Mailman 3 January 2005 - Mailman-Developers

RE: [Mailman-Developers] Min requirements for running Mailman?
by John.Airey＠rnib.org.uk 01 Jun '05

01 Jun '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: mailman-developers-bounces+john.airey=rnib.org.uk(a)python.org > [mailto:mailman-developers-bounces+john.airey=rnib.org.uk@pyth > on.org]On > Behalf Of Tollef Fog Heen > Sent: Monday, 06 September 2004 16:47 > To: mailman-developers(a)python.org > Subject: Re: [Mailman-Developers] Min requirements for > running Mailman? > > > * Nigel Metheringham > > | I'd tend to take this as:- > | * Mailman is a bitch to package > > Not really. It's fairly well-behaved in my experience. It's a > semi-large web application with some requirements, but nothing > unreasonable. > > | * RH have packaged it for a while > | * RH found a good few of the gotchas in packaging Mailman > | * RH have subsequently learnt from their mistakes and recently > | have produced good packages. > | * Other distros may do better, or may yet have to > learn from their > | mistakes :-) > > Mailman has been in Debian since June 1998 (1.0b4), so we've been > working on it for a while as well. I think our packages are of good > quality (far from perfect, but making perfect packages is _a lot_ of > work. ;) > Just to throw my tuppence worth in... I've used mailman since Red Hat 7.2. I found that the version that came with Red Hat 9.0 wouldn't work for me (ie I couldn't upgrade to it) so I stuck with the 7.2 version (2.0.13) till the end of Red Hat 9 support. We are now running the 2.1.5 version that comes with Fedora but running it on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I did however have to recreate all the lists by hand in an overnight shift (what fun that was...) a few days before leaving the country (hence the rush). At that time I didn't know I could export the configuration (Doh!). Red Hat have taken some packages out of RHEL eg arpwatch and mysql-server (although this is in the "extras" channel) even though these are in the source RPM. Mailman is currently not included but might be being put back in to RHEL 4.0. I would like to hope so, as I find 2.1.5 far superior to 2.0.13. -- John Airey, BSc (Jt Hons), CNA, RHCE Internet systems support officer, ITCSD, Royal National Institute of the Blind, Bakewell Road, Peterborough PE2 6XU, Tel.: +44 (0) 1733 375299 Fax: +44 (0) 1733 370848 John.Airey(a)rnib.org.uk To truly believe in Evolution requires complete faith that life has no meaning. Fortunately there are billions of people who aren't that stupid. -- DISCLAIMER: NOTICE: The information contained in this email and any attachments is confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient you should not use, disclose, distribute or copy any of the content of it or of any attachment; you are requested to notify the sender immediately of your receipt of the email and then to delete it and any attachments from your system. RNIB endeavours to ensure that emails and any attachments generated by its staff are free from viruses or other contaminants. However, it cannot accept any responsibility for any such which are transmitted. We therefore recommend you scan all attachments. Please note that the statements and views expressed in this email and any attachments are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RNIB. RNIB Registered Charity Number: 226227 Website: http://www.rnib.org.uk

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Fwd: Volunteer sought to code Mailman/Plesk integration script for use by African organizations
by Tobias Eigen 09 Feb '05

09 Feb '05

Dear Mailman developers - Below is a message I attempted to post to the Python jobs board, but which never appeared there. As it is directly relevant to Mailman, I hope you don't mind that I also share it with you all directly. I am quite keen on solving this problem as soon as possible. Please let me know if you're interested and I'll give you the gory details. Any useful scripts or lessons learned shared back to the community, of course. Cheers, Tobias +1-202-265-6116 -- Tobias Eigen Executive Director Kabissa - Space for Change in Africa http://www.kabissa.org * Kabissa's vision is for a socially, economically, politically, and environmentally vibrant Africa, supported by a strong network of effective civil society organizations. * Begin forwarded message: > From: Tobias Eigen <tobias(a)kabissa.org> > Date: January 12, 2005 6:21:46 AM EST > To: jobs(a)python.org > Subject: Volunteer sought to code Mailman/Plesk integration script for > use by African organizations > > `Kabissa - Space for Change in Africa <http://www.kabissa.org>`_ > (Washington DC, USA) > =================================================================== > > **Job Description**: Volunteer sought to code Mailman/Plesk > integration script for use by African organizations > > Kabissa helps African organizations to put the Internet to > work for the people they serve. A key aspect of this is > maintaining a server which our member organizations in > Africa use to host Websites, mailboxes - and mailing lists. > > We need one-off help from a Linux/open source coder, > which might turn into more regular volunteering if there is > interest, to write code that integrates our existing > Mailman (http://www.list.org) installation with the new > version of Plesk (http://www.plesk.com) server > administration tool. The goal is to empower our members > to use Plesk to create, manage and then delete their own > lists autonomously. > > We know it is possible and have tested it on a manual > basis on specific lists, but need some additional coding > done to make it work on a turnkey basis for all lists on the > server. > > Any work done to be released (with credit where due) to > the open source community. > > You will need to have your own testing server. > > **What Python is used for**: Mailman. The integration script could be > a python script but doesn't need to be. > > * **Contact**: Tobias Eigen > * **E-mail contact**: tobias(a)kabissa.org > * **Other Contact Info**: +1-202-265-6116 > * **Web**: http://www.kabissa.org > >

