public webspaces in this manner.
I'll explain how to enable this in the next section.
</P>
<H3>2.3 Setting up Apache</H3>
<P>
The next step is to set up Apache so that it allows users on the machine to
have their own public web directories. The Apache configuration file you
need to edit is /etc/apache/httpd.conf. Again, this may differ depending
on your distribution. If it's not there, issue the command "locate httpd.conf"
or "find / -name httpd.conf" to find it. Once you've found it, open it up
with your text editor and make sure that the following lines are uncommented
(meaning they don't have the # symbol in front of them):
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
&lt;IfModule mod_userdir.c&gt;
UserDir public_html
&lt;/IfModule&gt;
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
It is likely that your UserDir value is not public_html, and may be something
else like www. You can use whatever directory name you wish to represent
the user's webspace.
</P>
<P>
Now if you want your workgroup members to access your archive using an
address such as http://mybox.example.com/theproject/ you'll need to set up a
symbolic link from your Apache's root webspace to point to projarc's webspace.
To find out what your Apache's root webspace is, check out the DocumentRoot
value in /etc/apache/httpd.conf:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
root@mybox:~# <B>grep ^DocumentRoot /etc/apache/httpd.conf</B>
DocumentRoot /var/www
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
In the above example, Apache's root webspace is at /var/www. To create a
symbolic link to point to projarc's public webspace, issue the following
commands:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
root@mybox:~# <B>cd /var/www</B>
root@mybox:/var/www# <B>ln -s /home/projarc/public_html theproject</B>
</PRE>
</P>
<H3>2.4 Testing hypermail</H3>
<P>
When a user receives e-mails, the e-mails will be stored in a file called
/var/mail/username. So in the case of projarc, the file will be called
/var/mail/projarc (Note: in some distributions, this would be
/var/spool/mail/projarc).
</P>
<P>
We can use hypermail to read that mail file to generate the
web-based archive. However, when the projarc account is newly created, that
file won't exist yet. So you'll need to send an e-mail to
theproject@mybox.example.com first just to get that file created.
</P>
<P>
After sending out that test mail, run the following command as projarc:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
projarc@mybox:~$ <B>hypermail -m /var/mail/projarc -l "The Project" -d /home/projarc/public_html</B>
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
Now open up http://mybox.example.com/theproject/ in your web browser and
you should see your mailing list archive there. It should look something like
this:
</P>
<CENTER>
<TABLE BORDER="1" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="70%">
<TR><TD>
<H1 ALIGN="center">The Project<BR>By Thread</H1>
<FONT COLOR="blue"><STRONG><U>Most recent messages</STRONG></U></FONT><BR>
<STRONG>1 messages sorted by:</STRONG>
<FONT COLOR="blue">
<U>[ author ]</U>
<U>[ date ]</U>
<U>[ subject ]</U>
<U>[ attachment ]</U>
</FONT>
<HR NOSHADE><P>
<STRONG>Starting:</STRONG> <EM>Sat Oct 20 2001 - 01:45:23 EDT</EM><BR>
<STRONG>Ending:</STRONG> <EM>Sat Oct 20 2001 - 01:45:23 EDT</EM><BR>
<UL>
<LI><FONT COLOR="blue"><U><STRONG>This is the first message</STRONG></U></FONT> <EM>Lawrence Teo <SMALL>(Sat Oct 20 2001 - 01:45:23 EDT)</SMALL></EM>
</UL>
<P>
<STRONG>Last message date:</STRONG></A> <EM>Sat Oct 20 2001 - 01:45:23 EDT</EM><BR>
<STRONG>Archived on:</STRONG> <em>Sun Oct 21 2001 - 01:50:56 EDT</EM><p>
<HR NOSHADE>
<STRONG>1 messages sorted by:</STRONG>
<FONT COLOR="blue">
<U>[ author ]</U>
<U>[ date ]</U>
<U>[ subject ]</U>
<U>[ attachment ]</U>
</FONT>
</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>
<P>
It would be more convenient to use a hypermail configuration file to run
hypermail instead of typing in all those command-line parameters all the time.
