Mailman 3 January 2013 - Mailman-Developers

before next release: disable backscatter in default installation
by Jo Rhett Nov. 7, 2022

Nov. 7, 2022

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

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] (no subject)
by Barry Warsaw Jan. 23, 2013

Jan. 23, 2013

On Jan 21, 2013, at 10:40 AM, Sandesh Agrawal wrote: >I am writing a test for lmtp runner as follows: > >def test_function(self): > self._lmtp.sendmail(.........) > messages = get_queue_messages('in') > self.assertEqual(len(messages), 1) > > self._lmtp.sendmail(.........) > messages = get_queue_messages('in') > self.assertEqual(len(messages), 1) > > >and the test passes successfully , but shouldn't the second >self.assertEqual( ) fail because number of messages in 'in' should now >be 2 . One thing you can do when running tests that use runners in subprocesses (e.g. spawned by TestableMaster), is pass in the -e option to bin/test so that logging in the subprocesses is enabled. Such logging is suppressed by default because of the noise, but enabling it lets you see if an exception occurs in a runner that might only show up in the logs. >Might be, self._lmtp is creating new lmtp instance each time it >executes sendmail( ) , or is there something else ? I don't think it does. My first guess is that there's an exception getting masked. Cheers, -Barry

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] [Merge] lp:~sakuag333/mailman/BUG_non_queue_runner into lp:mailman
by Barry Warsaw Jan. 22, 2013

Jan. 22, 2013

On Jan 21, 2013, at 08:35 AM, Sandesh Agrawal wrote: >These lines were changed in my earlier commit, which required certain >fixing. So i re-changed these lines to the original one in my recent >commit to the branch. Hence bazaar was showing all that in the commit >history. It's important to learn how to work with feature/bug branches in Bazaar. It's not that difficult really, you just want to create a new branch per bug or feature that you're working on. If you have one feature branch that depends on another feature branch, you can use something like looms or pipelines to stack your branches. But in general, you want to make sure it's one-branch-per-bug-or-feature. >At present i am using jus gedit to do all my coding, which edtor is >best to be used so that i do not run into these problems ? I'm biased about Emacs because I've used it for a bazillion years. With the python-mode here <https://launchpad.net/python-mode> plus tools like global-whitespace-mode, pyflakes, and bzr-tools-grep, I think Emacs is a wonderful development environment. By default, this will use only spaces for indentation. Other editors are good too if you can configure them correctly, but others will have to chime in about them. Cheers, -Barry

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] (no subject)
by Sandesh Agrawal Jan. 21, 2013

Jan. 21, 2013

> Might be, self._lmtp is creating new lmtp instance each time it > executes sendmail( ) , or is there something else ? by lmtp instace, i meant a new smtp.LMTP( ) instance is being made each time we call self._lmtp.sendmail( )

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(no subject)
by Sandesh Agrawal Jan. 21, 2013

Jan. 21, 2013

I am writing a test for lmtp runner as follows: def test_function(self): self._lmtp.sendmail(.........) messages = get_queue_messages('in') self.assertEqual(len(messages), 1) self._lmtp.sendmail(.........) messages = get_queue_messages('in') self.assertEqual(len(messages), 1) and the test passes successfully , but shouldn't the second self.assertEqual( ) fail because number of messages in 'in' should now be 2 . Might be, self._lmtp is creating new lmtp instance each time it executes sendmail( ) , or is there something else ? Cheers, Sandesh

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] [Merge] lp:~sakuag333/mailman/BUG_non_queue_runner into lp:mailman
by Sandesh Agrawal Jan. 21, 2013

Jan. 21, 2013

> PEP 8 has a line length limit of 79 characters, so this line needs to be > wrapped. > PEP 8 requires a single space both before and after the = sign. > Thanks for pointing this out. I will get myself familial with PEP 8. > > === modified file 'src/mailman/core/switchboard.py' > --- src/mailman/core/switchboard.py 2013-01-01 14:05:42 +0000 > +++ src/mailman/core/switchboard.py 2013-01-17 07:44:42 +0000 >> @@ -90,9 +90,10 @@ >> 'Not a power of 2: {0}'.format(numslices)) >> self.name = name >> self.queue_directory = queue_directory >> + self.non_queue_runner={'lmtp','rest'} > > This should no longer be necessary, right? (I hope it's not! :) >> # Fast track for no slices >> self._lower = None >> self._upper = None >> @@ -143,11 +144,11 @@ >> data['_parsemsg'] = (protocol == 0) >> # Write to the pickle file the message object and metadata. >> with open(tmpfile, 'w') as fp: >> - fp.write(msgsave) >> - cPickle.dump(data, fp, protocol) >> - fp.flush() >> - os.fsync(fp.fileno()) >> - os.rename(tmpfile, filename) >> + fp.write(msgsave) >> + cPickle.dump(data, fp, protocol) >> + fp.flush() >> + os.fsync(fp.fileno()) >> + os.rename(tmpfile, filename) > > Why were these lines changed? The tabs are not allowed in Mailman code. > These lines were changed in my earlier commit, which required certain fixing. So i re-changed these lines to the original one in my recent commit to the branch. Hence bazaar was showing all that in the commit history. > Be careful about trailing whitespace! You might want to set your editor to > warn you about these, or display such whitespace. > At present i am using jus gedit to do all my coding, which edtor is best to be used so that i do not run into these problems ? Thanks for the feedback :) Cheers, Sandesh

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] (no subject)
by Barry Warsaw Jan. 16, 2013

Jan. 16, 2013

On Jan 17, 2013, at 04:10 AM, Sandesh Agrawal wrote: >I think that the new test function that i need to add to test_lmtp.py >has to be added to some configuration file or some base class because >while running ./bin/test -vv -t TestLMTP , it runs only 4 tests (for >the functions originally defined in test_lmtp.py) and my new function >added is ignored. I could not figure out the process of adding a new >test function to it. You shouldn't have to. Name the method `test_<whatever>` and testrunner should find it automatically. If that's not happening, push what you have and I'll look at it. -Barry

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] (no subject)
by Barry Warsaw Jan. 16, 2013

Jan. 16, 2013

On Jan 17, 2013, at 03:14 AM, Sandesh Agrawal wrote: >Is there a way of unning only test_lmtp.py to test lmtp runner or do i >need to do the full test using ./bin/test . Yes, you can run various subsets of tests by using the -t option. MM3 currently uses zope.testrunner. All the gory details: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zope.testrunner >I tried runnign both of the below >./bin/test ./src/mailman/runners/tests/test_lmtp.py/ >./bin/py ./src/mailman/runners/tests/test_lmtp.py >What is the correct way of running the unit test for lmtp runner ? `bin/test -t TestLMTP` would run all the tests in that class. Or, e.g. `bin/test -t test_message_id_required` to run an individual test. -t accepts other patterns, and I always add -vv to get more verbosity. Cheers, -Barry

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] (no subject)
by Sandesh Agrawal Jan. 16, 2013

Jan. 16, 2013

Is there a way of unning only test_lmtp.py to test lmtp runner or do i need to do the full test using ./bin/test . I tried runnign both of the below ./bin/test ./src/mailman/runners/tests/test_lmtp.py/ ./bin/py ./src/mailman/runners/tests/test_lmtp.py with this added in test_lmtp.py if __name__ == '__main__': unittest.main() But it did not ran as desired. What is the correct way of running the unit test for lmtp runner ?

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] (no subject)
by Sandesh Agrawal Jan. 16, 2013

Jan. 16, 2013

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:07 AM, Sandesh Agrawal <sakuag333(a)gmail.com>wrote: > Yes, that was the only failure :)

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