History of Mailing Lists at UT Austin
ITS has a long history of offering electronic mail distribution lists. Such lists were usually set up on an informal basis. Initially, they were nothing more than mail system aliases that redistributed mail sent to a system address. Subscriptions were still managed by hand-editing a text file on a Unix system, and no message archiving or digest capability was available.
By 1992 ITS was using the Majordomo mailing list manager for automated subscription management for some mailing lists, but the version available at that time did not provide for message archiving and other useful features. The migration from the IBM VM system (UTA3081) in 1993 led to an evaluation of the free list management packages available at the time. Listproc by Anastasios Kotsikonas was chosen for its similarity to LISTSERV, its file archiving facilities, and the fact that source code was available.
The Listproc mailing list service was established in October 1993, operating on a Sun SPARCstation 1+ workstation borrowed from a staff member's desk. Its initial goals were to accommodate the remaining VM LISTSERV mailing lists and provide an improved alternative to Majordomo. It easily accomplished and even surpassed those initial goals.
The hostname used by the first three server systems, mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu, was chosen in honor of the friendly, punctual delivery man on the popular children's television show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. The hostname chosen for the fourth server, iceman.cc.utexas.edu, is in honor of the late blues guitarist Albert Collins, the `Iceman.' The first server used for Sympa, muddy.cc.utexas.edu, follows the blues motif by being named after the great architect of Chicago blues,
Muddy Waters.
Hardware
- McFeeley Mark I: October 1993 - October 1994
- SPARCstation 1+ from staff person's desk
- 2nd internal disk drive was *taped* into the machine
- 32 MB memory
- 600 MB total disk space
- McFeeley Mark II: October 1994 - July 1997
- SPARCstation 5 x
- 2 GB total disk space
- 64 MB memory
- McFeeley Mark III: August 1997 - October 2002
- Ultra Enterprise 1/140 server system
- Mirrored 2 GB system disks
- 320 MB memory
- 16 GB RAID for software and lists
- Iceman: October 2002 - present
- SPARCserver 220R 2-CPU server system
- mirrored 18 GB system disks
- 2 GB memory
- Sun A1000 RAID array for 43 GB worth of high-performance list data storage
- Muddy: March 2005 - present
- Sun SunFire 240M
- 2 GB memory
- 64 GB of mirrored internal disk storage
Timeline
| Aug 1993 | Set up SPARCstation 1+ with 200+300MB disks |
| Sep 1993 | Testing release 6.0b |
| Oct 3 1993 | In production |
| Oct 15 1993 | 29 lists |
| Dec 23 1993 | 45 lists |
| Jan 17 1994 | Update to Listproc 6.0c, 60 lists |
| Oct 14 1994 | Upgrade to SPARCstation 5, 1 GB system disk |
| Feb 23 1995 | 157 lists |
| May 01 1995 | >250 lists |
| Aug 09 1995 | 294 lists |
| Sep 02 1995 | 300 lists |
| Jan 12 1995 | Upgrade to Solaris 2.5/ListProc 7.2: add 64 MB memory, 1 GB disk for list data |
| Jul 09 1996 | 588 lists |
| Aug 14 1996 | Server status report, list request form |
| Sep 16 1996 | Special delivery to UMBS |
| Oct 03 1996 | 681 lists |
| Dec 05 1996 | Listproc 8.0 upgrade |
| Jan 21 1997 | 837 lists |
| Feb 14 1997 | Sendmail 8.8.5 upgrade |
| Apr 04 1997 | Over 50K subscriber entries, 887 lists |
| May 27 1997 | Listproc 8.1 |
| Aug 04 1997 | Move service to Ultra Enterprise server system |
| Aug 25 1997 | 1000 lists |
| Sep 16 1997 | 1152 lists, 152 lists in two weeks' time |
| Oct 01 1998 | 1535 lists, 109045 subscribers |
| Jan 29 1999 | Automated Web-based list creation system |
| Oct 01 1999 | 1867 lists, 138489 subscribers |
| Sep 09 2000 | Exceed 2000 lists for the first time |
| Oct 01 2000 | 2068 lists, 188595 subscribers |
| Oct 01 2001 | 2310 lists, 204345 subscribers |
| Sep 18 2002 | Exceed 2500 lists for the first time |
| Oct 01 2002 | 2632 lists, 276756 subscribers |
| Oct 27 2002 | Move service to SPARCserver 220R, 2694 lists |
| Oct 3 2003 | 10th anniversary! 2969 lists |
| Oct 5 2004 | 3059 lists, 485 new since August 1st |
| Oct 5 2005 | 3132 lists, 399 new since August 1st |
| Spring 2006 | Sympa integration and internal testing |
| Summer 2006 | Sympa testing by early ITS and campus adopters |
| Fall 2006 | Sympa announced to university technical support community |