To do this, create a file called /home/projarc/projarc-hmrc and fill it with
the following lines:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
mbox = /var/mail/projarc
label = The Project
dir = /home/projarc/public_html
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
You can now generate the mailing archive by running the following command:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
projarc@mybox:~$ <B>hypermail -c /home/projarc/projarc-hmrc</B>
</PRE>
</P>
<H3>2.5 Setting up cron</H3>
<P>
Now, we would definitely want our mailing list archive to be automatically
updated whenever somebody sends mail to the mailing list. We will use cron
to do this. It won't be updated in real time, but we can set cron to run
hypermail every 5 minutes, which should be frequent enough for a simple
mailing list. Of course, you can always use a shorter interval such as
2 minutes; it's entirely up to you. Just remember that the shorter the interval,
the more load the machine will have to handle. That may not be good if you
have mail files that are really big with a lot of attachments, and you're
hosting several mailing lists on a slow machine.
</P>
<P>
So, let's set up cron. Issue the following command to edit your cron table:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
projarc@mybox:~$ <B>crontab -e</B>
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
You should now be in an editor with your crontab file open. If you want
hypermail to run every 5 minutes, enter the following lines:
</P>
<P>
<PRE>
# Update The Project mailing list archive every 5 minutes
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/hypermail -c /home/projarc/projarc-hmrc
</PRE>
</P>
<P>
When you're done, just save and exit. To test it, just wait for five minutes
and refresh the http://mybox.example.com/theproject/ web page on your
browser. You should see the updated "Archived on" timestamp after hypermail
runs.
</P>
<H3>2.6 Summary</H3>
<P>
Here's a summary of the steps we used to set up our web-based mailing list
archive:
</P>
<P>
<OL>
<LI> Make sure that your Apache webserver is up and running. You
can use the command "netstat -a | grep www" to check this.
<LI> Install hypermail on your system.
<LI> Create a dummy account to host your mailing list archive, e.g.
projarc.
<LI> Add the dummy account's username to the aliases file (/etc/aliases
or /etc/mail/aliases). Run the "newaliases" (for sendmail) or
"postalias /etc/aliases" (for Postfix) command to inform the MTA about
the changes. You don't need to run any command for exim.
<LI> Make the public webspace directory for the projarc user, e.g.
"mkdir public_html"
<LI> Set up Apache to allow public webspaces for users in the
/etc/apache/httpd.conf file.
<LI> Set up a symbolic link to point to projarc's webspace, e.g.
"ln -s /home/projarc/public_html theproject"
<LI> Test hypermail by running a command such as 'hypermail -m
/var/mail/projarc -l "The Project" -d /home/projarc/public_html'. Then
check "http://mybox.example.com/theproject/" to see if your mailing
list archive is there.
<LI> Set up cron to run hypermail every 5 minutes (or at any interval
you wish).
</OL>
</P>
<P>
I hope that you'll find the web-based mailing list archive to be as useful as
I have. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to drop me
some e-mail.
</P>
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<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Lawrence Teo</H4>
<EM>Lawrence Teo is a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte. He researches on intrusion detection
and critical infrastructure protection technologies with his
research unit, the Laboratory of Information Integration, Security, and
Privacy (LIISP). Lawrence has previously worked as a contract software
engineer at Lycos, Singapore and as a research assistant at DSTC in Melbourne,
Australia. He holds an Honors Degree in Bachelor of Computing from Monash
University in Melbourne, Australia. You can send him e-mail at
<A HREF="mailto:%6C%61%77%72%65%6E%63%65%74%65%6F%40%6C%79%63%6F%73%2E%63%6F%6D">lawrenceteo&lt;SPAM&gt;@lycos.com</A>.</EM>
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<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2001, Lawrence Teo.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 72 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, November 2001</H5>
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