Mailman 3 October 2001 - Mailman-Developers

Feature to stop spam mail
by Nick Hill 14 Oct '01

14 Oct '01

Hello. I have been using a mailman list run by a Linux users group, which I am a member of. Users of the list have started getting spam mail. This is almost certainly caused by a robot trawling the web discussion list for email addresses. We (the group) are loathed to do without the excellent web presentation of historical messages. I originally found the group by hitting upon the message list using a web search engine. We don't want to obfuscate the email addresses on messages to members via email. We don't think the distribution of member's email addresses to members by the mail system is likely to lead to spam. The publication of email addresses on the e-mail list creates useful off-list discussions. What we really need is a way to set mailman to obfuscate email addresses on the web presentation. I have downloaded mailman and installed it on my own machine in the hope of finding a way to set the system to obfuscate email addresses published on the web interface. The control flow through the program and objects for the pipermail section confounds me. I was hoping to insert a ~= s/email_address/not_email_address/ RE somewhere in the code to exchange email addresses for another string whilst the web pages were being written to files. Does anyone here know the code well enough to do this easily? How hard would it be to add the feature to the web administration interface on a per-discussion-group basis? Thanks.. Nick.

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FREE ANTENNA BOOSTER FOR YOUR CELL PHONE..NO NEED TO BUY ANYTHING
by INTERNALANTENNAS.COM 13 Oct '01

13 Oct '01

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Fw: Reusing mailman login/pass or cookie ?
by timduru 13 Oct '01

13 Oct '01

I've developped a few php scripts for the users of some of my lists, what I need is to have only users effectively subscribed and authenticated to the lists to be able to use the scripts. I also need to know what is the user's login in the php scripts. Is there a way to do that , either by reproducing the mailman auth process in php or by reusing the mailman cookie ? Anyone has already done that or knows of a way to do that ? thanks

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privacy problems with web interface
by Federico Grau 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

Hello: We're running a 16K member mailing list on version 1.1 and running into a significant privacy issue regarding membership management. As distributed, Mailman makes it trivial to discover if a given address is in fact a subscriber. If you suspect dev(a)null.com has joined a list, go to the user page and enter his address to subscribe; you'll get back a revealing reply 'You already belong, dummy'.. We initially yanked large chunks of html from the general list information page, but that removes all web-based user options. Our ideal outcome is a General List Info Page with two actions: No password section: Current users get passwords (if any) mailed; with the web page not saying if any address is subscribed or not. If not a subscriber, Mailman would send a "subscription confirmation" notice to the potential member. (This also alerts the 'victim' of potential abuse.) Password presented sections: Users w/ password see no feedback until after entering a valid ID and pw; i.e. both non-existent users and existing ones w/bad pw's are both met with "Sorry, wrong password" as in a *nix login. We looked at modifying the html on the user pages but the python module "handle_opts" seems hard-coded into giving revealing responses. We also glanced at Mailman 2.0.6 but it seemed to offer the same behavior. Has anyone else already looked into this issue, and proposed code to solve it? We are considering writing a patch for "handle_opts" and and submitting it but 1) don't want to fork the code, and 2) don't want to duplicate/waste the effort. thanks, David and Federico

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mimelib, mailman and postfix
by Igor Pruchanskiy 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

Hello all Today i installed Python 2.1.1 mimelib-0.3 AND mimelib-0.6 (more on this later) Mailman 2.1a2 and i already had Postfix installed.... I had to install 2 version of mimelib becasue Mailadmin Makefile was compaining about missing StringableMixin.py with 0.6 which is a part of mimelib-0.3 and with 0.3 it was complaining about missing RFC822.py which is a part of mimelib-0.6... killed 2 hours on that..... Anyway, so no i get this error when user trying to subscribe in my $prefix/logs/error Oct 12 16:44:30 2001 (16115) Uncaught runner exception: write() got an unexpected keyword argument 'unixfrom' Oct 12 16:44:30 2001 (16115) Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 102, in __oneloop self.__onefile(msg, msgdata) File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 150, in __onefile keepqueued = self._dispose(mlist, msg, msgdata) File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Queue/OutgoingRunner.py", line 54, in _dispose func(mlist, msg, msgdata) File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/SMTPDirect.py", line 57, in process msgtext = msg.get_text() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/mimelib/StringableMixin.py", line 28, in get_text g.write(self, unixfrom=unixfrom) TypeError: write() got an unexpected keyword argument 'unixfrom' I know nothing about Python, so i can not trace this problem myself. I also searched all over the net and read all the docs, but did not fine anything aobut this problem... igor -- Uptime: 40 days, 17:00

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Re: Approving messages with attachments? [was: Re: [Mailman-Developers] Handling of Posts held for approval and attachments
by Dan Mick 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

> > >From Defaults.py (which, if you want to change it, as always, put > > something in mm_cfg.py to override the Defaults setting): > > > > # how many bytes of a held message post should be displayed in the admindb web > > # page? Use a negative number to indicate the entire message, regardless of > > # size (though this will slow down rendering those pages). > > ADMINDB_PAGE_TEXT_LIMIT = 4096 > > Oh thank you for the pointer and sorry for the oversight :) > > However I'd like to know what do you think about this issue: > > > > Besides, the moderator is not able to see if a message contains > > > an attach (and its relative size), so he/she can eventually > > > post a message with a big attach without knowing this :) I usually set my ADMINDB_PAGE_TEXT_LIMIT to -1 for exactly this reason (and have a size limit set for messages anyway, and strip all attachments with demime in the first place).

