[Mailman-Users] FW: Mailman @ Ghoulnet

[stephen at xemacs.org]

Cath O'Connell writes:

 > We are having some problems, in that when we send an email to the
 > list it just disappears - no bounce message, no delivery failure,
 > no nothing - just disappears into the ether somewhere. Can you shed
 > any light? The people at Ghoulnet seem to know nothing about the
 > software and have referred me to yourselves directly!

This is Ghoulnet's responsibility, as they control access to the
information required for diagnosis.  If they haven't given you direct
access to the Mailman logs, the mail transfer agent (MTA) logs, and
the Mailman queues, you're going to have to ask them for various
information about that.

Internet email is extremely complex, potentially involving many hosts
each running many programs.  If the failures are happening with the
list, consistently with the list, and only with the list, then
something *probably* is wrong with the list (but only probably, mail
is that complex).

In order to find out precisely what is happening, you need to be able
to look at the logs produced by the various programs involved, and
often at the message queues.  These are only accessible from the
host.  If you do not have a login on the host which manages the lists,
you'll need to get someone who does have a login (and probably special
access, perhaps even full superuser privileges) to help you.

There's very little we can do without that information except to tell
you you're going to have to get it and point you at the FAQ, which has
lots of advice on *what* information to get and *where* on the list
host you can find it.

	Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py

You may also wish to look at Mailman's feature list

		  http://www.list.org/features.html

I suspect from your description that you may have a "non-traditional"
usage pattern, and Mailman has a number of settings that you can
tune.  The passwords are one of them.

 > Also, some users are receiving emails with password reminders -
 > what are these passwords for? We didn't set them up and I'm a bit
 > confused about what they are for!

The traditional usage pattern for mailing lists that motivated the
development of Mailman is users who come and go at their own option.
Mailman is primarily a means to take the burden of adding and removing
members from list administrator.  Mailman also allows various forms of
member configuration (sending bundles of messages at once as digests,
instead of sending each message immediately as it comes in, for
example).  These options can be changed by each member on an
individual basis.  There are various forms of mischief that can be
played by someone who has access to your list membership information.
The passwords are an imperfect (but so far very effective) way to
forestall such mischief.

By default, passwords are automatically generated, and tend to be less
than memorable.  So reminders are sent.

These reminders can be disabled on the general options page of the
list administrator's web site.

It sounds to me like there are a fair number of standard settings that
may not be best for your use.  While you're checking the FAQ, you
might want to look up how to tune your list settings to make things as
convenient as possible for your admins and users.

HTH

Steve