Mailman 3 November 1999 - Mailman-Developers

Mailman, hard links and the Openwall (fw)
by claw＠kanga.nu 29 Nov '99

29 Nov '99

This seems a little offbeat, but should be addressed: -- J C Lawrence Home: claw(a)kanga.nu ----------(*) Other: coder(a)kanga.nu --=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--

2 1

Mailmerge?
by Richard Leyton 27 Nov '99

27 Nov '99

Hi all, Just wondered if anybody else out there has, or is, thinking about support for mailmerge in the mailman software? It's something I need from my mailing software (as well as support for a dynamic user list drawn from a database), and I'm not keen on spending £lots if mailman could be modified... As you can tell from my mail address, I work at beenz.com, and we will soon be needing to e-mail our user base occasional e-mails with details of their balances and new offers. There's nothing really out there at the moment beyond an inhouse script we've written that just about does the job for small volumes. We're talking several hundred thousand mails soon enough == problems! Any comments/suggestions? I'm bracing myself to dip into the mailman source code - but my experience with python is (at the moment, at least) minimal, so before starting I thought I'd check whether you feel that it's something the mailman architecture could support, and people would want to see (besides myself!). Looking forward to your comments. Regards, Richard. -- Richard Leyton, Unix Systems Admin - http://www.beenz.com - The web's currency mailto:richard@beenz.com

4 4

Re: [Mailman-Users] optimizing mail delivery
by Barry A. Warsaw 27 Nov '99

27 Nov '99

>>>>> "PT" == Paul Tomblin <ptomblin(a)xcski.com> writes: PT> Wrong. Sendmail *does* do this for you. If you have a bunch PT> of people on a list in random order, sendmail will work PT> through the list in order, but every time it connects to a PT> domain, it will send one message to *all* the members of the PT> list at that domain. One of my most popular lists has at PT> least 30% of its subscribers at panix.com, and another 10% at PT> best.com. When it was on majordomo, the entire list was PT> passed off to sendmail in one chunk. Since one of the PT> panix.com people is first on the list, all the panixians got PT> their mail first, then a few more people, then all the people PT> at best.com, etc. Now that I'm using mailman, and it's split PT> into 5 chunks, I've noticed that one of the chunks is all PT> panixians, which goes in one message to panix, and one of the PT> chunks is almost all bestians, which also goes in one message. So do you think the Mailman way is better or worse? I'm curious because I'm trying to decide whether I should port Mailman 1.0's bulk mailer code to the new message pipeline. In the current 1.2 code base (available via the anonCVS), I os.popen() sendmail[1] passing the entire recipient list on the command line, then I pipe the message text to stdin and let the MTA do the rest. There's one complication; if the length of the recipients list is greater than a certain length (current 3000), I chop it up into multiple popens, but I don't do any sorting of the recipient list. The advantage I see of this is that sendmail can do it's thing asychronously, without keeping the list object locked the entire time. The disadvantage is that Mailman is only aware of delivery problems if the delivery bounces. I could see trying to sort the recips on the domain name if the total length is > 3000. I can also see porting the local-smptd delivery scheme of the current bulk mailer, but fixing some of the problems in the 1.0 code base (and there are quite a few). I'm leary though of stepping on too much of the MTA's toes -- a good MTA should just do the right thing. Another alternative, which would be less work and delegates all delivery to the MTA, is to just pump all the recips to the local smtpd via smtplib.py. The advantage here is that again we're MTA independent, but the disadvantage is that Mailman's delivery is synchronous with the smtpd. We'd have to be very sure to unlock the list object during this transaction (but watching out for race conditions, locking again if failure status's are handled directly, etc.) More code, more opportunity for bugs. Comments? -Barry [1] I actually don't use sendmail, I use postfix, but the code is easily configured to use anything with a sendmail compatible command line interface.

3 4

Bug in Mailman version 1.2 (experimental) (fwd)
by Phillip Porch 26 Nov '99

26 Nov '99

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 07:26:16 -0600 From: Phillip Porch <root(a)theporch.com> To: root(a)theporch.com Subject: Bug in Mailman version 1.2 (experimental) Bug in Mailman version 1.2 (experimental) Bug in Mailman version 1.2 (experimental) 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! Traceback: Traceback (innermost last): File "/home/mailman/scripts/driver", line 108, in run_main pkg = __import__('Mailman.Cgi', globals(), locals(), [scriptname]) File "/home/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/listinfo.py", line 28, in ? from Mailman import MailList File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 39, in ? from Mailman.MailCommandHandler import MailCommandHandler File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailCommandHandler.py", line 64, in ? option_info = {'digest' : 0, AttributeError: AcknowledgePosts -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Environment variables: Variable Value DOCUMENT_ROOT /home SERVER_ADDR 207.234.31.38 HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING gzip, deflate SERVER_PORT 8080 PATH_TRANSLATED /home/bapolicy REMOTE_ADDR 207.234.31.43 HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE en-us GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1 SERVER_NAME sco.theporch.com TZ CST6CDT HTTP_USER_AGENT Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows 98) HTTP_ACCEPT */* REQUEST_URI /mailman/listinfo/bapolicy PATH /usr/local/bin:/usr/local/kde/bin:/bin:/etc:/usr/bin:/tcb/bin:. QUERY_STRING SCRIPT_FILENAME /home/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo PATH_INFO /bapolicy HTTP_HOST www.theporch.com:8080 REQUEST_METHOD GET SERVER_SIGNATURE Apache/1.3.9 Server at sco.theporch.com Port 8080 SCRIPT_NAME /mailman/listinfo SERVER_ADMIN root(a)sco.theporch.com SERVER_SOFTWARE Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) PYTHONPATH /home/mailman REMOTE_PORT 1080 SERVER_PROTOCOL HTTP/1.1 HTTP_CONNECTION Keep-Alive

