Mailman 3 May 1999 - Mailman-Developers

automatically generated password too complicated?
by Gerhard Gonter 07 Jul '99

07 Jul '99

Some of our users complained about the automatically generated passwords that are sent out when a list is imported or if an admin subscribes someone. Especially the ` and ^ characters are major problem because these may be treated as parts of composite characters in some enviroments (` followed by a might be displayed as the same character as à in HTML) and so on. Also, upper case characters impose an extra mental burden ;) Anyway, I modified our Mailman which now has a function (method?) Utils.GetRandomPassword(length) which generates passwords of the given length with a restricted alphabet, namely: a-x, 2-9, excluding characters o and l as well as digits 0 and 1 which may be confused and y, z (german keyboards swap these, in the past, this cause trouble too ;) I would like to offer this patch unless there are good reasons why this should be avoided. The main concern is certainly a higher risk to crack such passwords (only 30 possibilities instead of 64) but this could easly be matched by using 5 character passwords: possibilities strength --------------------------- 64^4 = 16777216 1 30^4 = 810000 0.05 30^5 = 24300000 1.45 As far as I have seen, this patch involves replacing certain calls to GetRandomSeed in a few places such as: bin/add_members, Mailman/Cgi/admin.py, Mailman/MailCommandHandler.py Any comment? +gg -- Gerhard.Gonter(a)wu-wien.ac.at Fax: +43/1/31336/702 g.gonter(a)ieee.org Zentrum fuer Informatikdienste, Wirtschaftsuniversitaet Wien, Austria

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] stalled connection: archive locks?
by Harald Meland 29 May '99

29 May '99

[Ricardo Kustner] > Hi, > > well i've traced my problem back to the fact that the > lock files in the archive directory are not being removed. > > they appear as: > 1999-May-subject.lock.<host-name>.<#####> > > where <#####> is a number... The number is the process ID (pid) of the locking process. If you do a "ps auxww | grep #####" (substituting "#####" with a number from a lock file), does any Mailman processes show up? > does anybody have the same problems? > > i think this might be what causes the process-overload on our server, when > an impatient moderator doesnt wait for the stalled page to completely finnish > and approve several posts at once, all of them waiting for lock files to be > released...? I'll look into it -- this may be related to a problem J C Lawrence has reported (with subject "Performance under load (bursty message flow)"). -- Harald

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Performance under load (bursty message flow)
by J C Lawrence 27 May '99

27 May '99

In running a number of lists at VA under mailman, I've noticed an apparent performance problem: multiple simultaneous deliveries to the same list performs badly. Locking? One particular list tends to receive large numbers of messages over short time periods (eg 50 messages with less than a minute) followed by long periods of inactivity (eg an hour). The result is that multiple (typically a dozen) simultaneous instances of mailman are invoked for that list. Watching a mail bomb come thru the apparent behavious is curious: The first batch gets thru fine (ie # of simultansous deliveries as set in the MTS cfg), each individual message seperated from the others by fractions of a second. But the second run (which all start within milliseconds of each other) all seem to block on <listname>.lock for the same time period, and to then spin, all unlocking and relocking in synch and getting nowhere. Certainly the wait time on the lock is rather long (I haven't checked the source). Perhaps a shorter default lock time plus a random factor? Eeek. System is a 400MHz PII, 128Meg RAM, Python 1.5, RH 5.2, all updates, latest CVS version of MailMan. -- J C Lawrence Home: claw(a)kanga.nu ---------(*) Linux/IA64 - Work: claw(a)varesearch.com ... Beware of cromagnons wearing chewing gum and palm pilots ...

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RE: [Mailman-Users] stalled / locks?... corrupted database :(
by Ricardo Kustner 24 May '99

24 May '99

On 18-May-99 Ricardo Kustner wrote: >> When I approve a post in the admindb interface (mailman rc1), the connection >> "stalls" for several seconds after the new page has been brought up... the >> weird thing is that the full html output has been displayed on the browser, >> but apperantly, the http connection isn't closed immediately after this... >> could this be a lock-file problem? > i reply to my own post... when i approve a post and do a ps -ax on the > server, i can see python hanging around as a "zombie" process during the > stall-time of a the approval submit... i feel really stupid for being the only one to reply to my *own* posts... (i guess nobody is taking me seriously??... :) ) anyway it looks like my archive database has become corrupted since no posts have been added since last sunday... which is quite possible since i had a some trouble with the server last weekend (which is more due to lack of system resources and my own fault sort of... my fastcgi scripts are not that reliable (yet) and sometimes tend to crash the server, especially if mailman/exmin are *very* busy with posting messages at the same time) so my question is: how can i fix the archive database? i guess i have to turn off archiving for now... Ricardo. --

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] another "mailman" product...
by Harald Meland 22 May '99

