Hosting a list server: any experience with this?

[fingal]

Hello

I'm not really looking for any detailed technical answers here, but a friend of mine recently had a very bad experience with his website host (his Forum has been offline for days) and we've been chatting about a possible 'disaster plan' in case it happens again.

I suggested a list server, to be implemented in case the Forum vanishes again. If we had a list of Forum members we could then contact them during any down-time and keep that essential 'feeling of community' going. Currently this is in jeopardy for my friend.

I have no experience with list servers but have heard of Majordomo, and think this can be hooked up to Postfix. So my questions are probably quite naive:

1. is it difficult to implement Majordomo with Postfix?
2. can such a system be deployed at short notice from a desktop PC (*nix of course!)
3. does it require a box with high specs?

I would be grateful for any feedback from someone who runs a regular list server for an online community. Then I might be able to learn about this myself and figure out if I can even be bothered to try this!

[jledhead]

I am currently running mailman integrated with postfix and its working like a champ. this is on a debian system and was faily easy to setup

[fingal]

I am currently running mailman integrated with postfix and its working like a champ. this is on a debian system and was faily easy to setup

Many thanks - would you mind letting me know (roughly) what your specs. are? I'm really just thinking about RAM, hdd, CPU. My aim is to let my friend know of what's out there, so he can pick it up later if he wants to. I think I might leave it alone myself. Cheers.

[jledhead]

My server is a dual Intel 1.86 Xeon cpu, 2 G of ddr2 memory. my cpu's average less then 1% usage and memory stays above 500M. my postfix install sends anywhere from 10000 - 20000 emails a day depending. not sure of the mailman usage. I am also using debian etch with a base install and only what else I need installed (no X). Either way I would think this would work on a much smaller machine with absolutly no problems. postfix is a very robust system and mailman seems to be as well.

I will add that barring my site specific postfix setup, installing wasn't much more then apt-get install postfix and apt-get install mailman

and then a little minor config.

[fingal]

Thanks jledhead - that's all very useful information. I might play around with that software myself this weekend. It doesn't sound hard to run. Best of all, it'll work with a minimal installation.