Mailman 3 April 2000 - Mailman-Developers

a few suggestions
by Edmund Lau 14 Apr '00

14 Apr '00

I know it's a bit in the beta process for the 2.0 version, but is it possible to change the documentation a little bit? Here's what I'm suggesting with regard to forgotten passwords and archives. I've been using 1.1 for the most part so this stuff may already have been implemented in the newer betas. - Change the list-request response message entry for the password command to also say "the command by itself will send your current password to your Email address" - Add a comment on the user configuration webpage that sending an Email to list-request with the password command also works - Change the "About <list>" to say "Information About <list> and its Archives". Many of my users usually skim for the large size font so this might make it easier for them to find the archives Thanks! -Ed

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2.0beta3 update gate_watermarks->config.db for non-existent list
by Jim Tittsler 14 Apr '00

14 Apr '00

I just tried to update a system from 2.0b1 to 2.0b3 (CVS @ ~0300UTC) and discovered a problem with the section of 'update' that copies the gate_watermarks file into the config.db files. gate_watermarks can contain watermarks for lists that no longer exist. That results in: Updating Usenet watermarks Traceback (innermost last): File "bin/update", line 293, in ? mlist = MailList.MailList(listname) File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 70, in __init__ self.Load() File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 880, in Load raise Errors.MMUnknownListError, e Mailman.Errors.MMUnknownListError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/mailman/lists/tpc.test3/config.db' There are lots of ways to fix it... the one I used is attached. -- Jim Tittsler, Tokyo Python Starship http://starship.python.net/crew/jwt/

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cosmetic bug in order of held messages
by Thomas Wouters 13 Apr '00

13 Apr '00

My boss found a small cosmetic bug in message holding/approving: when approving a number of messages at the same time (ie, more than one) the order of the messages is screwed, which means that messages will be sent to the list and to the archive in a different order than in which it was recieved. Not much of a bug, i agree, but it does show itself, for instance when people post (manual) multi-part messages, or when a discussion goes to two lists, one moderated and one not, and people reply to one another, the replies show up first. The problem is caused by the way pending admin requests are stored: in a dictionary, with sequential id's as the key. Adding a 'ids.sort()' before 'return ids' in __getmsgids() (in ListAdmin.py) solves the problem for the most part, and keeps my boss happily playing with his pet project ;) Should I bother sending a patch ? -- Thomas Wouters <thomas(a)xs4all.net> Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!

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Customization of web interfaces
by Justin Patterson 13 Apr '00

13 Apr '00

I've been using mailman for a while with the default web page templates. I decided that to provide a more consistent look with a new site that I'm building, I would customize the templates. I soon figured out that many of the pages are not built from templates, but from the python scripts themselves. Is there any sort of project working on getting all of the information regarding the format of the pages out of the python scripts and into the templates? I hacked together a little proof of concept where I modified a few of the python scripts to produce XML which I could then munge using the Apache XML/XSL packages into a page that matches my site. I have no problem writing my own CGI scripts to pull stuff out of the mailman databases and formatting it, but it seems like it would be nice for users at large to be able to completely customize the web interface somehow. So, is there already someone working on this problem? Should I continue down my current path? Thanks, -Justin

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Mailman 2.0b2 checkdb error
by Marc Merlin 13 Apr '00

13 Apr '00

----- Forwarded message from Cron Daemon <root(a)marc.merlins.org> ----- Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 17:00:07 -0700 From: root(a)marc.merlins.org (Cron Daemon) To: mailman(a)marc.merlins.org Subject: Cron <mailman@marc> /usr/bin/python /var/local/mailman/cron/checkdbs X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/sh> X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/var/local/mailman> X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/usr/bin:/bin> X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=mailman> Traceback (innermost last): File "/var/local/mailman/cron/checkdbs", line 87, in ? main() File "/var/local/mailman/cron/checkdbs", line 52, in main text = text + '\n' + pending_requests(mlist) File "/var/local/mailman/cron/checkdbs", line 72, in pending_requests pending.append(' %s %s' % addr, time.ctime(when)) TypeError: not enough arguments for format string ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Microsoft is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ (friendly to non IE browsers) Finger marc_f(a)merlins.org for PGP key and other contact information

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[ANNOUNCE] Mailman 2.0 beta 2
by Barry A. Warsaw 12 Apr '00

