Mailman mailing list backup script

I’m sure there are some of these around already, but I have written a script to back up your Mailman mailing lists. It dumps the member roster and list configuration into separate text files, zips them up, emails them to you, and cleans up after itself.

The script is called mailmanBackup.py, and its syntax is pretty straightforward:
Usage: mailmanBackup.py listname <recipient> [<sender>]

If sender is not specified, the recipient is used as the sender. The recipient can also be a comma-separated list of email addresses.

Typical use would be to place a helper script like this /etc/cron.weekly:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/mailmanBackup.py listname emailaddress@domain.com

mailmanBackup.py is available under a CreativeCommons-Attribution license.

4 Responses to “Mailman mailing list backup script”

  1. Laure Says:

    How do you use the mail script you have?

  2. Curt Beckmann Says:

    Dude, found one of your (2005) comments on WorldChanging. You’re me! But you’re smarter and better looking…except maybe I could kick your butt at Scrabble. Also, I was surprised that Doonesbury didn’t appear under the comics. Hmm. Too political?

    Anyway, you’ve clearly been dealing with stuff for years that I’m just getting into. Love to connect sometime. curt_beckmann at yahoo.

    I’ll be back.

  3. blog.shrub » Blog Archive » MySQL database backup script Says:

    […] I wrote one of these for Mailman last fall, and finally got around to putting together a quick script to back up your MySQL database. It optimizes and repairs all of your tables, then creates a directory for today, dumps each database into a SQL file and zips it up, leaving you with a directory of .tgz files. […]

  4. metoo Says:

    Great - I can really use this - but HOW? Where do I put it and how do I get it to run?

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