22 May '99

[Jerry Adlersfluegel] > I was going through some stuff on freshmeat, and I found another > program named "mailman." I don't know if this has been discussed > here before, but I thought I should point it out. > > http://www.endymion.com/products/mailman/ It's been brought up before, and each time the conclusion has been that since the functionality provided by these two software packages differs quite a bit, there a) hopefully won't be too much confusion and b) is no reason to fear lawsuits over the name. And, they apparently camelcase their name (MailMan) while we capitalize ours (Mailman) ;) -- Harald

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] Error in Mailman Version: 1.0rc1
by Harald Meland 22 May '99

22 May '99

[Richard Ellerbrock] > I continuously get the following error in my error > log. Unfortunately I do not know what leads to the error. > > > admin: [----- Mailman Version: 1.0rc1 -----] > admin: [----- Traceback ------] > admin: Traceback (innermost last): > admin: File "/home/mailman/scripts/driver", line 112, in run_main > admin: main() > admin: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/listinfo.py", line 40, in main > admin: FormatListinfoOverview() > admin: File "/home/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/listinfo.py", line 66, in FormatListinf > oOverview > admin: if port and http_host[-len(port)-1:] == ':'+port: > admin: AttributeError: __getslice__ Apparently your web server isn't defining the HTTP_HOST environment variable when running CGI scripts. The CGI/1.1 spec says that SERVER_NAME should hold The server's hostname, DNS alias, or IP address as it would appear in self-referencing URLs" (but doesn't mention HTTP_HOST...), so with the below (just-checked-in) patch Mailman falls back on SERVER_NAME when HTTP_HOST is unset: Index: listinfo.py =================================================================== RCS file: /export/public/cvsroot/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/listinfo.py,v retrieving revision 1.10 retrieving revision 1.11 diff -u -r1.10 -r1.11 --- listinfo.py 1999/05/02 22:57:45 1.10 +++ listinfo.py 1999/05/22 10:06:09 1.11 @@ -60,7 +60,8 @@ # XXX We need a portable way to determine the host by which we are being # visited! An absolute URL would do... - http_host = os.environ.get('HTTP_HOST') + http_host = os.environ.get('HTTP_HOST') or\ + os.environ.get('SERVER_NAME') port = os.environ.get('SERVER_PORT') # strip off the port if there is one if port and http_host[-len(port)-1:] == ':'+port: Thanks for the bug report, -- Harald

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] found a bug? "ValueError: bad marshal data"
by Harald Meland 22 May '99

22 May '99

[Ricardo - Miss Janet. Fanclub] > Hi, > > like i mentioned earlier, when i approve a post with admindb, the webbrowser > stalls for several seconds before closing the connection... well i just found > out that it generates an error in my apache logs (See below) > is this a bug? or does this mean one of the databases is corrupted? Looks like one of your pipermail archive databases (located under ~mailman/archive/private/LISTNAME/database/) is corrupt. Sorry to say, I don't know very much about these database files -- but, if you have a plain mbox archive of the list as well (located in ~mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox), I guess the entire pipermail web archive can be regenerated from there. To regenerate, do rm -r ~mailman/archives/LISTNAME/ ~mailman/bin/arch LISTNAME ~mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox (but make sure you have all the needed articles in the mbox archive first). > ps: don't you all agree mailman needs more publicity? Well, if it's _good_ publicity, then yes, of course :) > did rc1 get posted on freshmeat and stuff? Just checked, and yes, it seems like Barry did so. -- Harald

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] getheader-setheader
by Harald Meland 22 May '99

22 May '99

[Bencsath Boldizsar] > The problem, if i use special characters in the subject, some of the words > appear two times in the subject ... Actually, it wasn't related to use of special characters, but to the fact that the resulting subject header spanned multiple line. This (just-checked-in) patch should fix this problem: Index: Mailman/Message.py =================================================================== RCS file: /export/public/cvsroot/mailman/Mailman/Message.py,v retrieving revision 1.20 retrieving revision 1.21 diff -u -r1.20 -r1.21 --- Message.py 1999/03/09 02:42:09 1.20 +++ Message.py 1999/05/22 06:05:48 1.21 @@ -22,13 +22,10 @@ import string import time -# get our hacked copy of Python 1.5.2's rfc822.py -import rfc822 -try: - rfc822.Message.getallrecipients -except AttributeError: - # the standard module doesn't have our enhancement - from Mailman.pythonlib import rfc822 +# Python 1.5's version of rfc822.py is buggy and lacks features we +# depend on -- so we always use the up-to-date version distributed +# with Mailman. +from Mailman.pythonlib import rfc822 # Utility functions 2 of these classes use: @@ -153,47 +150,11 @@ return real_name def SetHeader(self, name, value, crush_duplicates=1): - # Well, we crush dups in the dict no matter what... - # XXX Note that as of Python 1.5.2, rfc822 message objects support - # a .__setattr__() that does what we want, so eventually we'll - # want to switch to that instead of mucking w/the internal rep. - newheader = not self.dict.has_key(string.lower(name)) - self.dict[string.lower(name)] = value - if value[-1] <> '\n': - value = value + '\n' - - if not crush_duplicates or newheader: - self.headers.append('%s: %s' % (name, value)) - return + if crush_duplicates: + self[name] = value else: - for i in range(len(self.headers)): - if (string.lower(self.headers[i][:len(name)+1]) == - string.lower(name) + ':'): - self.headers[i] = '%s: %s' % (name, value) - - # XXX Eventually (1.5.1?) Python rfc822.Message() will have its own - # __delitem__. - def __delitem__(self, name): - """Delete all occurrences of a specific header, if it is present.""" - name = string.lower(name) - if not self.dict.has_key(name): - return - del self.dict[name] - name = name + ':' - n = len(name) - list = [] - hit = 0 - for i in range(len(self.headers)): - line = self.headers[i] - if string.lower(line[:n]) == name: - hit = 1 - elif line[:1] not in string.whitespace: - hit = 0 - if hit: - list.append(i) - list.reverse() - for i in list: - del self.headers[i] + # Only bother with the dict + self.dict[string.lower(name)] = value # This is a simplistic class. It could do multi-line headers etc... # But it doesn't because I don't need that for this app. Thanks a lot for the bug report, -- Harald

