ckoenig@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
# Majordomo was apparently written, in Perl, because listproc (AKA Unix
# LISTSERV) was too complex and did not do quite what was needed to
# manage a set of Usenix SAGE mailing lists.
That was _exactly_ why Majordomo was written. I obtained and tried to
install and configure listproc, spent a day or two on it, and decided
it was going to be easier to write something in perl that would do
exactly what I wanted.
For a discussion of the why's and wherefore's and early genesis of
Majordomo, take a look at my paper "How I manage 17 mailing lists
without answering -request mail", originally published at the USENIX
LISA 6 conference a couple of years ago, and now available for
anonymous FTP from FTP.GreatCircle.COM, file
pub/majordomo/majordomo.paper.ps.Z.
# Majordomo, on the other hand, is a much smaller package, designed for
# easier administration on an individual host
Well, it started out that way anyway... There's a growing trend to
add ever more features to Majordomo. This is one of the reasons I'm
no longer actively involved in Majordomo development I have nothing
against and no arguments with the folks (particularly John Rouillard,
who is managing the whole effort) who are working hard to extend and
expand Majordomo; I just have no interest in participating. Majordomo
already does most of what _I_ want it to do. I'm extremely pleased
that other folks are finding it useful, and finding it a good platform
to use as a starting point for the things _they_ want to do.
# and I have even heard (on
# the Majordomo-Users list) that some Majordomo hosts do NOT wish their
# lists advertised publicly on the net.
Yes. I expect that there are at least as many Majordomo servers
running private lists as public ones.
# I tried briefly to configure and build listproc for a comparison test,
# but gave up when it got weird, probably too soon, maybe I'll try again
# when I have more time to play with compilers etc :-) Listproc
# documentation etc. is a bit cryptic and not well thought out overall,
# at least from the point of view of someone new to the concept trying
# to understand all of its complex workings. I have seen correspondence
# from the Listproc author, on the listproc users' mailing list
# archives, where he defends his documentation because it is in the
# usual Unix style. (maybe "damning by faint praise"? :-)
As opposed to Majordomo's documentation, which was almost non-existant
until recently... :-) Actually, the new README file that John
Rouillard wrote, the chapter from the new "Managing Internet
Information Services" book from O'Reilly & Associates that they let us
extract and make available for anonymous FTP, the online manual pages
for some components written by Jim Duncan, the FAQ originally
assembled by Vincent Skahan, as well as contributions by lots of other
folks, go a long way towards improving the documentation situation for
Majordomo.
# Majordomo is simpler and written in Perl scripts, so documentation is
# more comprehensive, and is improving
Well, OK. :-) When I was doing most of the Majordomo development, I
always said that documentation (or lack thereof) was one of
Majordomo's weak points, and I'm glad to see that the documentation is
improving faster than new features are being added now that somebody
else has taken over development.
# as an active community of
# developers is contributing to it. It only took 2 days for the current
# maintainers to put out small patches to fix some recently-discovered
# potential security holes, and since it's Perl, no recompilation is
# needed.
I think this is one of the key strengths of Majordomo: the very active
Majordomo-Users and Majordomo-Workers mailing lists. They go a long
way towards making up for the documentation (or lack thereof); you can
ask a question, and get a helpful and almost immediate answer.
# Apparently, Listproc's daemon with its own queueing system used to
# give better performance, for high-traffic lists on heavily loaded
# server hosts, than older versions of sendmail. But now, newer sendmail
# versions have greatly improved efficiency so Majordomo with new
# sendmail may be just as fast and load-capable as a Listproc system.
# (comments welcomed on this point?)
I have no experience with listproc in order to provide a comparison,
but here's a data point. I run the Firewalls mailing list, with over
2000 subscribers and about 20-40 messages/day, plus a couple of dozen
other mailing lists (totalling another couple of thousand subscribers
and another 20-40 messages/day) on a Sun 3/60. Upgrading to the new
8.6.x version of Sendmail made an immense difference in performance.
-Brent
--
Brent Chapman | Great Circle Associates | Call or email for info about
Brent@GreatCircle.COM | 1057 West Dana Street | upcoming Internet Security
+1 415 962 0841 | Mountain View, CA 94041 | Firewalls Tutorial dates
|
|