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Handling of Posts held for approval and attachments
by Luca Maranzano 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

Hi, I've noticed that for a moderated list, when the moderator goes to the Web interface for processing "Posting held for approval", in the "Message Excerpt" box a long message gets truncated; is this a bug or a feature? The word "excerpt" suggests me that this is a feature :) but IMO in this way a moderator would never see a part of the message which could make him decide to not approve the message. Besides, the moderator is not able to see if a message contains an attach (and its relative size), so he/she can eventually post a message with a big attach without knowing this :) Thanks in advance for your comments about this. Regards, Luca

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Making the list archive URL configurable
by Marc MERLIN 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

I had the implement the following patches on SF's mailman: usw-sf-list1:/var/local/src# cat mailman-2.0.geocrawler.patch --- mailman-2.0.3/Mailman/HTMLFormatter.py Sat Sep 9 12:13:58 2000 +++ mailman-2.0.3.sf/Mailman/HTMLFormatter.py Mon Mar 19 15:44:02 2001 @@ -309,7 +309,7 @@ return ('<FORM Method=POST ACTION="%s">' % full_url) def FormatArchiveAnchor(self): - return '<a href="%s">' % self.GetBaseArchiveURL() + return '<a href="http://www.geocrawler.com/redir-sf.php3?list=%s">' % self._internal_name def FormatFormEnd(self): return '</FORM>' usw-sf-list1:/var/local/src# cat mailman-2.0.geocrawler2.patch diff -urN mailman-2.0.5.sf.old/Mailman/Handlers/CookHeaders.py mailman-2.0.5.sf/Mailman/Handlers/CookHeaders.py --- mailman-2.0.5.sf.old/Mailman/Handlers/CookHeaders.py Wed Nov 15 20:35:09 2000 +++ mailman-2.0.5.sf/Mailman/Handlers/CookHeaders.py Mon Oct 8 16:00:18 2001 @@ -131,7 +131,8 @@ # Always delete List-Archive header, but only add it back if the list is # actually archiving del msg['List-Archive'] - if mlist.archive: - value = '<%s>' % urlparse.urljoin(mlist.web_page_url, - mlist.GetBaseArchiveURL()) - msg['List-Archive'] = value + #if mlist.archive: + # value = '<%s>' % urlparse.urljoin(mlist.web_page_url, + # mlist.GetBaseArchiveURL()) + value = '<http://www.geocrawler.com/redir-sf.php3?list=%s>' % mlist._internal_name + msg['List-Archive'] = value (I am missing the link in the admin page, but that's ok) Is there a way to add the archive URL in the list options and the UI (I thought about doint it, but I'm not too familiar with the datbase compatibility issues and the problems with adding a new field in the list options) Thanks, Marc -- Microsoft is to operating systems & security .... .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | Finger marc_f(a)merlins.org for PGP key

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importing mailman lists...
by Ron Jarrell 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

I've been asked to serve a couple of lists on my production mm server (2.0.5) that are coming from a 1.0 server. If I just accept a tar of the list directories, will a make update do the right thing, or am I screwed by the fact that the other lists have already been upgraded from 1.0 to 2.0.5 over the years?

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Re: some Python announcements are lost (LONG)
by barry＠zope.com 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

