Mailman 3 April 1999 - Mailman-Users

Disabling passwords altogether.
by Joseph Leaver 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

Hi! I run a joke-a-day list and have received several complaints about the need to use passwords to subscribe and unsubscribe. Is there any way to disable this feature? Thanks, Joe

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Using a private web server for mailman
by Lyndon Drake 13 Jun '99

13 Jun '99

Hi, I have just finished setting up Mailman at a local school, and would like to thank the developers for a very well designed and usable application. The school is limited to a dialup connection to the internet, so even though the mailing list is accessible to people outside the school, they cannot access the web server used to administer the list. I imagine that other places exist where people might want to run Mailman on a server that has limited access (e.g. a company might run Mailman on an internal server that is firewalled from the Internet), so this may be of interest to more people than just us :-). I would like it to be possible for list subscribers (or users) to manage their account via email (I realise that there would be little appeal in doing this for admins). There would appear to be a couple of things that users can do via the web interface that cannot be done via email, in particular requesting a password mailing. Is it at all likely that the email commands will be extended to accomodate more functionality by email? Thanks, Lyndon

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Re: Usenet gating and archiving
by Stephan Spencer 21 May '99

21 May '99

We're using Mailman to gateway a Usenet newsgroup and email list. I'm curious, is that "severe breakage" in the archives that Barry Warsaw mentioned in his Apr 2 post fixed yet? What Usenet newsgroups out there are being successfully moderated using Mailman? misc.industry.printing is the only one that I know of. Also on the topic of moderating, it would be really useful if we could set up one or more "stationery" replies, which the moderator would choose from if rejecting a post (i.e. through a pulldown), rather than having to type in the responses to rejections over and over again. It would be ideal if the moderator could select a stationery from a pulldown, then once the appropriate stationery has been selected, the textarea would display that stationery response, which the moderator could tweak if s/he wanted to. If the moderator selected the "no stationery" option from the pulldown, then s/he could type in whatever they wanted into the textarea or leave it blank. If I knew Python, I'd help you guys build this functionality... As an interim solution, I've gone in to the code that displays the "If you reject this post, explain" textarea and modified it to include a "Thank you but we're sorry..." message along with a link to the group charter inside the textarea. In fact, it might be a good idea to have a variable where such a message can be defined, but which could be defined differently for each list that is being moderated. Such a solution would not be the "ideal" stationery solution, but it would still be a timesaver. Just a thought... Cheers, Stephan

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Moving Listproc lists
by Gerhard Gonter 04 May '99

04 May '99

Does anybody have a nice little tool to transfer a listproc based mailing list to mailman? If not, I'll start with a program to transfer the user list or check, if add_members could be hacked to do that ;) +gg -- Gerhard.Gonter(a)wu-wien.ac.at Fax: +43/1/31336/702 g.gonter(a)ieee.org Zentrum fuer Informatikdienste, Wirtschaftsuniversitaet Wien, Austria

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gate_news giving errors (in cron)
by Soren Dayton 03 May '99

03 May '99

I have two kinds of errors. Has anyone ever seen these? This is 1.0b11, python 1.5.2 on Solaris 2.5. thanks, Soren

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Re: Mailman bug
by ijackson＠chiark.greenend.org.uk 02 May '99

02 May '99

Stephen Early writes ("Mailman bug"): > When trying to view the subscribers list of 'troubadours', which is > only available to list members, and providing a bogus address and > password: > > > Bug in Mailman version 1.0b11 > > Traceback (innermost last): > File "/var/lib/mailman/scripts/driver", line 112, in run_main > main() > File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/roster.py", line 61, in main > list.ConfirmUserPassword(id, pw) > File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/SecurityManager.py", line 76, in ConfirmUserPassword > raise Errors.MMNotAMemberError > MMNotAMemberError I'm using Mailman 1.0b11. I installed it as a home-made Debian package, using the debianisation patch from Debian's 1.0b8-3. (The lists are at www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/mailman/listinfo etc.) Ian.

