=================== | ezmlm-web-3.0.1 | =================== If you only want to know how to install ezmlm-web, then you should read INSTALL. Contents ======== I. Copyright Stuff II. Some Background III. Requirements IV. Files V. Notes VI. Multi-level list access VII. Language Portability VIII. Bugs && Bug Reports XI. Acknowledgements X. Availability I. Copyright Stuff - essentially the FreeBSD licence ... ================== ezmlm-web - version 3.0.1 - 01/06/02006 Copyright (C) 1998, Guy Antony Halse, All Rights Reserved. Please send bug reports and comments to ezmlm-web@sumpfralle.de Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. Neither name Guy Antony Halse nor the names of any contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. II. Some Background =================== [this text was written by Guy Antony Halse - the original author of ezmlm-web] The need for ezmlm-web arose from the fact that we host many student societies on our system. These societies usually have a virtual host for web and email, which is administered by a computer rep from the society. These computer reps often have little or no knowledge of Unix and so we needed a user friendly system that would let the create and maintain mailing lists (such as members@foo.soc.ru.ac.za, committee@foo.soc.ru.ac.za, etc). Since I am never keen to re-invent the wheel, I had a look at Steve Peterson's script (http://virtation.com/qmail/ml-sub), which allows people to subscribe and unsubscribe from mailing lists using a form->email gateway. This is fine for putting on a web page saying "here come and join our mailing list", but doesn't really allow you to administrate a list. Security of mailing lists was a concern, as we really didn't want unauthorised people to be able to alter some users list. Ezmlm-web itself implements no security checks (apart from un-tainting input) and so relies on the web server to do this (re-inventing the wheel again :). We use an Apache webserver, so one can control access to a directory using a .htaccess file or in the access.conf file. ApacheWeek have a good article on doing this at http://www.apacheweek.com/features/userauth. I also give examples later in this document. This version of ezmlm-web is based to a large extent on previous versions that I have developed. It has however been totally re-written to make use of the Mail::Ezmlm perl module I wrote. At the same time it was updated and extended to include the new features of ezmlm-idx. It includes many new features that have been suggested to me over the last few months, and hopefully is now useful to a much larger group of people. Since 02005 ezmlm-web is maintained by Lars Kruse (ezmlm-web@sumpfralle.de). Only minor improvements had to be implemented to keep the already fully functional ezmlm-web up to date. III. Requirements ================= This version of ezmlm-web requires the following; * qmail v1.03 * ezmlm v0.53 (or ezmlm-idx v0.40) * clearsilver v0.10.2 (only perl support is necessary) * Perl v5.004 and the following modules; + Mail::Ezmlm v0.03 + Mail::Address v1.15 + CGI v2.6 + CGI::Carp v1.06 + DB_File v1.65 + Getopt::Std v4.1 + File::Find v? + File::Copy v2.02 The version number indicates the version of the module that ezmlm-web was developed with. Earlier versions may work, but then they haven't been tested. Have a look on http://www.CPAN.org/, http://www.qmail.org/, and http://www.ezmlm.org/ for anything you are missing. Of course, newer versions are expected to work as well. To install perl modules you may use the cpan command line interface. Just run "cpan" and type something like "install Mail::Ezmlm". You can download clearsilver (a templating engine - it is required since ezmlm-web v3.0) from http://clearsilver.net. IV. Files ========= In this distribution you should find the following files; README (optional) This file. Provides some background information. INSTALL (optional) Notes on installation. INSTALL.clearsilver (optional) Notes on the installation of clearsilver. CHANGES (optional) The change history. UPGRADING (optional) Notes on upgrading ezmlm-web from a previous version. TODO (optional) This file is a list of things I intend doing in future versions of ezmlm-web. ezmlm-web.cgi (required) The ezmlm-web cgi script in perl. You will need it :) index.c (recommended) A C wrapper to allow ezmlm-web.cgi to run suid. Not strictly necessary if your setup allows perl scripts to run suid, but I prefer using wrappers anyway. It needs to be edited and compiled to suit your system. Not needed to run ezmlm-web. ezmlmwebrc (required) This is the configuration file for ezmlm-web. All options are explained in this example file. You will need this file to run ezmlm-web. htaccess.sample (recommended) A sample Apache .htaccess file for controlling access to the mailing lists. If you use another web server, you will have to work this bit out for yourself. webusers.sample (recommended) A sample webusers file for multi-level access control. lang (directory, required) It contains the language files. You will need at least the one, that you have choosen in "ezmlmwebrc" by the option "HTML_LANGUAGE". css (directory, recommended) Here you find available css stylesheet files. Pick the one you like (for now, there is only one choice :)) and set it up by pointing the "HTML_CSS_FILE" setting in your "ezmlmwebrc" to an appropriate URL. template (directory, required) The clearsilver template files in this directory defined the layout of the web interface. You should be able to adapt them to your needs, if you like. spec (directory, optional) Some