12 Apr '00

I've just uploaded the Mailman 2.0 beta 2 tarball to the following locations: http://www.list.org/mailman.tar.gz http://download.sourceforge.net/mailman/mailman-2.0beta2.tgz ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/mailman/mailman-2.0beta2.tgz See the UPGRADING file for details on upgrading from 1.1 or 2.0beta1. See the NEWS file for a complete description of changes for every version; below is an excerpt for changes since 2.0beta1. Barring any showstopping bugs, this will be the last release until I finish my taxes. :) Enjoy, -Barry -------------------- snip snip -------------------- - Rewritten gate_news cron script which should be more efficient and avoid race and locking problems. Each list now maintains its own watermark, and when you use the admin CGI script to turn on gating from Usenet->mail, an automatic mass catch up is done to avoid flooding the mailing list. cron/gate_news's command line interface has also changed. See its docstring for details. - A new cron script called qrunner has been added to retry message deliveries that fail because of temporary smtpd problems. - New command line script called bin/list_lists which does exactly that: lists all the mailing lists on the system (much like the listinfo CGI does). - bin/withlist is now directly executable, however if you want to use python -i, you must still explicitly invoke it. bin/withlist also now cleans up after itself by unlocking any locked lists. It does NOT save any dirty lists though - you must do this explicitly. - $prefix permissions (and all subdirs) must now be 02775. bin/check_perms has been updated to fix all the subdir permissions. - "make update" (a.k.a. bin/update) is run automatically when you do a "make install" - The CGI driver script now puts information about the Python environment into the logs/error file (but not the diagnostic web page). - Bug fixes and some performance improvements

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] mailman 2.0beta1 problem: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender (fwd)
by Harald Meland 12 Apr '00

12 Apr '00

[Barry A. Warsaw] > I think I understand why you're getting output to stdout. Look in > scripts/post and change > > LogStdErr("error", "post") > > to > > LogStdErr("error", "post", tee_to_stdout=0) > > The question is, why haven't I seen this with Postfix? I don't know Postfix, but Exim has a config option for what to do with output generated by pipe deliveries: The `return_output' option can affect the result of a pipe delivery. If it is set and the command produces any output on its standard output or standard error files, it is considered to have failed, even if it gave a zero return code or if `ignore_status' is set. The output from the command is sent as part of the delivery failure report. However, if `return_fail_output' is set, output is returned only when the command exits with a failure return code, that is, a value other than zero or a code that matches `temp_errors'. I guess Gergely has set `return_output' on his Exim transport. Maybe something similar exists for Postfix? -- Harald

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] observations from new user
by Harald Meland 12 Apr '00

12 Apr '00

[Brian Grossman] > Does anyone actually run with DEFAULT_PRIVATE_ROSTER set to 0? Yes. > My suspicion is that just about everyone either sets it in their > mm_cfg.py or sets it manually to 2 for each list. I don't. > Shouldn't the default to be to protect privacy? Not necessarily -- the default should, ideally, be what is most useful to most of the people using Mailman to create new lists. As the world hardly is ideal, the issue of how to decide whether a change of default is really called for or not enters the picture. I see your point, though -- if I were inventing the option now, I probably wouldn't have made it default to 0. However, as I haven't heard anyone else argue for a change, I'm inclined to interpret that silence as "We think the current default is OK". I guess people now will let me know if that interpretation is wrong :) > > > Where should I send a script that eliminates the need for five > > > .qmail files per list? > > > > As Ricardo said: Here would be a good place. > > It's attached. Thanks, -- Harald

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] New MTA interface in mailman 2.0b
by Harald Meland 12 Apr '00

12 Apr '00

[Nigel Metheringham] > NM> 2. I'm concerned the patch above might do bad things when it > NM> comes to sending out list reminders :-) > > BW> Password reminders are sent through DeliverToUser. You can > actually > BW> force a mass password reminder mailing by running > > Let me explain further.... > > The sendmail command is given by > cmd = mm_cfg.SENDMAIL_CMD + ' -f ' + mlist.GetAdminEmail() + ' ' > > So the sender is set to be the list admin address. > However when sending passwords out presumably there isn't a single list > thats being dealt with - so will that mlist.GetAdminEmail() work > correctly? No, I don't think it will. IIRC, cron/mailpasswds iterates through all lists, and uses the message pipeline of the _first_ public list it finds for delivering all the reminders. That means that with your patch, any bounced reminders will go to the unfortunate admin of that first public list. [ In Mailman 1.1, cron/mailpasswds used 'mailman-owner' as envelope sender, which although far from optimal is better than the current situation, IMO. ] I think it would be better to solve this by overriding the GetSender() method in the various Message subclasses. -- Harald

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Zark unsubscribe notification
by mailman-owner＠merlins.org 12 Apr '00

12 Apr '00

Unsubscribe Notification rodrigue.mottay(a)lucasvarity.com has been removed from Zark. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Microsoft is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ (friendly to non IE browsers) Finger marc_f(a)merlins.org for PGP key and other contact information

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