In between versions of mailman they changed the way that the process that delivers mail gets run; it used to be run from cron, now it's a continuous process that you have to start separately.

When we upgraded mailman a while back, it looks like the command to start it didn't quite make it into the startup scripts. I'm pretty sure I've got it right in /etc/rc.local now, so when the machine gets next rebooted (for hardware upgrades, knock on wood), the mailing lists _shouldn't_ go silent mysteriously until someone remembers to start them up again. I hope.

Which brings me to my next point: we _really_ need to get the lists moved to a separate server that doesn't crash regularly, blocking our ability to communicate with one another.

Something entirely offsite is not unreasonable; if the hosting center catches fire or San Diego sinks into the sea ;) we should still be able to bitch at each other about it on the lists.

The lists shouldn't require a _huge_ amount of bandwidth. It doesn't need a low-latency connection to the database server (or any connection, rather). It just needs a reliable host.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)