View source for Mailman-htdig

This is a patched version of GNU [[Mailman]] which integrates support for searching list archives using htdig. This is integrated in the Wikimedia Mailman .deb.

=== Mailman patches ===
Apply these patches to the Mailman source before installation:
* [http://www.openinfo.co.uk/mm/patches/444879/index.html archive adjustment for better searching]
* [http://www.openinfo.co.uk/mm/patches/444884/index.html htdig integration]

The patch documentation describes how to enable it; this is not enabled in the default Mailman configuration file in the package.

=== htdig ===

htdig can be installed via yum on fedora and APT on Ubuntu.

'''Fun warning!''' Search result pages will [http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2002-May/020252.html come up blank with no error messages] if <tt>htsearch</tt> is unable to locate the 'COMMON_DIR' which contains its HTML templates and images.

For some reason, the fedora package installs this directory at <tt>/usr/share/htdig</tt> but the binaries look for it at <tt>/var/www/html/htdig</tt>. I made a manual symlink to that disused location.

Additionally, that directory should be aliased in to <tt>/htdig</tt> on the mail web server so that the icons show up in result pages; for the current setup I just symlinked it in from the docroot.

== Index updating ==

Search indexes are updated by a nightly cronjob, at <tt>/var/lib/mailman/cron/nightly_htdig</tt> which is called from <tt>/etc/cron.d/mailman</tt>.

== Setup notes ==

Initially, lists are set up for htdig as they first receive a mail after the configuration is enabled; but they won't be indexed until the cronjob next runs. (It can also be manually run, of course.)