Mailman 3 June 1998 - Mailman-Developers

Mailman not delivering the mail
by Michael McLay 06 Jun '98

06 Jun '98

The subscribe script execute and the Web page that is returned says a message will be sent to the subscriber, but no message arrives. I think something is wrong with gid or uid. By adding an intentional bug in Mailman/mm_utils.py the attached trace was triggered just after msg.GetSender() was called. Here's the bug that was added: import smtplib sender = msg.GetSender() findbug The debugging code that was added shows that the script is being executed as nobody. Am I correct in assuming that the mailer won't send out a message from nobody because nobody is not a trusted user? uid 65534 (nobody) euid 65534 (nobody) gid 55 (mailman) egid 50 (wwwcgi) - a group set up for cgi scripts. I also was curious about the wwwcgi egid. This is the gid setting used inside the httpd configuration, but when the subscribe cgi script create the data/pending_subscriptions.db the group is set to mailman. I'm confused about what the settings of all these things should be. I also found the layers used to send out the mail messages to be puzzling. Why the trip from maillist -> MailList -> mm_deliver -> Deliverer - > DeliverToUser -> mm_utils -> DeliverToUser. Why so much indirection? Michael ###################### REPLY MESSAGE ############################### We're sorry, we hit a bug! If you would like to help us identify the problem, please email a copy of this page to the webmaster for this site with a description of what happened. Thanks! ['/usr/local/mailman/scripts/subscribe'] Traceback (innermost last): File "/usr/local/mailman/scripts/subscribe", line 26, in ? from Mailman.subscribe import * File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/subscribe.py", line 151, in ? list.SendTextToUser(subject = "%s -- confirmation of subscription -- request %d" % \ File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/mm_deliver.py", line 105, in SendTextToUser mm_utils.SendTextToUser(subject, text, recipient, sender, File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/mm_utils.py", line 145, in SendTextToUser DeliverToUser(msg, recipient, add_headers=add_headers) File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/mm_utils.py", line 162, in DeliverToUser findbug NameError: findbug Execution privilage on the Server uid 65534 euid 65534 gid 55 egid 50 Environment Variable on the Server DOCUMENT_ROOT /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs REMOTE_HOST fermi CONTENT_TYPE application/x-www-form-urlencoded PATH_TRANSLATED /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/test/ REMOTE_ADDR 129.6.185.13 GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1 HTTP_COOKIE NVL_prefs=yvt0fss0000ss0s000000s000s00000000000000000000ss0s0000000000QQMichael%20McLay SERVER_PROTOCOL HTTP/1.0 HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE en REMOTE_PORT 25123 SERVER_PORT 80 HTTP_CONNECTION Keep-Alive HTTP_USER_AGENT Mozilla/4.05 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.31 i686) HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET iso-8859-1,*,utf-8 HTTP_ACCEPT image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, image/png, */* REQUEST_URI /mailman/subscribe/test/ PATH /usr/openwin/bin/xview:/usr/openwin/bin:/usr/local/bin:/etc:/usr/etc:/usr/lib:/usr/ucb:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/etc/yp:/usr/plum:.:/usr/asap/bin:/usr/sbmt QUERY_STRING SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin/subscribe CONTENT_LENGTH 71 HTTP_HOST www.eeel.nist.gov REQUEST_METHOD POST SCRIPT_NAME /mailman/subscribe SERVER_ADMIN kbrady(a)eeel.nist.gov SERVER_SOFTWARE Apache/1.2.5 PYTHONPATH /usr/local/mailman/Mailman PATH_INFO /test/ HTTP_REFERER http://www.eeel.nist.gov/mailman/listinfo/test SERVER_NAME www.eeel.nist.gov DEBUG Traceback (innermost last): File "/usr/local/mailman/scripts/subscribe", line 35, in ? Mailman.debug.print_environ() File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/debug.py", line 37, in print_environ print "DEBUG", debug NameError: debug Content-type: text/html Test Subscription results Confirmation from your email address is required, to prevent anyone from covertly subscribing you. Instructions are being sent to you at mclay(a)nist.gov. List run by mclay(a)nist.gov HTML generated by Mailman v 1.0b4