development specific information. V. Notes ========= * There is a function to delete mailing lists, but I really don't like the idea. The only reason I put it in is that bvi@rucus asked for it. If you set $UNSAFE_RD = 0 (the default) in the config section, the ezmlm-web won't actually delete the list. In this case it moves the to . and all the associated .qmail files to a sub-directory called deleted.qmail/ (In the users home directory. This is by far a safer way (since you can restore lists) and therefore I recommend it. * The HTML interface has been tested using Nutscrape, Internet Exploder, and Lynx. If anyone uses anything else and has problems, please let me know. * I suggest that you make use of custom ezmlmwebrc files rather than using the -d command line switches - it makes fault diagnosis easier ... * Please see the section on languages below. VI. Multi-Level Access ======================= Ezmlm-web has a multi-level access system. This depends on a file called webusers being present in $LIST_DIR. If the file is not present, then ANY valid user has access to all lists. If, however, this file exists a number of constraints come into place. - The webusers file is scanned for either the list name (case insensitive) or an ALL (case sensitive) entry. - The list entry (or ALL) is scanned for the current user (as set in $REMOTE_USER) or an ALL (user) entry. - If any valid match is made, then the user is allowed to edit the list. Otherwise the user is politely told to go away ;-) If list creation is allowed and the webusers file exists, then the person who creates the list is the default owner. There is no way to create users through the web interface, as this depends on your authentication system. The format of a webusers file is as follows; list1: user1 user2 user3 ALL: user1 user2 list2: ALL Once this file exists, the ezmlm-web script will allow the list users to configure their access lists along with any other options. You can permit some users to create lists by adding a line similar to the following to your webusers file: ALLOW_CREATE: user2 user3 If there is no line starting with "ALLOW_CREATE:" in the webusers file, then no one will be allowed to create lists. This behaviour is new for ezmlm-web since version 2.2. To stay compatible to old installations, the commandline option "-c" for ezmlm-web.cgi will still allow everyone to create lists. The use of this option is deprecated, since the line "ALLOW_CREATE: ALL" provides the same effect in a cleaner way. VII. Language Portablity ========================= One of the great new features of version 2.0 is that it is essentially language independant. All of the fixed strings, help, etc is defined in the files of lang directory. Of course you can change them or create a new translation. The language can be selected in ezmlmwebrc with the "HTML_LANGUAGE" option. If anyone gets round to writing full templates for languages I would appreciate it if you would do two things; Firstly, make them public and announce them on the ezmlm@lists.cr.yp.to mailing list so that others may benefit. Secondly, please mail me a copy (ezmlm-web@sumpfralle.de) so that I may use them in any future releases of ezmlm-web. VIII. Bugs && Bug Reports ======================= I don't know of any bugs, but then this is a rewrite and a first release. It has been tested reasonably well, but not exhaustively. I know it works on FreeBSD 4.0-STABLE, FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE, RedHat 5.1, Redhat 6.0 and Debian 3.0 all using an Apache web server, but I would be interested to know whether it works on other OSs and with other web servers. Please mail bug reports and comments to ezmlm-web@sumpfralle.de. Or (even better) submit a bug report at https://systemausfall.org/trac/ezmlm-web. Or subscribe to the ezmlm-web mailinglist: ezmlm-web-subscribe@lists.systemausfall.org. IX. Acknowledgements =================== * Guy Antony Halse (guy-ezmlm@rucus.ru.ac.za) - he created ezmlm-web and maintained it till 02005 * Keith Burdis (keith@rucus.ru.ac.za) - For constantly bugging me (Guy) and ensuring that I actually got round to writing some code :) * Bryan Kilian (bryan@rucus.ru.ac.za) and the administrators of the Litestep mailing list - For helping beta test and putting up with me (Guy) pestering them. * Several societies at Rhodes. For switching to my web interface and so unknowingly helping to beta test it. * Barry Irwin (bvi@moria.org) - For trusting me (Guy) and moving the Grahamstown Foundation over to qmail and ezmlm - yet another beta tester :-) * David Summers (david@summersoft.fay.ar.us) - For some ideas. And for offering to make up an RPM version. I hope the offer still exists for version 2.0 :-) * Glen Stewart (glen_stewart@associate.com) - For a multitude of ideas. * Fred Lindberg (lindberg@id.wustl.edu) for his useful posts to the mailing list, suggestions, help, etc * Galen Johnson (gjohnson@totalsports.net) - For some ideas on bugfixes. * Reinin Ooyama (lenin@hasiru.net) - a japanese translation and bugixes for v2.3 * Henning Rieger (age@systemausfall.org) - he designed most of the new interface for v3.0 X. Availability ================= More information on ezmlm-web and developments to ezmlm-web can be found at: https://systemausfall.org/toolforge/ezmlm-web The public subversion repository is at: https://svn.systemausfall.org/svn/ezmlm-web The website of Guy Antony Halse (the author of ezmlm-web) is still at: http://rucus.ru.ac.za/~guy/ezmlm/ The old ftp-archive of ezmlm-web is still available on: ftp://rucus.ru.ac.za/pub/mail/ezmlm/