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deleting archives
by kevin＠vulcanind.com 02 May '99

02 May '99

I have got Mailman running and tested on a Debian GNU/Linux box. I am going to put this into production in the next few days on our intranet. During my testing phase I just used forwarded copies of one of my favorite digests. Well now I got 50-60 copies of these digests in my archives, and it is not exactly appropriate reading material for business use. I can not find anything in the FAQs or archives that addresses deleting and restarting the archives. Any suggestions? Kevin Lee Vulcan Industries (205) 640-2433 mailto:kevin@vulcanind.com http://www.vulcanind.com

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Error/crash in admindb - Solved
by Brian Ryner 02 May '99

02 May '99

First of all, the bug I reported earlier happens if you access this URL: http://host/mailman/admindb/ <-- note trailing slash It tries to cause an "Invalid options to CGI script" error, but can't because of the typo in Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py, line 77: doc.AddItem(eader(2, "Invalid options to CGI script.")) where Header is misspelled. That fixed the crash. But I think that this URL (admindb/) should work just like admindb without the slash -- it should say that you must specify a list. -Brian Ryner bryner(a)uiuc.edu

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Error/crash in admindb - 1.0b11
by Brian Ryner 02 May '99

02 May '99

Hi- This crash happened when going to http://host/mailman/admindb. I have not been able to reproduce it since then. The error log is attached. The system is running Slackware 3.5, with Python 1.5.1. Any suggestions or patches? Also, is there a way that I can turn off the extraneous debugging information sent to the WWW client, and have it just be put in the log? The fact that it dumps so much information about the system could be seen as a security risk. Thanks. -Brian Ryner bryner(a)uiuc.edu Apr 29 22:33:41 1999 admin: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ admin: [----- Mailman Version: 1.0b11 -----] admin: [----- Traceback ------] admin: Traceback (innermost last): admin: File "/admin/mailman/scripts/driver", line 112, in run_main admin: main() admin: File "/admin/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py", line 77, in main admin: doc.AddItem(eader(2, "Invalid options to CGI script.")) admin: NameError: eader admin: [----- Environment Variables -----] admin: DOCUMENT_ROOT: /files/admin/httpd/htdocs admin: HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING: gzip, deflate admin: SERVER_PORT: 80 admin: PATH_TRANSLATED: /files/admin/httpd/htdocs/ admin: URL_COUNT: 6 admin: GATEWAY_INTERFACE: CGI/1.1 admin: HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: en-us admin: HTTP_PROXY_CONNECTION: Keep-Alive admin: REMOTE_ADDR: xxx.yyy.zzz.xxx admin: SERVER_NAME: www.xxxxxxx.org admin: URL_COUNT_DB: /files/admin/httpd/logs/counters/ALL admin: HTTP_USER_AGENT: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95) admin: HTTP_ACCEPT: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/msword, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, */* admin: REQUEST_URI: /mailman/admindb/ admin: PATH: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin admin: QUERY_STRING: admin: SCRIPT_FILENAME: /files/admin/mailman/cgi-bin/admindb admin: PATH_INFO: / admin: HTTP_HOST: www.xxxxxxx.org admin: REQUEST_METHOD: GET admin: SERVER_SIGNATURE: admin: URL_COUNT_RESET: Thursday, 29-Apr-99 00:19:13 CDT admin: SCRIPT_NAME: /mailman/admindb admin: SERVER_ADMIN: admin(a)xxxxxx.org admin: SERVER_SOFTWARE: Apache/1.3.4 (Unix) admin: PYTHONPATH: /admin/mailman admin: SERVER_PROTOCOL: HTTP/1.0 admin: REMOTE_PORT: 6208

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Error/crash in admindb - 1.0b11
by Brian Ryner 30 Apr '99

30 Apr '99

Is that line (admindb.py, line 77) supposed to say Header instead of eader ? > Apr 29 22:33:41 1999 admin: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ > admin: [----- Mailman Version: 1.0b11 -----] > admin: [----- Traceback ------] > admin: Traceback (innermost last): > admin: File "/admin/mailman/scripts/driver", line 112, in run_main > admin: main() > admin: File "/admin/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py", line 77, in main > admin: doc.AddItem(eader(2, "Invalid options to CGI script.")) > admin: NameError: eader

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Mailman-Users April 1999