Mailman 3 - Mailman-announce

SF.net March 2004 POTM
by Barry Warsaw 05 Mar '04

05 Mar '04

Hey folks, quick note. Mailman's the March 2004 SourceForge.net project of the month. http://sourceforge.net/potm/potm-2004-03.php -Barry

1 0

Mailman 3 development list
by Barry Warsaw 26 Feb '04

26 Feb '04

I've created a list specifically for discussing Mailman 3 design and development. Feel free to subscribe at: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman3-dev I'd like to keep MM3 discussions off the main mailman-developers list as much as possible. The list will be open and will be run with essentially the same policies as mailman-developers and mailman-users, except that it will reject posts by non-members. Sorry, but I think this will help keep the signal to noise ratio high and it reduces my administrative burden. I want to give the list a few days to get populated and then I'll start posting some issues in preparation for the upcoming sprint at Pycon. -Barry

1 0

RELEASED: Mailman 2.0.14 patch-only release
by Barry Warsaw 08 Feb '04

08 Feb '04

I have just released Mailman 2.0.14 as a patch-only release. This fixes a DoS bug to be described in CAN-2003-0991. See here for details: https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=97760 Please note that since I am no longer actively maintaining Mailman 2.0, this release has had only limited testing. It is recommended that all sites running Mailman 2.0 upgrade to 2.1 where ever possible. For those sites that cannot upgrade, this patch may be useful. Also note that it is no longer possible to download tarballs of Mailman 2.0 from SourceForge. Enjoy, -Barry

1 0

RELEASED Mailman 2.1.4
by barry＠python.org 31 Dec '03

31 Dec '03

I have released Mailman 2.1.4, a bug fix release that also contains support for four new languages: Catalan, Croatian, Romanian, and Slovenian. This release also contains a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the 'admin' cgi script (see CAN-2003-0965). There is also an expanded ability to filter message headers, nominally to provide better support when Mailman is used in conjunction with upstream spam and virus filters. The full source tarball has been made available from the usual sites. Sorry, there is no patch available yet, but you should be able to install Mailman 2.1.4 over your existing 2.1.x installation. See http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=103 for links to the downloadable files. After installing, be sure you restart your Mailman daemon by doing a "mailmanctl restart". IMPORTANT: You will want to re-run configure before doing a make install. See also: http://www.list.org http://mailman.sf.net http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman Enjoy, and have a Happy New Year. -Barry -------------------- snip snip -------------------- 2.1.4 (31-Dec-2003) - Close some cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in the admin pages (CAN-2003-0965). - New languages: Catalan, Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian. - New mm_cfg.py/Defaults.py variable PUBLIC_MBOX which allows the site administrator to disable public access to all the raw list mbox files (this is not a per-list configuration). - Expanded header filter rules under Privacy -> Spam Filters. Now you can specify regular expression matches against any header, with specific actions tied to those matches. - Rework the SMTP error handling in SMTPDirect.py to avoid scoring bounces for all recipients when a permanent error code is returned by the mail server (e.g. because of content restrictions). - Promoted SYNC_AFTER_WRITE to a Default.py/mm_cfg.py variable and make it control syncing on the config.pck file. Also, we always flush and sync message files. - Reduce archive bloat by not storing the HTML body of Article objects in the Pipermail database. A new script bin/rb-archfix was added to clean up older archives. - Proper RFC quoting for List-ID descriptions. - PKGDIR can be passed to the make command in order to specify a different directory to unpack the distutils packages in misc. (SF bug 784700). - Improved logging of the origin of subscription requests. - Bugs and patches: 832748 (unsubscribe_policy ignored for unsub button on member login page), 846681 (bounce disabled cookie was always out of date), 835870 (check VIRTUAL_HOST_OVERVIEW on through the web list creation), 835036 (global address change when the new address is already a member of one of the lists), 833384 (incorrect admin password on a hold message confirmation attachment would discard the message), 835012 (fix permission on empty archive index), 816410 (confirmation page consistency), 834486 (catch empty charsets in the scrubber), 777444 (set the process's supplemental groups if possible), 860135 (ignore DiscardMessage exceptions during digest scrubbing), 828811 (reduce process size for list and admin overviews), 864674/864676 (problems accessing private archives and rosters with admin password), 865661 (Tokio Kikuchi's i18n patches), 862906 (unicode prefix leak in admindb), 841445 (setting new_member_options via config_list), n/a (fixed email command 'set delivery')