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Long question: list management library?
by Sean Vickery 31 Jan '05

31 Jan '05

Dear Mailman developers, By way of introducing myself, I'm a small-time programmer and former Unix systems engineer. I used to focus on email systems (Sendmail & majordomo), web (Netscape & Apache), DNS (BIND), usenet news, etc. I intend to development an announcement-subscription and management system for the Queensland Peace Network <www.qldpeace.org>, a community organisation I do IT work for. I envisage a system more sophisticated than a simple mailing list to satisfy the peculiar needs of our organisation and potential subscribers. Would anyone here have some information on email lists management libraries that they could provide me? I'm interested in libraries (freeware or commercial) that do all or some of the following: - User subscription and unsubscription requests - Subscriber web interface to change options (I'd be extending this heavily .. I hope this will be the essence of my project) - Sending emails to subscribers and handling the consequent bounces (RCPT ORCPT= & DSN support would be highly desireable). - VERP probing of bouncing users Clearly Mailman has some fairly sophisticated code to do all of this. How tightly coupled is that code to the rest of Mailman? Are there any 'unpackaged' libraries there might be to perform these functions? Regards, Sean Vickery.

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] SMTPDirect timeout
by Thien Vu 30 Jan '05

30 Jan '05

It should but the MTA we're connecting to is a load balancer, and this is a known issue with our load balancer vendor (the backend goes down but the load balancer doesn't terminate the connection), but this could happen for a variety of other reasons. I chose to do this rather than SO_KEEPALIVE because the socket interface isn't really exposed through the smtplib module. Thien On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 11:01:30 +0100, Brad Knowles <brad(a)stop.mail-abuse.org> wrote: > At 9:00 PM -0800 2005-01-27, Thien Vu wrote: > > > The patch I've attached is a simple alarm around the SMTPDirect.py > > call into smtplib to terminate the connection after a configurable > > amount of time. Right now I have it set to minutes(10) but it's > > completely configurable via mm_cfg.py > > That's very weird. The MTA should be dropping those connections > after five minutes of idle time (I think that's the recommended > value). Obviously, in your case the MTA is not doing this, so the > client should definitely be protecting itself against being hung > indefinitely. > > -- > Brad Knowles, <brad(a)stop.mail-abuse.org> > > "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little > temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." > > -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania > Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755 > > SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info. >

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[Mailman-Users] Bug in matching acceptable_aliases - was: Are the "regexps" used in Mailman reallyRegularExpressions?
by msapiro＠value.net 30 Jan '05

30 Jan '05

Mark Sapiro wrote: >Jeff Groves wrote: > >>So, would that "never match" scenario be a feature or a bug? > >It would be a bug if it's true. As I said, I just looked quickly at the >code. I would have to verify actual behavior before drawing a final >conclusion. > >>My opinion is that Mailman should do the Python equivalent of a "tolower" to every email >>address (and every regular expression) before applying the regular expressions filter.... > >In most cases the IGNORECASE flag is specified for the match which >accomplishes the same thing. I didn't see it here, but as I said, I'm >not that confident that case is not ignored. I've had a chance to test this out and my original impression is correct. Currently if the pattern in acceptable_aliases has any upper-case only characters in it, it won't ever match. I have submitted a bug report at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1112349&group_id=1… (thus the Cc: to Mailman-Developers) -- Mark Sapiro <msapiro(a)value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

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Mailman 2.1.6 beta 1
by Barry Warsaw 29 Jan '05

29 Jan '05

I put together a tarball for Mailman 2.1.6 beta 1, but unfortunately SourceForge's file upload machine is out of disk space. For now you can get the file from: http://www.list.org/mailman-2.1.6b1.tgz I'll get that uploaded to SF as soon as possible. Huge thanks go out to Tokio Kikuchi for all his great work on this release. -Barry

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[Fwd: Mailman tutorial]
by Barry Warsaw 28 Jan '05

28 Jan '05

Jack Jansen sent the following message to me, but I will not be able to attend. I still think it would be a great idea though, and Jack said it would be okay to forward this message to this mailing list to see if anybody else would be willing to sign up for giving a Mailman tutorial at this conference. Time is short though -- the deadline is (officially) January 31st. If you think you'd be able to give this tutorial, please let Jack know (and CC me). Thanks! -Barry

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Admin-controlled rejection text...
by Brad Knowles 28 Jan '05

