Mailman 3 March 2009 - Mailman-Developers

before next release: disable backscatter in default installation
by Jo Rhett 07 Nov '22

07 Nov '22

Hi. There's a fairly simple problem here that needs to be addressed. And it's mostly a documentation/install problem. I'm hoping we can get this resolved before the next release. PROBLEM: Mailman comes out of the box ready to backscatter spam people. Yes, it's easy enough to fix. But because it comes stock this way, and is documented to install this way, most people install it to do this. Those of us who work in abuse departments are tired of hearing "well that's how Mailman works". We also object to having to teach people how to fix their mailman installations because it's not documented in the current manual. This is *exactly* like Sendmail 14 years ago. We didn't accept it then, and Sendmail fixed the problem. RESOLUTION: Mailman default installation should not backscatter in a default configuration. 1. Don't create backscatter aliases for subscribe/unsubscribe/etc by default. Nearly everyone uses web based signup. 2. Discard or hold messages from non-subscribers by default. I would think that it would be perfectly reasonable to have documentation on how to enable the 1980s-style -request / -subscribe etc aliases. However this documentation should have a note that this is against the AUP of nearly every network provider, and enabling it will likely cause them to get listed in various blacklists as a backscatter source. FYI: I know that this goes against the instincts of many old-time mailing list advocates here. But after dealing with a 10k/hour backscatter DoS my tolerance for this problem is understandably limited. Yes, it was a sweet day back in the 1980s. I was running a mailing list server and several UUCP gateways at the time, so I remember them well. But those days are past, and we need to deal with the reality of today. -- Jo Rhett Net Consonance : consonant endings by net philanthropy, open source and other randomness

21 168

Putting the FAQ link in with error messages?
by Terri Oda 02 Apr '09

02 Apr '09

We often *have* the answers in the FAQ, people aren't always finding them there, often because it hasn't occurred to them to look. I was mentioned this to the last person who I helped with a Mailman problem, and he offered this brilliant suggestion: Why don't we print the FAQ (or at least the wiki link) with error messages generated by mailman? Just a quick "For more information on this error, consult the documentation at http://wiki.list.org/x/Bw" or something along those lines. I know, it's another line of work for the translators, and it won't solve the problems that aren't heralded by error messages, but hopefully it'll result in more people actually finding the information they need on their own! Terri

4 4

Inserting content to an html message (aka: unsubscribe link).
by Asaf 01 Apr '09

01 Apr '09

Hello Is anyone working on the subject ? can anyone suggest approaches, I'm pretty new to mailman's code I know the its considered impossible, and that html messages are considered bad, but there is no other way to format, for example , bidi languages in non-html emails, and listserv, for example, can embed link (e.g : unsubscribe) in the footer of an html message (AFAIK) I'd like to implement this, I think it shouldn't be that hard, and would work in most cases. -- Asaf Ohaion Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd. http://www.lingnu.com

2 1

PyCon 2009 sprint: Webinterface
by Patrick Ben Koetter 24 Mar '09

24 Mar '09

Barry, I am collecting information for my work on the MM3 Webinterface while we meet at PyCon 2009 sprint. So far I have found the "Summer of Code summary" <http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/2006/08/20/Summer+of+Code+summary>. Any other information/writing I should collect and read before we meet? I also believe I had seen a page where you (?) had noted a link for a design you favoured, but I can't find it. Can you post the link or come up with a list of sites you like? (Not that we weren't able to develop design. I just want to get an idea.). Thanks, p@rick -- state of mind Agentur für Kommunikation, Design und Softwareentwicklung Patrick Koetter Tel: 089 45227227 Echinger Strasse 3 Fax: 089 45227226 85386 Eching Web: http://www.state-of-mind.de Amtsgericht München Partnerschaftsregister PR 563

4 13

Sprint on Mailman/SpamBayes integration at PyCon?
by skip＠pobox.com 23 Mar '09

23 Mar '09

Would any Mailman experts like to help me out with a bit better Mailman/SpamBayes integration at the PyCon sprints? I plan to be there just a couple days. I was able to integrate SpamBayes into gate_news, but there is no user interface for training and no direct integration into other parts of SpamBayes. (SpamBayes is invoked on mail.python.org long before mail messages get to Mailman.) So, would anyone be interested in at least being a subject matter expert on the Mailman site of things? -- Skip Montanaro - skip(a)pobox.com - http://www.smontanaro.net/

2 3

Web Interface: Login
by Patrick Ben Koetter 23 Mar '09

23 Mar '09

Is there any reason why there need to be two login screens? One for regular users and another one for moderatores/admin? p@rick -- state of mind Agentur für Kommunikation, Design und Softwareentwicklung http://www.state-of-mind.de Franziskanerstraße 15 Telefon +49 89 3090 4664 81669 München Telefax +49 89 3090 4666 Amtsgericht München Partnerschaftsregister PR 563