1 0

SourceForge donations for the GNU Mailman project
by Barry Warsaw 22 Dec '03

22 Dec '03

SourceForge recently instituted a donation system for projects and users, whereby you can donate some money to a PayPal account to show your appreciation for the free and open source projects you use. Donations to projects require opt-in from all the project's admins. Jeremy and I have both opted-in to the donation system for the GNU Mailman project. I have set the donations email address to the Python Software Foundation's PayPal account. This needn't be set in stone, but we had to pick an address to turn this on and the PSF seemed like a reasonable choice. Note that the Python project is accepting donations for the PSF as well. GNU Mailman remains free, in both the monetary and liberty senses of the word. I personally feel that the good will, help to others, insights, patches, bug fixes, and general good community that you already donate is enough reward. If you feel like making a monetary contribution as well, please know that the PSF is a US public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. See http://www.python.org/psf for details. If you have comments or feedback about our choice for the recipient of donations, or about whether we should be taking donations at all, please email me directly. Cheers, and happy holidays, -Barry

1 0

Calling all Mailman hosting sites
by Barry Warsaw 21 Nov '03

21 Nov '03

I've had a lot of requests recently for information about Mailman hosting. As a general rule I don't like to recommend any particular hosting company. But if you do provide Mailman hosting facilities, please make sure you've added yourself to the PythonHosting wiki: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/PythonHosting I usually point people here for more information, so please make sure you're on that list. Now to check the FAQ and see if it points here... -Barry

1 0

A book on Mailman? Opinions, please.
by Martin Streicher 07 Nov '03

07 Nov '03

Dear Mailman Users: My name is Martin Streicher, and I am the Editor for Open Source books at Apress (http://www.apress.com). I am considering publishing a book on Mailman and would like to hear your opinions. Briefly, the book would be very focused on Mailman, would be about 150-200 pages, and would sell for less than $20. The book would be very hands-on, something you would keep in your lap and work through as you installed and configured Mailman with the MTA and web browser of your choice. Then the book would switch to a problem-solution section, useful for when you are troubleshooting or adding features to your configuration, or trying to help users manage their Mailman accounts. My questions: 1/ Is such a book needed, and what is it's potential? 2/ If it is needed, what information should it include? What problems come up time and again? 3/ Should it only be about Mailman, or should it include ezmlm, Mailman, and Majordomo? 4/ Finally, what other topics in system administration might fit this format -- short, project-oriented, solutions -- well? Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to your replies. Please send replies to martin(a)apress.com. I will post a summary of all replies so as to share the info, but not clutter the list in the interim. Martin

1 0

Terri Oda's List Member Manual now available
by Barry Warsaw 07 Oct '03

07 Oct '03

Terri Oda has written a nice manual for Mailman list members, and I've finally pushed it out to the web site (and mirrors). It's available both on-line and in PDF format. You can access the manual at: http://www.list.org/users.html http://mailman.sf.net/users.html http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/users.html (As usual, the GNU mirror has a delay and is not yet up-to-date.) Thanks Terri! -Barry