Background: Mailman 2.0.6 has a problem in its mail->news gateway related to the strictness of the NNTP server being posted to. This bites python.org for the two mailing lists that are gatewayed to/from netnews. python-list(a)python.org is a simple bi-directional gateway, such that any message originally posted to comp.lang.python is gatewayed to python-list, and vice versa. The comp.lang.python.announce newsgroup is gated to python-announce-list(a)python.org, but the route is a bit more circuitous because c.l.py.a is a moderated newsgroup. On python.org, we have a MM2.0.6 patch with SF patch #101270 that implements a hack for moderated newsgroup gatewaying. I plan on making this patch more official for MM2.1, but we need to first deal with the following problem. Problem: In the logs/error file on python.org we occasionally see rejections of messages posted to the news server via the ToUsenet.py module. Here are some examples of the reject log entries: Dec 18 07:31:00 2000 (15053) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "clpa-moderators": 441 Can't set system "NNTP-Posting-Host" header Dec 20 17:46:04 2000 (10666) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "clpa-moderators": 441 Can't set system "X-Complaints-To" header Jan 03 17:21:02 2001 (17750) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "clpa-moderators": 441 Duplicate "To" header Jan 05 12:52:06 2001 (32547) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 Duplicate "Cc" header Jan 06 14:43:07 2001 (31278) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 437 Binary in non-binary group Jan 22 07:22:30 2001 (2822) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 Line 201 too long Jan 24 12:45:01 2001 (5285) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "clpa-moderators": 441 Can't set system "X-Trace" header Jan 24 15:56:29 2001 (17406) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 No valid newsgroups in "['comp.object.corba', 'comp.object.C++', 'comp.object.C++.moderated', 'comp...." Feb 17 08:17:24 2001 (13293) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 Can't parse "Date" header Feb 23 05:01:02 2001 (25246) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 Article posted in the future Mar 19 00:20:34 2001 (15766) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 From: address not in Internet syntax May 10 15:52:16 2001 (17585) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 Duplicate "Mime-Version" header Jun 12 09:24:01 2001 (772) (ToUsenet) NNTP error for list "python-list": 441 437 Too old -- "Fri, 05 Jan 1996 16:48:56 -0600" When MM2.0.x gets such an exception, it simply drops the message on the floor. It doesn't save it, or bounce it, and this has definitely lead to lost messages. It appears that lossage is more prevalent in the python-list-announce list than in the python-list, or perhaps it's more obvious because patch #101270 sets things up such that the message is never seen by anybody unless it flows first through Usenet. python-list lossages simply won't cross the mail->news boundary, but any message posted on the mailing list will be seen by all list members and messages posted to the newsgroup will be seen by all newsgroup readers and all list members. FTR: our posting host is news.baymountain.com a hosting service that Zope Corporation uses and which gives us a newsfeed for the gatewayed groups on mail.python.org. % telnet news.baymountain.com nntp Trying 63.102.48.11... Connected to news.baymountain.com. Escape character is '^]'. 201 news.baymountain.net InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.2.2 13-Dec-1999 ready (no posting). I'm looking for a principled way of handling such exceptions, both for MM2.0.x and for MM2.1. There are two sides to this: what can we do to avoid the rejections in the first place, and what to do when we can't avoid rejections. First, it seems like exactly what the news server will reject is not completely guessable, although there are some hints available. AFAICT, there is no standard, or even good documentation available on this subject except the INN source code, and an IETF Internet-Draft called draft-ietf-usefor-article-05. This latter says that an injecting agent (i.e. the nntpd Mailman is posting to), should remove some headers and must remove others. Being a draft though, we can't rely on this and besides, because the injecting agent has the option of not stripping some of the offending headers, and rejecting the message anyway, we've still got to deal with it. >From a post on news.software.nntp, I found a list of "forbidden" headers that a normally configured INN will reject: "NNTP-Posting-Host" "X-Trace" "X-Complaints-To" "NNTP-Posting-Date" "Xref" "Date-Received" "Received" "Posted" "Posting-Version" "Relay-Version" Okay, so that's a start, however INN can apparently be configured to reject or accept other combinations of headers, so we can't rely on this list. That leads me to think that at the least, we want a Mailman configuration variable that lists the headers ToUsenet should strip before attempting to post the message. Now we come to the issue of illegal duplicate headers, like To: and Cc:. Well, I don't think we want to strip these, and I'm not comfortable with folding them (i.e. folding multiple Cc: headers into one big long one), so that leads me to think that we want another configuration variable that will transform duplicates to X-* headers. It's a bit distasteful that you'd have a message posted through that will have one Cc: header and a bunch of X-Original-Cc: headers, and it seems stupid that INN rejects multiple Cc: or To: headers, but it seems we have no choice here. One thing I want to try to avoid, because it seems error prone and too complicated, is to try to grep out the exact problem in the 441 rejection message, then massage the posting and attempt to repost until we're out of options. Now, given the above, we can get rid of probably 90% of the rejections, but we'll still be left with some that are inconvenient to handle programmatically. Like the "No valid newsgroups' or "Binary in non-binary group" rejections. So here comes the second part. In MM2.1 we can take any rejected message, encapsulate it into a MIME document, and send it and the rejection notice to the list moderators. The list moderators can then apply some wetware algorithms to the problem and resend it to the list. We'll have to invent some mechanism that a moderator could use to tell Mailman that this is an approved/munged Usenet post and that it ought not to go to the list membership, but that should be easy (perhaps another list-robot address or a special header for list-request to look at). In MM2.0.x it's harder to craft that message and get it sent to the list moderators correctly, so I propose to write a simple patch that just saves the message on disk some place and then sends a notification to the list moderators. They'll have to coordinate with the site moderators to get the message posted, but at least it won't get lost as it currently does. Hmm, here's another thought: what if the rejected message were held in the pending database? I'm not sure if that'll be possible (the main problem being that all the actual posting stuff happens in a child proc that can't lock the list), but if it were, then the recently posted patch to allow editing of held messages thru-the-web could be used to edit the message and re-approve it for posting. That's an approach that might work in MM2.1 if the edit-held-message patch is accepted. Hopefully someone out there will have some better ideas. I'd also love any other pointers to standards or documentation on this matter. -Barry

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