Mailman 3 July 2004 - Mailman-Developers

Alternate user (and admin) interfaces
by Ian Bicking 05 Sep '04

05 Sep '04

I've been searching around for people's experiences implementing alternate web interfaces for Mailman, but I've been surprised not to find much. The desire to do this seems obvious to me -- there's a lot of different flavors of mailing list (discussion, announce, correspondance management, and many others). The interface tries to support all of these, and is rather overwhelming as a result. Since I haven't found other people making these interfaces, I'm guessing: (a) I'm not looking in the right places, (b) people are doing this but not sharing their results, (c) and it's so easy they don't even need to ask public questions about it, (d) or it's so hard they give up quickly, (e) or it's easy but fragile, and people create lots of prototypes but nothing serious, (e) or everyone lacks the imagination or interest to try. Now that I list them, (a) seems the most likely, but I swear I've really tried to find them. Are their examples people might suggest? Right now I'm just trying to evaluate the feasibility of creating a trimmed-down interface. Actually a couple interfaces: one for announce list subscribers (*very* minimal), another for announce list administrators (including some posting tools and reports), and another simplified discussion list user interface. Anyway, I just wanted to see if other people are thinking about this, have already done this, or can give any advise. It doesn't look hard from my first investigation, but I'm also not sure how to best implement -- Mailman's web interface confuses me a bit, and I'm guessing that it's an ad hoc application server. If we go ahead to make this, I suspect we'll want to do something more expedient (i.e., not based on Mailman 3.0), but it would be nice to do this in a way that can be shared, and something that isn't just a hack. -- Ian Bicking / ianb(a)colorstudy.com / http://blog.ianbicking.org

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Relocating a list
by Nigel Metheringham 07 Aug '04

07 Aug '04

We are (finally) about to upgrade exim.org to a less obsolete version of Mailman [the excuse up to now has been that the box was overloaded and a Pentium 200 wouldn't handle the upgrades needed to get current!]. In one transition we intend to:- * Move to new hardware (Original pentium to P-IV) * Move to a new OS (Linux (RH7.3) to FreeBSD) * Move to a new Python (1.5.2 to 2.3) * Move to a new directory layout and we would like to keep the change relatively transparent :-) In particular we would like to keep the archive URLs stable, so regenerating the archives from the mboxes is not really an option despite the fact it would give us slightly better handling of the few attachments that have made it to the list. [The archives have had messages removed in the past so a regenerate would not keep numbering stable] I've just been looking at Barry's notes for his list relocation at http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers@python.org/msg03127.html Would the process detailed there work OK for this sort of move - obviously I need to transfer the complete tree for a list from the old machine to the new one, but thats easy enough. The main thing I was wondering about is whether the python saved files (ie the list db file etc) will transfer OK, or whether they have machine/os/python-version dependencies that will preclude doing things this way? Cheers Nigel. -- [ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham(a)InTechnology.co.uk ] [ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ]

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] Bug 930819 -- onload focus for admlogin.html
by J C Lawrence 04 Aug '04

04 Aug '04

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 20:38:42 -0300 Christian Robottom Reis <kiko(a)async.com.br> wrote: > Just a heads-up for bug 930819, which has a patch (two now) that adds > onload form focus to the password entry in admlogin.html, a usability > improvement for people using graphical browsers and maintaining many > lists. +1 -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw(a)kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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disabling some feature control to list-owners
by iv.longhi＠tiscali.it 30 Jul '04

30 Jul '04

I manage a virtual community and I have installed mailman on my system in order to give the users the ability to create their own lists and manage them by themselves. For this pourpose I think that mailman is almost perfect, but I would like to avoid that list owners be able to change the default for some features, for example because I'm worry about that low skilled people can make changes that can make the list not usable (for example making a invalid host_name, etc.) Is there a way to avoid list owners change those values? Thanx, Ivan __________________________________________________________________ Tiscali ADSL Senza Canone, paga solo quello che consumi! Non perdere la promozione valida fino al 3 agosto. Per te gratis il modem in comodato e l'attivazione. In piu' navighi a soli 1,5 euro l'ora per i primi tre mesi. Cosa aspetti? Attivala subito! http://abbonati.tiscali.it/adsl/prodotti/640Kbps/

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a bug in 2.1.5 moderation web interface
by Stepan Kasal 30 Jul '04

30 Jul '04

Hello, the moderator page "with details" doesn't have a "Submit" button at the top, only at the bottom. This looks weird, as the "Discard all deferred" checkbox is on the top (without the button). I've filed a bugzilla report on sourceforge. I'm not on this list, cc to me, please. Have a nice day, Stepan Kasal

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Update MM 2.1.2->2.1.5 fails and no help from mailman-users
by Frank Thommen 29 Jul '04

