# Presentation: 226805

## A new Mailing List infrastructure at CERN

- Ruben Gaspar Aparicio
- Michel Christaller & Ruben Leivas Ledo
- IT - Internet Services Group
- CERN

## Schedule	

- What is Listbox?
- A bit of history
- New service architecture and design
- Externals & External Lists
- Conclusions

## What is Listbox

- Listbox is the Mailing list service at CERN
- It includes the Mailing list editor (_[http://simba.cern.ch](http://simba.cern.ch/)_) and the mailing list archive web site
- Numbers
- 3,300 lists
- Active lists: 350  per day, 800 per week
- 8 Gb of web archives, with access control
- 60 users per list (avg), up to 6,000 users per list (max)
- 15,000 CERN users
- 35,000 addresses-without-CERN-account
- 1,500 list owners
- Traffic: 2,000 (in) / 45,000 (out) messages distributed in 24 hours (avg)

## List properties

- Name of the list (email address)
- Owners
- Members
- Description
- Subscription and unsubscription policies
- Posting restrictions
- Moderation
- Message size limit
- An Archive may exist  + authorization settings
- Delivery policy
- Alias

## Old Service

**SUN computer**

**Old Service**

**SMTP**
**Gateways**

**AFS**
**File System**

**HR**
**People**
**database**

**LDAP**

**CCDB**
**Accounts **
**database**

**External**
**internet**

**Mailbox**
**Stores**

## Motivations for renewal

**10 years of home grown software**
**High maintenance cost**
- Dedicated team and special skills necessary
- Single computer, non scalable architecture
- Service sometimes overloaded, delivery delays
- Flat file database, AFS and LDAP dependencies
- Difficult “mirroring” of flat files for majordomo and ldap repository for SIMBA
- Archiving problems
- Little monitoring and alarms (requires human monitoring)
**Missing functionalities**
- anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-flood, expiration, invalid recipients removal, web archive management by owner, ...

## Weaknesses Old System

- Weakness Listbox
- Info shared into Listbox4 and LDAP
- Problems of spurious synchronization.
- Membership 0.
- UNIX like
- All is in files.
- SIMBA deals with LISTBOX4 machine and LDAP server.
- Breaking Messages.
- Sometimes a message with a strange MIME type or with some awful expression inside (Perl can't cope with) is breaking "mhonarc" generating a core file in the Listbox4 archives directory.
- A lot of different perl scripts for guarantee the Majordomo features.
- Resend and bounce messages.
- Member addresses resolutions.

## New Service

**HR / CCDB**
**databases**

**List definitions**
**(Active Directory)**

**New Simba**
**(ASP .NET **
**Web interface)**

**New Listbox Service**** **
**(load balanced array of PCs)**
**____**
**Mail Distribution**
**(Exchange 2003 Gateways **
**Spam, AntiVirus, Flood Check)**
**____**
**Web Archives**
**(Exchange 2003 Public Folders)**

**External Lists**

## New Service

**Infrastructure**

**New Service**

**External ****Lists**

**HR**
**People**
**database**

**CCDB**
**Accounts **
**database**

- List definitions
- (Active Directory)

- Mail
- Distribution

- Public Folders
- (Web archive)

- Simba (ASP.NET
- Web interface)

## New Service

**SMTP Gateways**
**(Spam, AntiVirus, Flood Check)**
**Exchange 2003**

**HR**
**database**

**List definitions**
**Active Directory**

**New Simba**
**(Web interface)**

**External**
**internet**

**New Listbox Service**
**(load balanced array of PCs)**

**MailBox & Public Folders**
**Exchange 2000/2003**

**Externals Lists**

## New Listbox infrastructure

- Infrastructure shared with Mail Service
- All machines Windows 2000/2003, Exchange 2000/2003, Dual Xeon 2.0Ghz, Hyperthreading on, 1 Gbit/s network card
**Public folders**
- 2x 4U servers, 4GB memory. Mainly List’s Archives
**Databases are replicated**
**Front End Servers**
- 4x 2U servers, 2GB memory. IMAP, POP, MAPI over HTTP and HTTP (webmail) gateway
**Store Servers**
- 12x 4U servers, 3-4GB memory, 2 SRCU32 Intel RAID controllers with each 1xRAID1 (2x70GB/SCSI), 1xRAID5 (3x120GB/SCSI).
**SMTP Gateways**
- 6x** **2U servers, 2GB memory. Windows Load Balancing, Symantec Antivirus for Exchange and CERN made C# Protocol Event Sink
**Spam Content filtering servers (CERN SpamKiller)**
- 4x 2U servers, 2GB memory.

## New Listbox design 

- User Objects (CERN accounts or Externals)
- Global security groups
- Owners
- Members
- List ~ Public Folder with email @
- Message sent to the PF
- Restriction on who can send messages
- Restriction on message size
- Forwards to the group of members, possible delivery in the folder
- Web archive through OWA
- Archive Permissions
- Owners  *Editor*
- Members  *Non Editing Authors*
- Owners can have more freedom for **managing** the archive.
- delete and modify possible

## Archive access from Outlook

## From users perspective

**Almost the same interface for managing lists**
**No change in email addresses**
**Almost the same functionalities**
**What was changed :**
**Bounced mail goes to sender instead of owners**
**No more Majordomo mail commands**
- Every subscription must be authenticated
**No more AFS archives / AFS lists**
- WEBDAV access / External lists web service

## CERN External Accounts

- People without a CERN mail account can register into Listbox
- Implemented as special user accounts with a mail address
- Access restricted to
- SIMBA interface
- Web archives (OWA)
- With a group policy which denies access from the network / logon locally on all CERN computers but a few servers
- Logon with the mail address (userPrincipalName property)

## CERN External Accounts

- Account is created disabled when address is inserted in a list
- Account must be validated with a mail response
- Unused accounts are reclaimed
- MemberOf property
- altrecipientBL
- Web interface to manage account properties (validation, password.. ) _[http://cern.ch/externalsweb](http://cern.ch/externalsweb)_
- External Accounts can be reused by other CERN Services

## External’s notification

## External Lists

- Replaces AFS lists
- Membership is provided through a web service as a file
- Email addresses are extracted and matched to user objects
- Web interface shows the original file content (retains comments)

## DEMOhttp://simba.cern.ch/

## Simba web site

## Owners View

## Members View

## Web archive

## Conclusion

- New Listbox integrated with new Mail infrastructure deployed at CERN last year
- Benefits from
- Infrastructure redundancy
- Antivirus
- SPAM fight
- Flood control
- Integrated Web archive
- Integrated repository : Active Directory
- Smooth migration undergoing
- New interface in production (combines search on the old-new system)
- 450 lists already in the new system
- shorter time in delivery for list in the new system
- Owners will have more functionality (manage archives, add/delete in bulk)
- Less SPAM hassle for owners (bounces, subscription)

- Questions