2 4

Re: [Mailman-Developers] [Mailman-checkins] [Branch ~mailman-coders/mailman/2.2] Rev 1046: - Changed some old messages for more current meaning.
by Barry Warsaw 16 Mar '09

16 Mar '09

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Mar 14, 2009, at 6:22 PM, noreply(a)launchpad.net wrote: > > @@ -510,6 +507,12 @@ > try: > msgfp = open(pckfile) > msg = cPickle.load(msgfp) > + if data == {}: This looks a little Pythonically weird; maybe if len(data) == 0 instead? > + # There was no .db file. Is this a post 2.1.5 .pck? > + try: > + data = cPickle.load(msgfp) > + except EOFError: > + pass > os.unlink(pckfile) > except EnvironmentError, e: > if e.errno <> errno.ENOENT: raise Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin) iQCVAwUBSbw52nEjvBPtnXfVAQKhmQP/aZDty8h2jtExUlcSUjsV98zIsxxajO92 ZmxdMc6NQd+42N+ZVvMJqdaQatUUbUArap+gvlLTxuPJOoFe0JjWfed79VMSFwkQ lvmR4EdJTby/tT95U72/w/gKjA/+KH9m6SgHdu06iUGTVaM+pzwLkqQK6/qQKpIY XHaxZpebxZ8= =lsE0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

4 5

Mailman 2.1.12 - Python 2.4.[456] incompatibility
by Mark Sapiro 16 Mar '09

16 Mar '09

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 There is an internal inconsistency in the 3.0.2 email package that shipped with Python 2.4.4 through 2.4.6. This has to do with the Charset.Charset() constructor setting input_charset to a unicode which then causes TypeError: decoding Unicode is not supported exceptions in other parts of the email package. This problem does not seem to occur with email 3.0.1 and Python 2.4.[123]. This (along with other stuff) is discussed in the bug report at <https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/328353> and there is a patch for email/Charset.py at <http://launchpadlibrarian.net/23670138/Charset.py.patch> At this point, the best advice seems to be use Python 2.5 or 2.6 with Mailman 2.1.12. - -- Mark Sapiro <mark(a)msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32) iD8DBQFJvpFfVVuXXpU7hpMRAt1PAKDJ6BY84Fx271paX1m4BrtUikMFvQCePbyg 8xyRMCTeV2GB5v0ZZhjCf7E= =ji8z -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Short introduction & request for input
by Patrick Ben Koetter 05 Mar '09

05 Mar '09

Mailman Developers, I've recently sent the one or the other mail to this mailing list concerning Mailman and Postfix as well as development of a new web interface for MM3. You might have wondered who I am and why I started posting to the MM developer list without any introduction. Please let me make up for this now. My name is Patrick Ben Koetter. People who use Postfix may now my name from my involvement in the Postfix community. At LISA'07 I was asked by Brad Knowles to join the Python postmaster team, which I did a few months ago. This involved introducing myself to Barry and we started talking about MM3 development, the webinterface, the plan for a REST client/server architecture etc. To cut things short we - my business partner Andreas and Florian, who's been working with us for years - will attend the Mailman sprint at Pycon 2009. The plan is to introduce us to MM3 code and architecture and start to develop a new web interface based on a REST client/server architecture. Andreas and Florian will focus on programming and I will work on the web interface, documentation etc. I hope this gives an idea what our motivation is about and why you (hopefully) are going to see more posts from us to this list in the next time. To start let me ask you for your input on MM3 web interface plans. Barry told me several plans/feature/wish lists have been written and that he would like them to be the base for further development. So far I have found the following links: <http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Web+Interface> <http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/REST+Interface> Do you know of more? Thanks, p@rick P.S. We hope to meet all of you at Pycon 2009! -- state of mind Agentur für Kommunikation, Design und Softwareentwicklung http://www.state-of-mind.de Franziskanerstraße 15 Telefon +49 89 45227227 81669 München Telefax +49 89 45227226 Amtsgericht München Partnerschaftsregister PR 563

2 1

mailman-pgp-smime: talks at FOSDEM and in Ulm, new release
by Joost van Baal 05 Mar '09

