Enabled ports 37 and 123 TCP/UDP to allow the windows 2000 Server to access the time servers.
Going to harden the system and explicitly restrict some ports:

Configuring the Mailman software for the BELTA Mailing List.

Following configuration options obtained from:

http://www.whoopis.com/howtos/mailman-howto.html


Edit /var/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py and fix these lines:
DEFAULT_URL_HOST = 'www.domain.com'
DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'domain.com'

Edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf and uncomment/fix this line:

RedirectMatch /mailman[/]*$ http://www.domain.com/mailman/listinfo
Then restart httpd.

cd /var/mailman/bin and run "mmsitepass" to set the Mailman site password.

Create a "site-wide" mailing list. This is the one that password reminders will appear to come from.
It needs to be called "mailman." cd /var/mailman/
./newlist

Follow the prompts.
NOTE: When it asks for admin "name", enter an email address, or it'll fail.
Ignore the /etc/aliases line that it spews out at you, you don't care about messages being sent TO the "mailman" list. (Right?)
(sudo) /etc/init.d/mailman start

Now create your real mailing list(s) via the web interface.
It will tell you to paste some lines into /etc/aliases, like this: mymailinglist:

"/var/mailman/mail/mailman post mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-admin: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman admin mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-bounces: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman bounces mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-confirm: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman confirm mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-join: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman join mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-leave: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman leave mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-owner: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman owner mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-request: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman request mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-subscribe: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe mymailinglist"
mymailinglist-unsubscribe: "/var/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe mymailinglist"
Then run the "newaliases" command. Also, make sure that the installation of Mailman already put in two similar lines (add them if not): # Basic system aliases -- these MUST be present.
mailer-daemon: postmaster
postmaster: root
If you're using /etc/mail/virtusertable and you want to have a catchall/wildcard address, add entries like this to virtusertable: # mailman aliases
mailman@domain.com mailman
mailman-owner@domain.com mailman-owner
mymailinglist@domain.com mymailinglist
mymailinglist-admin@domain.com mymailinglist-admin
mymailinglist-bounces@domain.com mymailinglist-bounces
mymailinglist-confirm@domain.com mymailinglist-confirm
mymailinglist-join@domain.com mymailinglist-join
mymailinglist-leave@domain.com mymailinglist-leave
mymailinglist-owner@domain.com mymailinglist-owner
mymailinglist-request@domain.com mymailinglist-request
mymailinglist-subscribe@domain.com mymailinglist-subscribe
mymailinglist-unsubscribe@domain.com mymailinglist-unsubscribe
Restart sendmail.
Explanation: Because virtusertable is parsed before aliases, these lines in virtusertable hand off matches to aliases which in turn pipes them to the appropriate Mailman processors. This way you can still have a wildcard address in your virtusertable file, after the Mailman meta-aliases.
Another badly-documented task. To delete specific messages from your list archives, do the following: cd /var/mailman/archives/private # public archs are just symlinked to private
rm -rf mailinglist
cd /var/mailman/archives/private/goosepondchat.mbox
edit goosepondchat.mbox, delete the lines containing the messages you want gone
cd /var/mailman/bin
run ./arch mailinglist
The last command shown here will regenerate the database and html so that the rest of the archived messages are restored and viewable.
References:
Mailman Site Administrator documentation. http://www.list.org/site.html
Mailman & Postfix HOWTO for Debian Woody. http://homex.subnet.at/~max/mail/mailman.php#install
(a thread in a support forum.) http://www.support-forums.com/showthread.php?p=3419
Mailman INSTALL document. http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/mailman/mailman/INSTALL?content-type=text%2Fplain&rev=2.19.2.6

Trying to increase the EIDE disk access speed on Aparajita by carefully using the "hdparm" utility. Current setting are as follows:

[root@aparajita root]# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 4998/255/63, sectors = 80293248, start = 0

* Changing the IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit) to IO_support = 3 (32-bit w/sync)
by issuing the command: hdparm -c3 /dev/hda

* Changing unmaskirq = 0 (off) to unmaskirq = 1 (on)
by issuing the command: hdparm -c3 -u1 /dev/hda

Have to put the entire command - hdparm -c3 -u1 -d1 -m16 /dev/hda in the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file since hdparm does not remember previous commands after reboot.

Final Settings:

hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 3 (32-bit w/sync)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 4998/255/63, sectors = 80293248, start = 0


Now going to optimize the "bdflush" event:

Current "bdflush" settings:

0 1000 64 256 500 3000 100 20 0

changing to:

100 1200 128 512 15 5000 500 1884 2 by issuing the following command:

echo "100 1200 128 512 15 5000 500 1884 2">/proc/sys/vm/bdflush

Original setting in /etc/sysctl.conf file on line 34: vm.bdflush=0 1000 64 256 500 3000 100

Changing to : vm.bdflush = 100 1200 128 512 15 5000 500 1884 2

Restarting network to see if this will increase performance.