Mailman 3 January 2006 - Mailman-Developers

Serious Archiving problem in 2.1.7
by Mark Sapiro 05 Jan '06

05 Jan '06

There is a potentially serious archiving problem in 2.1.7 involving a UnicodeError when obscuring email addresses in the body of posts destined for the .txt file. The problem is reported at <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1395683&group_id=1…> and was also reported by a different user on the mailman-users list at <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2006-January/048413.html>. I observed one manifestation of this myself and mentioned it to Tokio and Barry, but I didn't have time to follow up before going away last week. The problem can abort a bin/arch run and can also result in a list post not being archived (it will be shunted in this case). I have worked up a patch which avoids the problem in all the cases I have seen. (My original patch simply ignored the UnicodeError which allowed unobscured email addresses in the .txt file for the problem messages - my current patch avoids the UnicodeError so addresses are properly obscured). The patch is attached to the above tracker item. The purpose of this post is twofold. First, I would like independent review of the patch, as I still don't fully understand the reason for the error in all cases and the i18n implications. Second, other than committing the patch to CVS, is there a mechanism for making it more widely visible. -- 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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subscription_cancel in Cgi/confirm.py lacks SIGTERM parachute
by Lionel Elie Mamane 04 Jan '06

04 Jan '06

Hi, I noticed that in 2.1.6, subscription_cancel in Mailman/Cgi/confirm.py doesn't have the same SIGTERM unlocking parachute that subscription_confirm has; is this done on purpose, and why? Is there no risk of leaving a stale lock with what subscription_cancel does? Without more info, I'd say this is "simply" oversight and that it would be needed. Your opinion? -- Lionel

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On allowing any list member to be an email moderator
by R. Bernstein 03 Jan '06

03 Jan '06

Note: the basic info of the below feature request has been posted here: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1394592&group_id=1… I received an weird but interesting weird email the other day that got me thinking about moderation of GNU mailing lists. Here's a paraphrase the email: To: Moderator Slacker Subject: Bug-slacker-project post from xxx(a)gnu.org requires approval As list administrator, your authorization is requested ... [you know rest] [mail message] Dear Slacker: We've rather belatedly realized that a you've been ignoring the moderation messages of your mailing list which now has hundreds or thousands of held messages and/or a whole lot of spam in the archives. If you would like to volunteer to take out the trash for this or *any* of the 25 or so lists mentioned below, please email me. Although somehow I don't think there are going to be too many takers of this fabulous offer, the email does have I think one useful idea in it. Basically for any slacker-moderated list, it's probably okay to let just about anyone do the moderation. After all, just about any human can easily detect spam from legitimate posts. As someone who's been doing GPL projects for a long time, things have been getting tougher. In the good old days, one gave an email address for support and the email address was used for support on the project. Nowadays the email address is used to send viruses, spam and phishing requests, and to use as the return address for viruses, and spam to others. Okay. So now this moderation thing on mailing lists was then added. That then gave the person offering support the additional burden to act as a trash man for the list (in addition to his/her own personal increased spam/viruses). The thing that always struck me as wrong about moderated lists is that for the convenience of the poster --- and often this is someone who is a novice asking for help (and sometimes in a not even in a very respectful way) -- burden is usually put on the people who might be able to help. I think of this as the N to one burden problem: a little burden (by not having to register to post) is reduced on N people (often novices), at the expense of adding N times extra burden on the "moderator(s)" (someone who is often an expert and is 1 in number). It strikes me as a poor use of the expert's time. Actually, I'm probably not the only one who feels that way, hence the result cited above. So it might be nice to have a box or flag for such a mailing list that allows anyone who is registered in the mailing list have the pleasure of doing email moderation. I suppose this could be subject for abuse too (discard valid posts and accept spam), but I have a feeling that to first order approximaton this would be a big help. And doesn't mailman already have ways of watching users or moderators, and revoking moderation by the administrator or whatnot? Thanks for considering this.

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Mailman/mnoGoSearch Integration
by Erling Hellenäs 03 Jan '06

03 Jan '06

Hi all ! I have created a mailgroup where you can look at how Mailman and mnoGoSearch can work together. In the mailgroup you can also get instructions and most of the programs needed. We can help each other with issues related to the integration of Mailman and mnoGoSearch. We can also discuss how to continue development related to this. Subscribe here: http://erlinghellenas.no-ip.com/mailman/listinfo/mmi Welcome ! Cheers, Erling Hellenäs

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RELEASED Mailman 2.1.7
by Tokio Kikuchi 02 Jan '06

02 Jan '06

I'm pleased to announce the release of GNU Mailman 2.1.7. This is a significant release, which includes security enhancement fixes, a new language (ia: Interlingua) support, a couple of new features, and many bug fixes. Mailman is free software for managing email mailing lists and e-newsletters. This release enhances the fixes for CAN-2005-0202 and CVE-2005-3573 which were fixed in mailman release 2.1.6, and reduces the chance of list admin privilege abuse. Because of these and other fixes, it is highly recommended that all sites update to 2.1.7. For more information, see: http://mailman.sourceforge.net/ For links to download the Mailman 2.1.7 source tarball, see: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=103 Best regards and a happy new year! -- Tokio Kikuchi

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