28 Jan '05

Folks, I've been doing a bit of hacking on Mailman. The issue is that if you set member_moderation_action to be Reject instead of Hold, you can supply a nice little bit of text in member_moderation_notice, or you can let the system supply a standard text for you. My problem is that I want to leave member_moderation_action set to Hold, and set the generic_nonmember_action to be Reject, but still supply my own text. Let's look at how these two are handled differently. First, member_moderation_action, has the following lines in Mailman/Handlers/Moderate.py, starting at line 59: if mlist.getMemberOption(sender, mm_cfg.Moderate): # Note that for member_moderation_action, 0==Hold, 1=Reject, # 2==Discard if mlist.member_moderation_action == 0: # Hold. BAW: WIBNI we could add the member_moderation_notice # to the notice sent back to the sender? msgdata['sender'] = sender Hold.hold_for_approval(mlist, msg, msgdata, ModeratedMemberPost) elif mlist.member_moderation_action == 1: # Reject text = mlist.member_moderation_notice if text: text = Utils.wrap(text) else: # Use the default RejectMessage notice string text = None raise Errors.RejectMessage, text elif mlist.member_moderation_action == 2: # Discard. BAW: Again, it would be nice if we could send a # discard notice to the sender raise Errors.DiscardMessage else: assert 0, 'bad member_moderation_action' # Should we do anything explict to mark this message as getting past # this point? No, because further pipeline handlers will need to do # their own thing. Okay, I don't know Python, but I can kinda follow that. Notice how the value of "text" is modified depending on whether or not member_moderation_notice is empty or not, and how this code directly raises the error instead of calling a subroutine. Now, let's consider what happens with generic_nonmember_action. We have the following lines in Mailman/Handlers/Moderate.py, starting at line 101: # Okay, so the sender wasn't specified explicitly by any of the non-member # moderation configuration variables. Handle by way of generic non-member # action. assert 0 <= mlist.generic_nonmember_action <= 4 if mlist.generic_nonmember_action == 0: # Accept return elif mlist.generic_nonmember_action == 1: Hold.hold_for_approval(mlist, msg, msgdata, Hold.NonMemberPost) elif mlist.generic_nonmember_action == 2: do_reject(mlist) elif mlist.generic_nonmember_action == 3: do_discard(mlist, msg) Note how this does very little other than decide which subroutine to call, then call it. No check is made for member_moderation_notice, nor is any specific rejection text supplied. Let's take a look at do_reject(), starting at line 136: def do_reject(mlist): listowner = mlist.GetOwnerEmail() raise Errors.RejectMessage, Utils.wrap(_("""\ You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has been automatically rejected. If you think that your messages are being rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner at %(listowner)s.""")) This creates a hard-coded message with a %()s substitution, and sends that out. Now, am I missing something here, or should we not be calling do_reject() in each of these cases and having just the one canonical "raise Errors.RejectMessage", and passing this routine a string to be used as the rejection notice, or allowing it to decide to fill one in for us in the case that we provide "None"? Okay, so I modified do_reject to at least check the value of member_moderation_notice and to use that text, if it is non-empty. Here's what I've now got: def do_reject(mlist): listowner = mlist.GetOwnerEmail() text = mlist.member_moderation_notice if text: text = Utils.wrap(text) else: # Use the default RejectMessage notice string text = Utils.wrap(_("""\ You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has been automatically rejected. If you think that your messages are being rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner at %(listowner)s.""")) # Reject this sucker raise Errors.RejectMessage, text This works. Well, mostly. I'd be submitting this as a patch and working on getting this put into production, if it worked completely. I know that what we should really have is a separate generic_nonmember_notice and have the routine check that instead, but I would be willing to take this as a small but significant improvement in the meanwhile. Problem is, while we can provide a %()s substitution ourselves in the text we feed to Utils.wrap, I can't do the same thing from member_moderation_notice. Instead, it simply outputs the literal string, and gives me "<" and ">" as opposed to the real less-than/greater-than symbols that I want to use around the URLs. I'm stumped. I don't even know what to search for in the archives of the mailman-users and mailman-developers lists. Can anyone here lend me a clue? -- Brad Knowles, <brad(a)stop.mail-abuse.org> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755 SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.

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SMTPDirect timeout
by Thien Vu 28 Jan '05

28 Jan '05

We recently experienced a problem with our smtp delivery where the connection is lost to the SMTPHOST which caused all the OutgoingRunners to lock up. There is no connection reset or anything so the connection appears to be ESTABLISTED and it just sits there. Eventually all OutgoingRunners are consumed in this state. The only reference I see to something similar to this happening is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers@python.org/msg07442.html The patch I've attached is a simple alarm around the SMTPDirect.py call into smtplib to terminate the connection after a configurable amount of time. Right now I have it set to minutes(10) but it's completely configurable via mm_cfg.py Any thoughts about this? Thien

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] Mailman 2.1.6 beta 2 released
by J C Lawrence 28 Jan '05

28 Jan '05

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 22:32:06 -0800 Alan Batie <alan(a)batie.org> wrote: > Tokio Kikuchi wrote: >> - Most of the installation instructions have been moved to a latex >> document. See admin/www/mailman-install/index.html for details. > This is *not* a positive move. I'll mildly disagree if the installation ball includes either - a text or HTML version of the same data (easy enough produce via standard TeX commands) - a Makefile which runs the appropriate tetex commands to produce either of the above -- 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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Mailman-Developers January 2005