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CGI thoughts
by John Viega 06 Jun '98

06 Jun '98

I was just thinking that it's a little much to require people to go in and change their httpd configuration files. Something we could do for the next release would be to provide a single C binary, and tell people, "Put this in your system cgi-bin directory". Then mailman URLS would become: http://www.blah.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo I think while the URL may get a little bigger, it has the advantage of being a lot less error-prone to install. Of course, we could always have an option to configure that would keep things the way they are. Thoughts? John

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Pipermail
by John Viega 06 Jun '98

06 Jun '98

Has anyone modified pipermail's hypermail emulation to work using only modules that are compiled in the default Python distribution? There's one dependency I have in mind: pipermail currently uses bsddb, which is not compiled into Python 1.5. I think gdbm is compiled in by default, but the two interfaces aren't compatible. My biggest goal w/ Mailman has always been to have everything people would ever want to do be easy to do. That's why I'm pretty reluctant to distribute without built-in archiving - one thing I hated about Majordomo was having to go out and download extras and then figure out how to integrate them to get useful functionality. I also believe that many people who will want to use Mailman will be using Python for the first time. The default Python installation is really easy to build. But as soon as you tell people, "Hey, now you have to recompile, and install crypt. Oh, and now you have to go download pipermail. And before you use that, you have to find bsddbm on the net somewhere, and install it", that's going to send people running back to the comfort of Perl and Majordomo, even though they'll be doing the same sorts of things. To that end, I've put in provisions for passwords to use md5 if crypt is not found. BTW, do you guys think md5 should be the default, and crypt an option for those who add it to their config? The only real advantage of crypt is that it is less space intensive. Also, the way I have things set up at the moment, if someone starts w/ the default distribution and later recompiles Python to include crypt, all the old passwords won't work, since they'll be in the md5 digest format. John

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Some improvement suggestions
by Ken Manheimer 06 Jun '98

06 Jun '98

Some of the other people here at cnri are using mailman, and they've hit up against one small change needed. I thought i'd mention it here, in case anyone gets the chance and inclination to address it. I also have one other item which i would really like to do, but the eventuality of actually doing it may be less near than i'd like (especially since i'm going away for a week, and there's all that catch-up time on return). The first item is the ability to edit the new-member welcome message. We offer list managers the ability to edit the html pages, and they get to see the way the magic refs (eg, <MM-List-Name>) are used on the template to see how they could use them for their own versions. Well, there is a number of standard mail messages, including particularly the welcome message, that they may want to edit. (IN FACT, two different groups, separately, came to me today with the need to edit the welcome message - for different reasons! A sure sign...) I think we would have to change the format substitutions, currently all the "%s" order dependent style, to be "%(real_name)s" dictionary substitutions, and otherwise do the same kind of thing we do for the html templates. (Ah, i see barry's done that in some recent checkins.) There is a bunch of messages, some which may benefit from this treatment, other might just clutter the list admins choices. Along these lines, there's something much more encompassing i'd like to do or see done. I'd like to extend the handling of list admin options and html templates so list-specific versions are only squirreled away in list-specific space if and when the list admin changes them from the default. This way, the central administrator could change the template or default values, and the new value would show for all the lists that haven't tailored their own versions. This would certainly be suitable for something like the html pages, where site style changes need propagation, and also for stuff like the forbidden posters. It may not be suitable for some others. This should be easy for the template files - just don't stash list-specific copies until an edit is made (and the edited copy differs), and use the default template if no list-specific one exists. It'd also be good to offer a way in the edit interface to revert to the default version, wiping out the list-specific copy. For the list admin options, we'd need a new field in the options data structure specifying the *name* of the default value, and likewise some way for the gui option for the list admin to explicitly revert to the default. Maybe there should be some way to have a locked-in list-specific setting, even if it doesn't differ from the _current_ site default. And then all the routines that use the list admin options will have to mediate through a routine (or options mediator object) that takes the name of the option and gets the default value when suitable... Well, i hope this is at least slightly understandable, if quick - i gotta run. C ya later! Ken

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A bug in 1.0b4 (subscriber's options)
by Janne Sinkkonen 05 Jun '98

