Configurable Archiving Proposal
Hi all,
I want to set up Mailman to support other archiving methods, more cleanly than subscribing a procmailrc to a list. I know a few other people are interested in this as well.
I would like to add a per-list configuration option to each list's config.db which tells Mailman a command line to run to archive a message. Is this any more complicated than adding a variable to the MailList class and adding a few lines to Archiver/Archiver.py?
What do other users and developers think of this idea? Is it dangerous to allow a list adminstrator to execute arbitrary commands? If so, how else could this be done?
-- Paul
"PH" == Paul Hebble <hebble@ncsa.uiuc.edu> writes:
PH> I want to set up Mailman to support other archiving methods,
PH> more cleanly than subscribing a procmailrc to a list. I know
PH> a few other people are interested in this as well.
PH> I would like to add a per-list configuration option to each
PH> list's config.db which tells Mailman a command line to run to
PH> archive a message. Is this any more complicated than adding a
PH> variable to the MailList class and adding a few lines to
PH> Archiver/Archiver.py?
PH> What do other users and developers think of this idea? Is it
PH> dangerous to allow a list adminstrator to execute arbitrary
PH> commands? If so, how else could this be done?Is it that important to allow individual lists to have different archiving mechanisms?
Dave Cinege posted[1] a message to mailman-users explaining how he hooks MHonArc to Mailman and I'm playing with the approach right now (if I can actually get perl <shudder> <coff> to build :).
-Barry
[1] http://www.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/1999-July/001726.html
Is it that important to allow individual lists to have different archiving mechanisms?
I don't think so, although it might be useful to use different archiving mechanisms for internal vs. external. Actually I might be to blame for this -- Paul asked me about it and I may have misunderstood his question.
Dave Cinege posted[1] a message to mailman-users explaining how he hooks MHonArc to Mailman and I'm playing with the approach right now (if I can actually get perl <shudder> <coff> to build :).
It's an icky approach, though... Like he mentions, it's pre-filtering based *and* requires admin permissions to modify anything. If it has to be hacked, I prefer to subscribe a known alias or account to the list, then have that call a .procmailrc file (which can call other files writeable by the Web group, etc.)
What we're trying to do is generalize Mailman's archiver enough so that you can drop any binary into pipermail's place.
Chris
"CL" == Christopher Lindsey <lindsey@ncsa.uiuc.edu> writes:
CL> I don't think so, although it might be useful to use different
CL> archiving mechanisms for internal vs. external.In that case, we might be able to add a Default.py variable to control this.
CL> It's an icky approach, though... Like he mentions, it's
CL> pre-filtering based *and* requires admin permissions to modify
CL> anything. If it has to be hacked, I prefer to subscribe a
CL> known alias or account to the list, then have that call a
CL> .procmailrc file (which can call other files writeable by the
CL> Web group, etc.)
CL> What we're trying to do is generalize Mailman's archiver
CL> enough so that you can drop any binary into pipermail's place.A laudable goal.
BTW, I just converted my first mbox to HTML using MHonArc. There are some things I don't like (where are the by-author and by-date archives? Can I split my months and give an overview similar to Pipermail? Perhaps I can and haven't read enough of the manual...)
-Barry
BTW, I just converted my first mbox to HTML using MHonArc. There are some things I don't like (where are the by-author and by-date archives? Can I split my months and give an overview similar to Pipermail? Perhaps I can and haven't read enough of the manual...)
MHonArc won't split by month (it expects you to do this beforehand), but you can create author/by-date archives using rc files. I usually pre-process with procmail to do the splitting (and create an archive of the actual Berkeley-style mbox in case I need to recreate the archives, etc.)
Take a look at
for lists in action, and
http://www.mallorn.com/~lindsey/mhonarc/
for the rc files that make the definitions that you're looking for. They're old though -- our newer ones are site-specific based on local patches.
Chris
participants (3)
-
Barry A. Warsaw -
Christopher Lindsey -
Paul Hebble