05 Mar '09

Hi, Thanks to the NLnet foundation, the Secure List Server project ( http://non-gnu.uvt.nl/mailman-pgp-smime/ ) , which is including OpenPGP and S/MIME support in Mailman has released a much improved mailman-pgp-smime patch: http://non-gnu.uvt.nl/pub/mailman/mailman-2.1.11-pgp-smime_2009-01-02.patch… . See http://non-gnu.uvt.nl/mailman-pgp-smime/NEWS.PGP-SMIME for the details. There'll be talks about this patch: On monday january 12 I'll talk at the Chaos Seminar</a> in Ulm, Germany, see http://ulm.ccc.de/ChaosSeminar/2009/01_Mailman_PGP_SMIME . On sunday february 8th, 10h20 (probably), I'll give a lightning talk at the FOSDEM conference, ULB Campus Solbosch, Brussels, Belgium. See http://fosdem.org/2009/node/164. The talk will start with a very short overview of the history of Mailman and the mailman-pgp-smime project. Some remarks will be made on how to install and configure the software, so that one can try it. Currently supported features will be mentioned, as well as an overview of development plans. One will learn how to contribute to the project; an overview of the revision control system used will be given. Some remarks on the future of the patch will be made: will it be shipped with Mailman itself? If you have used Mailman, both as a subscriber and as a list admin, and if you know what PGP and S/MIME are, you should definitely attend this talk. Hope to meet you there! Bye, Joost -- irc:joostvb@{OFTC,freenode} ∙ http://mdcc.cx/ ∙ http://ad1810.com/

3 5

MM3: Content filter rules
by Barry Warsaw 04 Mar '09

04 Mar '09

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 As you know, Mailman 2 can filter the content of a message before it's forwarded on to the list membership. It can reorganize the MIME structure of a message, based on settings for MIME type and file extension. The rules are fairly complex though: * If the outer MIME type or file extension matches a filter pattern, the entire message is disposed of. * If there are pass filters and the outer MIME type or file extension does not match a pass filter, the message is disposed of. * If a subpart's MIME type or file extension matches a filter pattern, that part is disposed of. * If there are pass filters and a subpart's MIME type or file extension does not match a pass filter, the subpart is disposed of. * After all that, multipart/alternatives can be collapsed. * After all that, text/html parts can be converted to text/plain * After all that, if the outer message's body is empty and it has exactly one subpart, the subpart "becomes" the outer part. Disposal of messages can be one of: * Reject the message to the original author * Forward the message to the list owner and discard * Preserve the message in the 'bad' queue and discard The Zen of Python says: "Complex is better than complicated." "If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea." and I think the implementation is both complicated and hard to explain, and the u/i is no model of comprehension. I'm not entirely sure how people use this feature though. Some of the python.org lists have pass-types allowing multipart/mixed, multipart/alternative and text/plain, while filtering out various file extensions. So I'd like to solicit your input on how you use the feature, and if you have any ideas for an approach that would be easier to understand, more useful, or both. Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin) iEYEARECAAYFAkmsFQ4ACgkQ2YZpQepbvXEIAACffKwhPLRK4hIbJ7Hs2Cfsitjk xr8An1RqTVblud9OipgfanywU3Wr8kWV =E7Nw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

5 9

Re: [Mailman-Developers] MM3: Content filter rules
by Barry Warsaw 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 With David's permission, I quote his message On Mar 2, 2009, at 1:50 PM, David Champion wrote: > This is a crazy idea I haven't really thought through, and completely > tangent to what you're asking, but what about implementing a Milter > interface (the MTA component, not the filter component) in Mailman > and adopting its semantics? > > Then Mailman could take advantage of an existing framework with many > instances in the field already, while limiting the use of those > filters > to Mailman (not the whole MTA) and being completely independent of > whichever MTA you're indeed using. > > The pymilter project makes writing Milter filters in Python rather > easy, > so that Mailman-specific milters can be contributed and distributed > with > Mailman. http://www.bmsi.com/python/milter.html This occurred to me too, so let's explore it. MM3 has a lot of plugin points, and content filtering could definitely be one as well. For example, I could imagine a filter such as "leave nothing but the first text/plain", "strip out all word documents", etc. implemented as Python modules. Some would come with stock MM3, others could be added by the site administrator. In fact, I think the current mime_delete.py handler could be implemented as a plugin (though I'm not sure you'd want to ;). The advantage of a plugin architecture here is that I think it is simpler to implement, understand, explain, and skin. The disadvantage is that the individual plugins would be less flexible, and you'd need a site administrator to add third party plugins. I'm not sure that the milter API is quite appropriate for Mailman, which has a much different architecture than an MTA. For example, it doesn't make sense for Mailman to expose SMTP callbacks since that will have happened long before Mailman gets its paws on the message. But something /like/ this could make a lot of sense. Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin) iEYEARECAAYFAkmsRCIACgkQ2YZpQepbvXG2ZwCeLhv5WOiuS2iwrxznGqOmZsYj Al8An3GjQVGTBDN2sIJhjwOKuBZslw5b =0tfj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0