mailman update

[gw1500se]

Since Centos 7 is way behind on mailman rpm (2.1.15 is the only available rpm) and mailman is currently at 2.1.34 I need to do a manual update. While I know how to install software, I am concerned that just doing a manual install will mess up current settings, lists and members. Does anyone have experience doing this that can advise about pitfalls or has a cookbook document to do a safe update? TIA.

[TrevorH]

The mailman package is from the base repo so is supplied by RHEL/CentOS. That should mean that any security vulnerabilities are patched by Red Hat so you shouldn't need to update from that POV.

[gw1500se]

The problem is DMARC mitigation. That was not added to mailman until version 2.1.16 thus version 2.1.15 is not useful any more because most mail servers include DMARC.

[TrevorH]

If you really need to upgrade then the safe way to do that is to grab the SRPM for the existing package and tweak that to build the newer version. Adjust the spec file to bump the version number, download the tarball, rebuild the whole lot under mock and then add it to a local yum repo. Adjust base/updates to exclude=mailman and then update.

[gw1500se]

Thanks but that is beyond my skill level.

[futatuki]

If your problem is only DMARC mitigation, you don't need to update to 2.1.34, because mailman 2.1.15-30.el7 in base already contains the feature, back ported from upstream.

quoted from changelog in mailman.spec:

* Mon Mar 16 2015 Jan Kaluza <jkaluza@redhat.com> - 3:2.1.15-18
- fix #1107652 - add support for DMARC
- fix #1180981 - install tmpfiles.d into /usr/lib instead of /etc
- fix #1188043 - set 2775 permission for /etc/mailman

It is also security fixes back ported from upstream.

See also viewtopic.php?t=62085