29 Jul '04

Dear Mailman developers, I dare to post this problem to mailman-developers, because it is critical to us to solve it. I assume that "code insiders" as you can possibly help in this case. While updating MM from 2.1.2 to 2.1.5 (Mailman stopped, MTA stopped, lock directory cleared manually, Apache stopped, 'check_perms -f' done) the process of updating gets stuck at a specific point. I added a 'print mlist' in 'def update_pending()' after 'for listname in Utils.list_names(): mlist = MailList.MailList(listname)' to know where it happens: ------ # bin/update Upgrading from version 0x20102f0 to 0x20105f0 getting rid of old source files Updating mailing list: XXX [...updates all lists with one "could not acquire lock" message...] Updating Usenet watermarks - nothing to update here Updating Mailman 2.1.4 pending.pck database WARNING: Ignoring duplicate pending ID: 7544. [..warns for many more "pending IDs"..] <mailing list "list1" (locked) at 4b8300> <mailing list "list2" (locked) at 4bbdf0> ------ ...and here the process stalls forever. I ^C-stopped the update several times, but it gets always stuck at the same list. If I nevertheless start 2.1.5, I get around 20 of the following errors; ------ # mailmanctl start Starting Mailman's master qrunner. # Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/pack/mailman-2.1.5-inf/bin/qrunner", line 270, in ? main() File "/usr/pack/mailman-2.1.5-inf/bin/qrunner", line 230, in main qrunner.run() File "/usr/pack/mailman-2.1.5-inf/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 70, in run filecnt = self._oneloop() File "/usr/pack/mailman-2.1.5-inf/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 99, in _oneloop msg, msgdata = self._switchboard.dequeue(filebase) File "/usr/pack/mailman-2.1.5-inf/Mailman/Queue/Switchboard.py", line 147, in dequeue data = cPickle.load(fp) EOFError [...] # ------ After that, MM 2.1.5 does not deliver any mails. I can go back to 2.1.2 and mail delivery continues (even for mails posted in the meantime, i.d. when 2.1.5 was running), after having given me a about a dozen errors of the following type: ------ Jun 26 21:43:27 2004 (1204) lost data files for filebase: 1088195523.0786779+4c5e6189f5cc4ba967f1556ffb911c03c84d6174 ------ If I then go back to bin/update, the process stopps within the same procedure as above, but at an other maillist (see above). An other obervation is, that when doing bin/update, I get errors like the following with some maillists: ------ # bin/update [...] Updating mailing list: XXXX Updating the held requests database. - updating old private mbox file looks like you have a really recent CVS installation... you're either one brave soul, or you already ran me - updating old public mbox file - This list looks like it might have <= b4 list templates around Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/pack/mailman-2.1.5-inf/bin/update", line 782, in ? errors = main() File "/usr/pack/mailman-2.1.5-inf/bin/update", line 672, in main errors = errors + dolist(listname) File "/usr/pack/mailman-2.1.5-inf/bin/update", line 357, in dolist os.rename(o_tmpl, n_tmpl) OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory # ------ After that, bin/update exits and I have to restart it. The next run it will give the error with an other list. This happens three times, so the fourth time bin/update runs through and finally stopps at the error described at the beginning of this posting. I'm running Python 2.2.2 on a Solaris 9 host. Do you need more information to track down this problem? Please reply to my personal address (fthommen(a)inf.ethz.ch), since I am not member of this list and please be very specific if it comes to coding, as I dont really speak Python. Thanks a lot in advance from me and my 70 maillists :-) frank ---------- Frank Thommen, IT Support Group, D-INFK, ETH Zuerich Mail: fthommen(a)inf.ethz.ch; Phone: +41-1-63 27208 (Mon-Thu) Web: http://www.isg.inf.ethz.ch ----------

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Piping Mailman's HTML through PHP
by John Price 23 Jul '04

23 Jul '04

I'm far from a Python guru, so that's why I'm asking the developer's list. I want to integrate the Mailman web pages into the rest of my web page, but everything else is PHP. I've seen lots of posts about using PHP with Mailman, but not really any solutions (if I missed it, please point me in the right direction). With that in mind, I thought I'd try to see how to do it myself. All I really need Mailman to do is after it generates it's HTML to pipe the output through /usr/bin/php before sending it to stdout where apache will get it. I have a solution, but I but there's a better way within Mailman. Right now I moved all the programs in /usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin to /usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin.orig, then created shell scripts in cgi-bin that look like this: --- start file: listinfo --- #!/bin/sh ../cgi-bin.orig/listinfo | /usr/bin/php --- end file: listinfo --- That's all there is to it. Now I can add PHP directives in Mailman's HTML code, and they get parsed. Is there a better way? Maybe you good folks could add some hooks into later releases so that the user could specify a "filter" program or something that Mailman will pipe all it's HTML output through. That's all that is needed. Thanx for a great program! - John -- "Cat's motto: No matter what you've done wrong, always try to make it look like the dog did it." -- Unknown http://GCFL.net (The Good, Clean Funnies List): Good, clean funnies five times a week, no ads, for free!

