This item provides a more detailed explanation of the above procedure for NT systems. Before you install MailMan on an NT system, make sure that you have Perl 5 installed. For more information on where to get Perl 5 and how to install and configure it for Windows, you can consult the general-purpose Win32 Perl FAQ or you can just go straight to ActivePerl at ActiveState, which is where you're going to end up anyway.

First, unpack the distribution
Copy the distribution to some temporary directory for unpacking. For instance, "c:\tmp", and then unpack the distribution with your favorite unzipping utility. You should now have a subdirectory containing all of the files that we mentioned in the installation overview.

Then copy the files to your web server

Copy the files that you just unpacked from the distribution into the location where you want your MailMan installation to live, "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\mailman\", for example. The specific location of your web tree will vary depending on your machine and the web server that you are using. If you don't even know where your web-accessible tree is then now would be an excellent time to put the MailMan installation on hold while you go and consult with the nerd that set up your web server for you. Better yet, mail that nerd a link to this document and tell them that they are welcome to contact us if they need any help doing your install. We can't do remote installations with Windows machines but we will still be happy to help.

Check your permissions

If you are using IIS, then use the IIS administrations tool to make sure that the directory where your MailMan installation resides is marked executable. The specifics on how to do that vary from version to version of IIS, so consult your IIS documentation if you need more information on how to do that. Also make sure that your Mailman CGI file ends in an extension that will be recognized by your system as a Perl 5 script. Most of the time the Perl installer will associate ".pl" files with the Perl interpreter, so "mailman.pl" will do the trick, but your installation of Perl 5 may be different.

Apache users only: check the first line

If you are using Apache (this also applies to some other Windows web servers, but generally not IIS) then make sure that the first line of the Mailman CGI file refers to the correct location of your Perl interpreter. Be warned that it probably does not. We have supplied the second line in the script file as an example of how you might need to configure the first line on Windows systems. The exact contents of the line will depend on the exact location of your installed Perl executable. Simply delete the first line, which is intended for Unix installations, making your Windows-oriented line the first line in the file. If you are using Apache then you might also need to mess with your Apache configuration file to tell Apache to run MailMan as a CGI file. Instructions on that are included in our Unix installation instructions.

As of Apache 2.0, there is a new way to do this. Apache can now be configured to pay attention to the Windows registry when trying to determine what interpreter to use for a CGI script file. All that you have to do is toggle an option in your "httpd.conf" file. Just add "ScriptInterpreterSource registry" to your httpd.conf file. That line should be included in the default "httpd.conf" file for Windows distributions of Apache, so you should just need to un-comment it, rather than typing it in new. This is documented at the Apache web site here. It's a great option to configure for your server anyway, since that will make it a lot easier for you in the future to install CGI scripts that were intended for Unix servers, as most are.

Check your installation

Check your installation by loading "mailman.pl" in your web browser through your web server. In the above example, the URL to access MailMan might be "http://yourserver/mailman/mmstdod.pl".

NT systems tend to be very, very resistant to running Perl scripts without serious hassle, and NT administrators are generally unfamiliar with dealing with this sort of thing, so we have provided a few more tips for NT installations that we have developed over time: On some NT systems, when you try to run MailMan you are presented with completely useless error messages like "The script misbehaved by producing no output" and things like that. We have worked out a simple process to get the system up and running that starts out by running the script alone, without going through CGI, then slowly builds up to running through CGI through the server:

Troubleshooting Step #1: Run the script from the command-line

To test that the script itself is working okay under simple conditions, switch to the directory that MailMan is installed in via the command line, DOS prompt, etc. Switch to the directory that MailMan is installed in with "cd" and then type "perl mailman.cgi". That will run MailMan directly, and you should see a bunch of HTML code for the login page that corresponds with HTML code stored in "t_login.htm". If that works okay then your script is fine. Otherwise, that's where you have problems. If that doesn't work and you don't see the problem then just contact us and we'll be happy to help.

Troubleshooting Step #2: Check your path information

Now you need to test that the script has the path information set up correctly so that it will run even when IIS screws up the 'current directory' when it runs. Switch to some other directory, say the root of the C: drive. Run MailMan by executing a command similar to the one used in step 1, but specify the full path to the MailMan script. For example: "perl inetpub\wwwroot\mmstdod.pl". If the path information is correctly set up, it should still be able to locate the template for the login page and basically do the same thing that you saw in step #1. Otherwise, that's where you have problems.

Troubleshooting Step #3: Check your CGI mechanism

If the above two steps worked, then you are almost there. If you still can't get MailMan working then the problem is most likely your ability to run a CGI script in the first place. We have included the "simple.pl" file in the MailMan distribution to help you to debug the CGI mechanism itself. The "simple.pl" file is a very simple CGI script that does not have any external dependencies and basically can't fail unless the sky is falling or something. If you do your IIS troubleshooting using that file then you can be assured that the problems that you are having are with IIS and not with some sort of MailMan complexity. Once you get "simple.pl" producing its simple output then you can normally also run MailMan.

If you follow all of the above steps and you are still having problems then please contact us, we might be able to help. We are certainly happy to try.