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another "mailman" product...
by Jerry Adlersfluegel 21 May '99

21 May '99

I was going through some stuff on freshmeat, and I found another program named "mailman." I don't know if this has been discussed here before, but I thought I should point it out. http://www.endymion.com/products/mailman/ -- Jerry A.

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] features suggestion: languages
by Juan Carlos Rey Anaya 21 May '99

21 May '99

"Bognar, Attila" wrote: > > Hi all, > > I'm quite new to this list. > I faced a "problem": I run a maillists for Hungarian people and the > problem is that some of them don't speak english very much. So I > have/should change the English text to Hungarian. > > So what I suggest: > when creating a new list, there could be a question, which asks what > language the list should be. > The datas of languages could be taken for example from > ~mailman/templates/hungarian/ > Well, we (Victoriano Giralt and I) have the same trouble and we're thinking on modifying mailman to support different languages. We see the multilingual issue as a three pronged one: - The mail messages sent by the MLM to the users. - The apparence of web pages. - And the commands used to control the MLM via e-mail. At first, we should tack the two fist ones. The last one is not a big issue thanks to the amazing web user interface :) ;) Our approach to the problem would be as follows: - The system should have a default system language, defined at install time, which will be used for everything unbound to any list. - The system will have a set of supported languages, that can be selected as list default language (list creation) or by users for interfacing to system areas not related to a list. - A list can support a subset of languages of server, one of them being the list default language, that will be used for users that don't select a language and and for any list general messages, like the signature appended to list messages. - The user selected language will be used for the web interface and for personal messages, like password reminders. - The templates will be customisable like they are now, but on different languages. - List info webpage could be shown in any language supported by the list. - System logs will be in English. System manager should know what they are doing :) This ends the philosophical part. Now the hard implementation issues :) Directory $prefix/templates would include different directories, each dedicated to a diferent language, from which the selected new list languages, would be copied. So, this structure would be replicated for every list, but only for the list supported languages. templates/es/ spanish de/ german bu/ bulgarian it/ italian, etc The system messages would use a similar directory structure. A new directory, called $prefix/messages, would be created, to hold the supported languages. This directory would hold a module per supported language, named 'language'.py, i.e.: es.py, de.py, bu.py, etc Each file could have entries like: --- BEGIN es.py --- ErrorInvalidPasswd = 'Error: clave incorrecta' ListNotFound = 'la lista no se encuentra: %s' DEFAULT_MSG_FOOTER = """_______________________________________________ lista de distribucion %(real_name)s - %(real_name)s@%(host_name)s %(web_page_url)slistinfo/%(_internal_name)s """ --- END es.py --- And to use it: It should be at the beggining of a program that wants to use it, like: import MsgLang -- or whichever name it should have Msg = MsgLang.MsgLang() -- We are going send messages in the server default language Msg = MsgLang.MsgLang('es') -- We are going to send spanish messages print Msg.msg('ErrorInvalidPasswd') returns 'Error: Invalid Password"' print Msg.msg('ListNotFound') % 'List' should return 'la lista no se encuentra: List' VBLE = {'web_page_url' : 'http://www.uma.es/', 'real_name' : 'Lista', 'host_name' : 'uma.es', '_internal_name' : 'XXXX'} print Msg.msg('DEFAULT_MSG_FOOTER') % VBLE should return '_______________________________________________ lista de distribucion Lista - Lista(a)uma.es http://www.uma.es/listinfo/XXXX' We have a little problem, one of us is new to Python, but we won't reveal who :) Of course this is open to discussion on this list. -- ___ / F \ [[[]]]] ( O O ) #----------------0000--(_)--0000---------------# | Juan Carlos Rey Anaya (jcrey(a)uma.es) | | Servicio Central de informática | | Universidad de Málaga - España | #----------------------------------------------# # Solo se que cada vez se menos :-| # #----------------------------------------------#

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