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] Piping Mailman's HTML through PHP
by J C Lawrence 22 Jul '04

22 Jul '04

On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 15:56:46 -0500 John Price <jp_mailman(a)gcfl.net> wrote: > I have a solution, but I but there's a better way within Mailman. SSI and suitable use of CSS can go a lone way. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw(a)kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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CTE "base64" due to UTF-8?
by Michael Heydekamp 22 Jul '04

22 Jul '04

Hi, we are encountering the following "problem" with Mailman 2.1.3: When a subscriber sends a message to one of our lists with an UTF-8 encoded body and CTE "8bit", Mailman obviously recodes the body from "8bit" to "base64" before distributing the mail to the subscribers of the respective list. Although this is perfectly legal it does not really make sense and also creates sometimes hassles for users with MUAs which have difficulties with base64 encoded bodies. A qp-encoding would IMO be more appropriate for text/plain bodies, but I would prefer if Mailman would not recode the body at all. Three strange things in this context: 1. In the Pipermail archive, the message appears in its original "8bit" format. 2. We are using the mail<=>news facility of Mailman, and the newsgroup users are also receiving the message in the original "8bit" format. 3. We have one (non-public) admin mailing list where Mailman does *not* recode the body. This particular list is also *not* gated to a newsgroup (and this is the only difference to all of the other lists we are currently aware of). Any idea or suggestion what might be the reason for the recoding and how we could avoid it? Michael

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Somebody can help me ?
by ulisavi＠tin.it 22 Jul '04

22 Jul '04

Pardon my english. I'm italian. I would like to allow users of my future sites to create a owner mailing list, by becoming moderator of the list created. With Plesk 7 and Mailman i have the capability to choose a password and to give it to all member of my sites or to all anonymous visitors. With this Password each user can create a New "owner" mailing list and becoming moderator of the mailing list created. The problem is that with this system each user can modify the header and the footer of each message sent and he can choose also to include in the messages sent by mailing list members images and allegates. I will, in fact, that each member can create, in freedom, a "owner mailing list" with this system. It is good. But i hate that each moderator/creator can modify the footer and the header of the messages (pre definite) sent by the owner mailing list created and i do not will that he member insert in the message sent images and allegates but only pure text or external link. I also like to deny the possibility to change the html pages type archive html, member sign up and so on (because i would like to predefine it by myself with my logo and banners). I would like that. ... Each man can create and moderate thier "owner" mailing list created but Not to change the html pages or modify the header and footer of the messages sent and not allow the sending of images or allegates (only text pure and links). Here : http://lists.forum99.com/mailman/create each user with a email address can create a NEW mailing list, by becoming moderotor of the list created. List creator's (authentication) password is : "new" . For example i have just created, using this creator password ("new"), the list : "test22jul04" password of mailing list admin : "tester". http://lists.forum99.com/mailman/admin/test22jul04 password tester The problem is that in the admin panel each administrator can modify "Non-digest options" and "Digest options" (header and footer). He can change the "Content filtering" and he can "Edit the public HTML pages" . THIS IS THE MENU ADMIN : Test22jul04 mailing list administration General Options Section Configuration Categories Other Administrative Activities [General Options] Passwords Language options Membership Management Non-digest options Digest options Privacy options Bounce processing Archiving Options Mail<->News gateways Auto-responder Content filtering Topics Tend to pending moderator requests Go to the general list information page Edit the public HTML pages Go to list archives Logout ----------- IS IT POSSIBLE TO ELIMINATE FROM THE ADMIN MENU THESE VOICES : Non-digest options Digest options Content filtering Edit the public HTML pages And to fix (pre define) it in a configuration file on the server ? On the server i have in the mailgate directory a template directory : /var/mailman/templates/ different file html that i can customize but this general menu is not present. Is it possible to eliminate these voices from the general option admin page ? Or to disable the admin capability to change these 4 voices ? When i have to specify the password in mailman to give it to the user i have to write the command : [root@air421 templates]# /var/mailman/bin/mmsitepass -h This command have also a "list ONLY CREATOR password". The list creator is authorized to create and remove lists, but does not have the total power of the site administrator. Exist a system to disable these voices using this command option ? I have used this option "only creator" but the 4 voices in the menu' continue to exist. .... Somebody can help me to disable these voices from the User Admin Option Menu' ??? Usage: /var/mailman/bin/mmsitepass [options] [password] Options: -c/--listcreator Set the list creator password instead of the site password. The list creator is authorized to create and remove lists, but does not have the total power of the site administrator. -h/--help Print this help message and exit. If password is not given on the command line, it will be prompted for. [root@air421 templates]#

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Mailman-Developers July 2004