How to Install Mailman on FreeBSD Latest

Mailman is a popular mailing list management software designed to facilitate communication and collaboration between people. It is an open-source project and available under the GNU General Public License.

In this tutorial, we will explain step by step how to install Mailman on FreeBSD Latest.

Prerequisites

Before starting with the installation, make sure that you have the following:

• A FreeBSD Latest operating system installed on your computer
• A sudo user account with root privileges
• An active network connection

Step 1: Installing Required Dependencies

Firstly, you need to install the required dependencies for Mailman by running the following command:

sudo pkg install py36-virtualenv py36-cryptography

This command will install the Python virtual environment and cryptography libraries, which are necessary for the installation of Mailman.

Step 2: Create Mailman User

To run Mailman, we need to create a dedicated user account. Run the following command to create the Mailman user:

sudo pw useradd mailman -g mailman -d /usr/local/mailman -s /sbin/nologin

This command will create a user account named mailman with the home directory /usr/local/mailman.

Step 3: Install Mailman

Now that we have installed the required dependencies and created a dedicated user account, we can proceed with the installation of Mailman.

1. Download Mailman's latest source code from the official website - https://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/download.html.

2. Extract the downloaded archive using the command below:

   sudo tar -xzvf mailman-2.1.34.tgz
   

   Replace mailman-2.1.34.tgz with the latest version of Mailman.

3. Move the extracted Mailman directory to /usr/local/share/mailman using the command below:

   sudo mv mailman-2.1.34 /usr/local/share/mailman
   

4. Switch to the mailman user account by running the command:

   sudo su - mailman
   

5. Create a virtual environment for Mailman by running:

   virtualenv mailman
   

6. Activate the virtual environment by running:

   source mailman/bin/activate
   

7. Install Mailman requirements by running:

   sudo python setup.py install
   

   Follow the prompts to complete the installation.

After the installation is complete, you can deactivate the virtual environment by running:

deactivate

Step 4: Configure Mailman

Now that we have installed Mailman, it is time to configure it to work properly.

1. Switch to root user account by running the following command:

   exit
   

2. Open the file /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py using a text editor:

   sudo vim /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py
   

3. Uncomment the line that specifies the MTA option and set it to Postfix.

   MTA = 'Postfix'
   

4. Save and close the file.

Step 5: Start Mailman

Start the Mailman service by running the following command:

sudo /usr/local/mailman/bin/mailmanctl start

You can check the status of Mailman by running:

sudo /usr/local/mailman/bin/mailmanctl status

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured Mailman on FreeBSD Latest. You can now use Mailman to manage mailing lists on your system.

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