05 Jun '98

If I go to editing subscriber's options by writing an e-mail address onto the listinfo page, submitting the changes does not work. Instead I get an error saying handle_opts: no such list. Instead, editing options by clicking the subscriber's address on the subscriber list works fine. -- Janne

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News->Mail gateways
by John Viega 05 Jun '98

05 Jun '98

The new release includes both Mail->News gatewaying and News->Mail gatewaying. The latter uses a polling strategy. If you have direct access to your nntp server, it would be possible not to have to poll. In fact, it would be fairly easy. Unfortunately, I don't have that sort of access available. If anyone is interested in getting non-polling gatewaying working, please contact me, I'm interested in writing the necessary code, I just need someone who can test it, etc. John

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2 Quickies
by Corbett Klempay 04 Jun '98

04 Jun '98

Being the big newbie, I am having 2 snags so far in my Mailman 1.0b4 installation (Red Hat 5.1): 1) Cron is giving me this every 5 minutes: Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 19:20:01 -0400 From: Cron Daemon <root(a)chimera.acm.jhu.edu> To: mailman(a)chimera.acm.jhu.edu Subject: Cron <mailman@chimera> /usr/bin/python /home/mailman/cron/gate_news Traceback (innermost last): File "/home/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 41, in ? file = open(os.path.join(mm_cfg.DATA_DIR, "gate_watermarks.last"), "w") IOError: (13, 'Permission denied') 2) And I'm getting a 403 Forbidden on the test list...I'm thinking this might be related to the other admin installing cgi-wrap...I'm not too keen on how it works. Does is the user mailman supposed to belong to just the users group, or users as well as the mailman group? CK

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Cookies (again)
by John Viega 04 Jun '98

04 Jun '98

Okay, I just let a friend of mine set up a list. The first thing he said was, "it looks great, but my changes don't submit, it gives me the login screen and then my changes are gone". Well, he's almost certainly got cookies turned off. Do you think it would be a good idea to put a password field above the "Submit your changes" button, and label it: "If your browser doesn't have cookies on, put your password here"? John

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Mailman 1.0b4 released
by John Viega 04 Jun '98

04 Jun '98

Mailman 1.0b4 is now available from: ftp://list.org/pub/mailman/mailman-1.0b4.tar.gz This release is only intended to see a small distribution, primarily this development community. The first "major" release is still a couple of weeks away (some people still need to sign copyright forms for GNU, archiving has to be integrated back in, etc.) Developers, please feel encouraged to go to the Mailman home page, look at the developer's TODO list, and pick out a project. If you are thus inclined, the Mailman home page is located at: http://www.list.org/ The major changes since 1.0b3 are: - A configure script for easy installation (Barry Warsaw) - The ability to install Mailman to locations other than /home/mailman (Barry Warsaw) - Use cookies on the admin pages (also hides admin pages from others) (Scott Cotton) - Subscription requests send a request for confirmation, which may be done by simply replying to the message (Scott Cotton) - Facilities for gating mail to a newsgroup, and for gating a newsgroup to a mailing list (John Viega) - Contact the SMTP port instead of calling sendmail (primarily for portability) (JohnViega) - Changed all links on web pages to relative links where appropriate. (John Viega) - Use MD5 if crypt is not available (John Viega) - Lots of fixing up of bounce handling (Ken Manheimer) - General UI polishing (Ken Manheimer) - mm_html: Make it prominent when the user's delivery is disabled on his option page. (Ken Manheimer) Enjoy, John

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ETA?
by Corbett Klempay 04 Jun '98

04 Jun '98

Not to be annoying or anything, but would anyone be able to venture a guess as to the ETA for b4? Since I convinced the other ACM admin to move from Majordomo to Mailman, he's waiting until b4 is released to migrate all mail and list services to our new machine. Any info is appreciated. Thanks :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Corbett J. Klempay Quote of the Week: http://www2.acm.jhu.edu/~cklempay "There exists in India no politician daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten." PGP Fingerprint: 7DA2 DB6E 7F5E 8973 A8E7 347B 2429 7728 76C2 BEA1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mailman-Developers June 1998