[PLUG] Retrieving Mailman subscriber lists from backups

[Keith Lofstrom]

Not a problem, but a solution.  I wish I could have saved
an hour by finding this same solution via Google.  Maybe
posting this will save someone else an hour.

The important information:

  The subscriber database for Mailman is stored in the file:
  /var/lib/mailman/lists/[listname]/config.pck


The details:

I used to be volunteer webmaster for another organization. 
Mailman, wiki, some online forms, and some static http content.

The president of the organization got increasingly demanding 
about doing things his way, and my time commitments got too
crazy, so I said "Do it any way you want.  I will not be your
webmaster in 6 months" about a year ago.  I actually pulled
the plug on the site and the mailing list in November.  Then
El Presidente complained that Mailman was still sending out
subscriber password reminders, so I used the Mailman "rmlist"
command to zero out the list (saving the archives, while
removing the config files) in January.

Yesterday, El Presidente asked for the subscriber lists. 
A month after I deleted them.  Fortunately, I have nightly
backups of my server going back for years.  Unfortunately,
I could not find any documentation saying which file[s]
actually store the subscriber information, or their format. 
I spent about an hour Googling, and found nothing.  

Why, why, WHY don't programmers document their architectures?

I found that REMOVING the /var/lib/mailman/lists/[foo]/ directory
for another still-existing Mailman list "[foo]" caused the
Mailman command "./list_members [foo]" to fail.  I put the [foo]
directory back, and pulled the [deleted] directory for the deleted
list off the backups.  With that, I could run the Mailman command
"list_members [deleted]" and send the resulting file to El
Presidente, then remove the [deleted] directory again.

Okay, that wasn't documented on the web, it is now.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs