Mailman-Developers March 2020

mailman-developers@python.org

7 participants
9 discussions

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

Rest API not returning members in alphabetical order
by goran.terzic＠gmail.com 01 Apr '20

01 Apr '20

Based on Rest API documentation I expected that list of members will be returned in alphabetical order. However, when I tried localhost:8001/3.0/lists/new.list.example.com/roster/member and localhost:8001/3.0/members/find?list_id=new.list.example.com&role=member&page=9&count=10 I got list of members in order of creation. I tried same thing on another server, and I got members ordered alphabetically. Any ideas what might be causing this behavior?

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The Viewing of Private Archives (Hyperkitty)
by brian_carpenter＠emwd.com 17 Mar '20

17 Mar '20

List members (subscribers) who are not verified users of Django/Hyperkitty are unable to view private archives, is that correct? If yes then the following message in Hyperkitty should be reworded as it is confusing: "This mailing list is private. You must be subscribed to view the archives. "

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Question regarding Indexting
by brian_carpenter＠emwd.com 16 Mar '20

16 Mar '20

I have some questions about MM3 Indexing. I am using Xapian as the search engine. 1. I first tested it on a small archive of 3 messages: /opt/mailman/mm/bin/django-admin update_index_one_list test(a)subdomain-lists.com It said "Indexing 3 emails". I assume that is good and then it stopped. No success message at all. Is that normal? I reran the above line and it said "Indexing 3 emails again. Is that normal behavior as well? 2. In the fulltext_index folder is a lot of .seg files and other file types as well such as .glass. What are these files/folders in the fulltext_index folder? Sorry for these questions. I am trying to learn some of the additional features of Mailman and am looking in detail at the search indexing. I have a client who is bringing over a large mbox file of archives dating back to 2006. Thanks, Brian

3 2

Some questions for the Domains page
by brian_carpenter＠emwd.com 16 Mar '20

16 Mar '20

I have some questions for the Domains page of Postorius. 1. What intended audience is this page for? The server owner? 2. This brings up a follow up question. We have list owners, list members, and list users. What is the title for the superuser account that has the permissions to add/remove domains via Postorius? 3. What scenario would make someone want to add a description for a Domain? 4. Since templates can be added on a per domain basis, does that mean that domain template is applied to any list that is created under that domain name? Does it override list templates? 5. What is the purpose to have multiple owners for Domains? Does this allow a list owner to access the domains page and edit/create templates for their list domain? Thanks, Brian

2 1

Using REST api to subscribe member
by brian_carpenter＠emwd.com 12 Mar '20

12 Mar '20

I have a development server that only has Mailman core installed on it. I used a virtual environment to do the installation but I did not install Postorius or Hyperkitty as I am currently working on developing a custom u.i. for Mailman 3. My programmer said the following: "I have a problem with mailman on development server ... I was trying to add member to a list using REST api, but to no avail. After I tried all possible and impossible things, I finally looked at the logs. Error I found in log file is: IsADirectoryError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: '/opt/mailman/mm/venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/mailman/templates' I guess mailman was looking for a template for welcome mail, and failed for some reason. I also guess this has something to do with locale or language settings I tried googling, but couldn't find anything" The log that gave the error was /opt/mailman/mm/logs/mailman.log My programmer tried it on another server that has both Postorius and Hyperkitty working and the api call worked, i.e. added the member to the list and sent out a welcome email. So what else do I need to install to be able to use the api to add members to a list using a non-postorius interface? Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks, Brian

4 7

Screen Shots of Affinity
by brian_carpenter＠emwd.com 10 Mar '20

10 Mar '20

Made it through the first week of development of Affinity. A decent amount of progress was made today. Here is a preliminary screenshot of the login page for Affinity: https://static.emwd.com/uploads/2020/03/affinity_login-1030x728.png Let me know what you think. I will be posting screen shots via this thread as more progress is made. Brian

2 1

New Admin Interface for Mailman 3
by brian_carpenter＠emwd.com 06 Mar '20

06 Mar '20

Hello everyone. I have been a long time supporter of Mailman 2 and now 3. Most of my experience with Mailman has been as a service provider that offers managed mailman hosting both for version 2 and 3. I do have the benefit of a decade+ of insight into the use of Mailman from a list admin, moderator, and member point of view simply via my support ticket system that my Mailman clients have access to. I want to say that I appreciate all of the hard work that has been put into bringing Mailman 3 to life. I also appreciate the forward thinking that shows itself in the including of a REST api with Mailman 3 and the use of and support of databases such as postgreSQL and MySQL. I have been using Mailman 3 for over a year now in a commercial/production environment and have installed it on several servers using Docker and now from source. I received quite a bit of feedback from users this past year and also lost about 20% of my Mailman 3 users to other competing list/forum applications. The feedback I received was almost entirely due to shortcomings in the user interface. After much thought, I have decided to break away from the use of Postorius/Hyperkitty. Tomorrow a PHP developer will begin work on brand new admin interface on my behalf. Here are my goals: 1. Modernize the admin interface to meet modern design and interface standards. 2. To provide an easy installation approach to the setup and portability of the admin interface. 3. To reveal everything that Mailman core has via the new admin interface and perhaps to bring in additional features such as the ability to migrate a Mailman 2 list into a Mailman 3 list from a browser interface. 4. To bring in the use of stats that a list admin would like to see such as overall number of list members, which list is generating the most bounces, subscription/unsubscription rates, etc. 5. To provide a list creation wizard for list admins that will automatically create a list that has preset settings in place based upon the input during the list creation wizard. I am sure there are many hurdles to overcome in the process. When the inevitable questions arises that pertain anything to the Mailman side of this project, I hope I can count on this list for assistance. I am also interested in seeing if I can recruit some of you to test out the new admin interface for usability testing when I reach that stage. I am interested to find out if some of you that have enough experience in PHP to help contribute to this project. Bootstrap 4 and User Interface design skills would also be appreciated. The name of the new admin interface: Affinity Wish me well with this new project and let me know on or off list of anything that you would like to see change, removed, implemented into a new admin interface. Brian

5 10

Re: [Mailman-Users] multiple explicit reply addresses?
by Stephen J. Turnbull 03 Mar '20

03 Mar '20

Note change from Mailman [2] Users to Mailman Developers. Mark Sapiro writes on Mailman-Users(a)python.org: > On 3/3/20 2:25 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote: > > It seems very explicit that the explicit reply address is > > singular.. would making it e1(a)x.com, e2(a)y.com work? > > It won't work. The code uses email.utils.parseaddr() which accepts > various display-name and address formats, but only one address. > 'e1(a)x.com, e2(a)y.com' will result in only 'e1(a)x.com' in the Reply-To:. I think we should check if this is the same in Mailman 3, and change it if it is. If we have an attribute whose main function is to populate a header field, it should accept any valid value for that field (POLA). Unless there's a Very Good Reason[tm], in which case "Errors should never pass silently." :-) Steve

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Mailman-Developers March 2020