1 0

RELEASED Mailman 2.1.3
by barry＠python.org 29 Sep '03

29 Sep '03

I have released Mailman 2.1.3, a bug fix release which also contains support for four new languages: Ukrainian, Serbian, Euskara (Basque), and Danish. This release also contains a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the 'create' cgi script, as well as improved performance of the bounce and outgoing queue runners. I recommend all sites running versions of the 2.1.x line upgrade to the new version. The full source tarball has been made available from the usual sites (although the gnu.org sites have not yet been updated). Sorry, there is no patch available, but you should be able to install 2.1.3 over your existing 2.1.x installation. See http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=103 for links to download all the patches and the source tarballs. After installing, be sure you restart your Mailman daemon by doing a "mailmanctl restart". See also: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman http://www.list.org (not yet updated) http://mailman.sf.net Cheers, -Barry -------------------- snip snip -------------------- 2.1.3 (28-Sep-2003) Performance, Reliability, Security - Closed a cross-site scripting exploit in the create cgi script. - Improvements in the performance of the bounce processor. Now, instead of processing each bounce immediately (which can cause severe lock contention), bounce events are queued. Every 15 minutes by default, the queued bounce events are processed en masse, on a list-per-list basis, so that each list only needs to be locked once. - When some or all of a message's recipients have temporary delivery failures, the message is moved to a "retry" queue. This queue wakes up occasionally and moves the file back to the outgoing queue for attempted redelivery. This should fix most observed OutgoingRunner 100% cpu consumption, especially for bounces to local recipients when using the Postfix MTA. - Optional support for fsync()'ing qfile data after writing. Under some catastrophic system failures (e.g. power lose), it would be possible to lose messages because the data wasn't sync'd to disk. By setting SYNC_AFTER_WRITE to True in Mailman/Queue/Switchboard.py, you can force Mailman to fsync() queue files after flushing them. The benefits are debatable for most operating environments, and you must ensure that your Python has the os.fsync() function defined before enabling this feature (it isn't, even on all Unix-like operating systems). Internationalization - New languages Ukrainian, Serbian, Danish, Euskara/Basque. - Fixes to template lookup. Lists with local overriding templates would find the wrong template. - .mo files (for internationalization) are now generated at build time instead of coming as part of the source distribution. Documentation - A first draft of member documentation by Terri Oda. There is also a Japanese translation of this manual by Ikeda Soji. Archiver / Pipermail - In the configuration variables PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER, and PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER, %(hostname)s has been added to the list of allowable substitution variables. - The timezone is now taken into account when figuring the posting date for an article. Scripts / Cron - Fixes to cron/disabled for NotAMemberError crashes. - New script bin/show_qfiles which prints the contents of .pck message files. New script bin/discard which can be used to mass discard held messages. - Fixes to cron/mailpasswds to account for old password-less subscriptions. - bin/list_members has grown two new options: --invalid/-i prints only the addresses in the member database that are invalid (which could have snuck in via old releases); --unicode/-u prints addresses which are stored as Unicode objects instead of as normal strings. Miscellaneous - Fixes to problems in some configurations where Python wouldn't be able to find its standard library. - Fixes to the digest which could cause MIME-losing missing newlines when parts are scrubbed via the content filters. - In the News/Mail gateway admin page, the configuration variable nntp_host can now be a name:port pair. - When messages are pulled from NNTP, the member moderation checks are short-circuited. - email 2.5.4 is included. This fixes an RFC 2231 bug, among possibly others. - Fixed some extra spaces that could appear in the List-ID header. - Fixes to ensure that invalid email addresses can't be invited. - WEB_LINK_COLOR in Defaults.py/mm_cfg.py should now work. - Fixes so that shunted message file names actually match those logged in log/errors. - An improved pending action cookie generation algorithm has been added. - Fixes to the DSN bounce detector. - The usual additional u/i, internationalization, unicode, and other miscellaneous fixes.

1 0

[Fwd: [Mailman-cabal] Linux Expo UK 2003 - .Org Village Free Space for Mailman]
by Barry Warsaw 22 Jul '03

22 Jul '03

This sounds like an interesting opportunity to get some more Mailman exposure. I won't be able to attend, but if any of our UK or Euro friends are planning to, would you be willing to volunteer a little time at the booth? If so, please let me and Brian know (I don't know what all is involved, other than shouting at the top of your lungs every five minutes: "Mailman Rocks!" :) -Barry

1 0