2 1

Found a privacy loophole...
by Rick Niess 25 Nov '99

25 Nov '99

Hi All, I just noticed something. I have some lists which are "private", so they don't show up in the index of lists that listinfo generates. However, if you follow the link to the "list admin overview page", it shows all the list names. Not terribly useful to the average web browser, but to someone who knows about mailman... ~ Rick ~ -- .oooO "Man with closed Oooo. Rick C. Niess ( ) mouth gathers ( ) University of Southern Miss. \ ( no foot!" ) / resnet(a)usm.edu --\ )------------------(_/-------------------------------

1 0

Latest changes
by Barry A. Warsaw 24 Nov '99

24 Nov '99

Hey folks, I've finished checking in my latest batch of changes. At least the basic stuff seems to be working fine, as this message will prove if you actually see it :) I could be asking for trouble, but I plan on moving many of the lower volume mailing list from python.org over to this new code base. It'll be very interesting to see if it performs better. I'm crossing my fingers that it's not worse! Narrowing it down to causes will be a little difficult because 1) it'll be running on a much faster machine; 2) it will be using a different MTA (not sendmail); 3) the new Mailman codebase. Enjoy, and for you US folks, have a happy holiday, -Barry

1 0

Another round of changes
by Barry A. Warsaw 24 Nov '99

24 Nov '99

Hi folks, I have another big batch of checkins ready to go. This set of changes should simplify the code even more; now all delivery of non-list email (e.g. admin notifications, post rejections, etc.) go through their own smaller message pipeline. Gone are contact_transport, deliver, and dumb_deliver scripts. Messages snagged off a newsgroup now also go through the pipeline directly. The advantages are that tracing through the code is much much simpler. I've also tried to remove all unused code, although there may be more simplification to follow. The downside is that currently there's no direct SMTP delivery, although I've started to hack together a module for the message pipeline that will do this. It may not be as elaborate as the bulk mailer, but it will give us back MTA independence. You'd be able to select either Sendmail (command line) or SMTPDirect as your MTA delivery mechanism, but for now, you'll have to that by hacking the code. Fortunately, there's one file you'd need to hack to change this. Once again, I'm going to do the checkin, followed by more local testing. If all looks good, I'll make you guys guinea pigs again :) for some wider test. Has anybody looked at the new stuff? If so, are you using it, even for test lists? My goal (dream? nightmare?) is to migrate all of the Python.Org lists over to the new software over the Thanksgiving weekend. We shall see... -Barry

1 0

Re: [Mailman-Developers] Bug in 1.1
by Richard Ellerbrock 23 Nov '99

23 Nov '99

Ok, did that and found 1 error: /home/mailman/data/adm.pw permissions must be exactly 0640 (got 0100644) (fixing) Problems found: 1 Will monitor. Thanks for the advice. -- Richard Ellerbrock richarde(a)eskom.co.za >>> John MacKenzie <jmackenzie(a)local.ie> 1999/11/23 06:35:14 >>> That looks rather like the error I was recieving when my files/folders where the incorrect GId. Try running bin/check_perms? Regards - John On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, you wrote: > Since upgrading to 1.1, I am getting the following error in my error log. I do not know when it occurs or what leads up to it. > > Nov 23 10:44:16 1999 post: Traceback (innermost last): > post: File "/home/mailman/scripts/mailowner", line 42, in ? > post: mlist = MailList.MailList(sys.argv[1]) > post: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 62, in __init__ > post: self.Load() > post: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 804, in Load > post: self.Lock() > post: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 1373, in Lock > post: self.__lock.lock() > post: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 186, in lock > post: os.link(self.__lockfile, self.__tmpfname) > post: os . error : (2, 'No such file or directory') > > > -- > Richard Ellerbrock > richarde(a)eskom.co.za > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailman-Developers mailing list > Mailman-Developers(a)python.org > http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers -- John MacKenzie | Unix Systems Admin | e: mailto:jmackenzie@local.ie ___________________________________________________________________ Stay in touch your local area through Local Ireland http://chat.local.ie/chat/index.html ___________________________________________________________________ local ireland | dublin | new york | http://www.local.ie

1 0

Bug in 1.1
by Richard Ellerbrock 23 Nov '99

23 Nov '99

Since upgrading to 1.1, I am getting the following error in my error log. I do not know when it occurs or what leads up to it. Nov 23 10:44:16 1999 post: Traceback (innermost last): post: File "/home/mailman/scripts/mailowner", line 42, in ? post: mlist = MailList.MailList(sys.argv[1]) post: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 62, in __init__ post: self.Load() post: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 804, in Load post: self.Lock() post: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 1373, in Lock post: self.__lock.lock() post: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 186, in lock post: os.link(self.__lockfile, self.__tmpfname) post: os . error : (2, 'No such file or directory') -- Richard Ellerbrock richarde(a)eskom.co.za

1 0

Feature suggestion
by Andy Harrison 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

Just had an idea for a cool feature. I run a humor list and keep the filesize limit fairly low, most of the people are dial-up of course. I don't want to mail bomb a ton of people because someone stupidly e-mailed the 3.2MB aliens_1.mpg file. Right now, I pretty much just reject it that's it. However, my idea is this. What if there was some sort of mechanism in place that stored the file in a different type of archive, and instead of mailing the file, it included a link to click on to pick up the file instead. That way they could see the file size first and whatnot and know what they were getting into before they tried to download it. --------------------------------- E-Mail: Andy Harrison <andy(a)nachoz.com> Date: 19-Nov-99 Time: 16:46:19 This message was sent by XFMail ---------------------------------

5 4