Mailman 3 September 1999 - Mailman-Users

Re: [Mailman-Users] Users to change their address themselves
by Listwrangler 22 Sep '99

22 Sep '99

>I maintain a Mailman mailing list where people sometimes change >addresses.. Would it be a good idea to include Mailman change >address possibility to users itself where users would be able >to change their own address him/herself on www-page >user__at__host.somewhere ? It would reduce admin work. > >Regards, Ilpo Kantonen > This would be real handy. However, it would need to require the confirm option so that the new address verifies it really wishes to be subscribed. Otherwise, you could subscribe yourself, then just change your addy to whatever person you want to get the junk mail. However, this is no worse than how things are already. Mailman can already be used to subscribe an unwilling user. Just type in that user's email address, set the password, and let it go. If the address looks plausible, the list administrator will approve it. Eg, I'll subscribe joeuser(a)yahoo.com but I won't subscribe president(a)whitehouse.gov . If you have set Mailman to send a subscription announcement, then the unwilling subscriber gets a message that tells them they've been subscribed and what to do if they want to be unsubscribed, which tends to discourage pranks. However, a high volume list could clog somebody's email box if they don't log on and don't get the 'you have subscribed' email for a couple of days. Screening out mischief is an ongoing task. Listwrangler Listwrangler listwrangler(a)iximd.com ******************** For help with subscribe/unsubscribe, troubleshooting, or more info about The American Boyz email lists, please visit: home.iximd.com/~amboyz/online.html, or request a copy of the Amboyz Elist Help File to be emailed to you. If you are familiar with Mailman, the following lists are implemented with Mailman and use standard Mailman features: Amboyz-Main, Amboyz-Announce, TrueSpirit, and ElderTG

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Creating New List via Web Interface
by The List Server Administrator＠UNH 22 Sep '99

22 Sep '99

Christopher Lindsey <lindsey(a)ncsa.uiuc.edu> posted (in part) a while back: > I would really prefer a model where the user can create a list on > their own ... I personally find it easier to create a new list on the > commandline, but I'd rather punt the entire job (except for aliases) to > the end user. Otherwise I end up sending questions back and forth, > etc... J C Lawrence <claw(a)varesearch.com> followed-up (in part): > How about the following approach: > > There is a web interface. > > It allows a list to be created and configured, but does not > instantiate the aliases or anything else to actually make it "live". > The nice thing about this approach is that it removes all the > priviledged account problems, the "oh god someone hacked in and > is running a warez list without me noticing" problem, and further, > requires minimal changes to the current code (the admin interface > would need to be touched to not publish lists "in edit"). And Darren Boyd <dboyd(a)its.to> chimed in: > I was thinking of something along these lines as well. > A web page could allow a user to create a list, which doesn't get > created. When they hit 'submit' mailman generates a script (sh or python > or whatever) in the .../mailman/newlists/ directory. A mail is sent to > the administrator who can then log into the box and run the script. The > script then sets up the list and mails the owner. This is, in effect, what we do here for setting up ListProc lists. See: http://listproc.unh.edu/New-lists Anyone is welcome to try this out -- I'll just ignore your requests. :-) Basically what this does is just create a data file with the user's input. Unfortunately I don't currently do as much data validation as I would like, i.e. catching un-allowed listnames and such, but for the most part these forms seem to work well and in almost all cases has eliminated the question and answer cycle I use to go through in setting up a new list. I also like that it has allowed us to have almost 100% compliance in requiring every list to have a list owner supplied info and welcome file that is specific for their list. (We have over 500+ lists and I would not have time to otherwise nag delinquent list owners). For setting up the list, I have a Perl program that takes the admin through the submitted application information, allowing edits and corrections to be applied to the supplied data as needed. Then it writes a Perl script that instantiates the list and aliases. Currently I run the script as root, but only because of the alises. I'm going to look into the comment that somebody made that you do not have to be root to re-build the aliases. In any case, I find the process of setting up a list pretty quick and painless now and will apply the same model when we start using MailMan. Cordially, The List Server Admin list.admin(a)unh.edu (currently Bill Costa)

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How to change URL base for cookies
by Aaron Optimizer Digulla 22 Sep '99

22 Sep '99

How do I change the URL which is beeing used to generate the cookies for a single list ? I want to administer the list related to the project. For every project, I have a virtual web server. This works fine for the archive but not for the admin pages. I don't know if it works for the normal users of a list. -- Aaron "Optimizer" Digulla Team AMIGA AROS Head of Development Author of XDME, ResTrackLib, CInt. <http://www.aros.org/> "(to) optimize: Make a program faster by improving the algorithms rather than by buying a faster machine." <digulla(a)hepe.com>

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Re: [AROS-Dev] CVS down?
by Adam Chodorowski 22 Sep '99

22 Sep '99

When this message is sent to the list, I get a mail that this is held for approval because "adam" is not subscribed. Adding "adam" to the list of addresses which can always post doesn't work. -- Aaron "Optimizer" Digulla Team AMIGA AROS Head of Development Author of XDME, ResTrackLib, CInt. <http://www.aros.org/> "(to) optimize: Make a program faster by improving the algorithms rather than by buying a faster machine." <digulla(a)hepe.com>

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Archive Idea
by Craig Kelley 22 Sep '99

22 Sep '99

I believe it would be nice to specify a size threshold on archived messages. The situation is like this: We have a certain list where the memebers throw around large attachments, but they take up a lot of space sitting in the archive. If I could say "don't archive messages >30k" it would clear the problem up. Maybe I should just break down and get the O'Rielly Python book. :) Oh, and I also want a searchable archive for Christmas. :D This is *great* software. I love it. Version 1.0 fixed any gripes I had before, and what's even better is that my users love it more than I do. -- The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead. Craig Kelley -- kellcrai(a)isu.edu http://www.isu.edu/~kellcrai finger ink(a)inconnu.isu.edu for PGP block

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mailman still wedges on FreeBSD
by Justin Wells 21 Sep '99

21 Sep '99

Sorry to be so persistent about this, but every 2nd day I've had to unwedge mailman, and I still haven't go an answer from this list. platform: FreeBSD 3.2, Python 1.5.2, mailman 1.0 This sounds a lot like the locking problem described in README.BSD, however my version of python is up to date. Justin

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Error while executing newlist.
by Wolfram Stumpf 21 Sep '99

21 Sep '99

Hi everybody! After succesfully installing mailman 1.0, I tried to create a test-list with newlist. But instead of creating the list, newlist exits with the following error message: Traceback (innermost last): File "./newlist", line 146, in ? raise SystemExit(main(sys.argv)) File "./newlist", line 93, in main newlist.Create(list_name, owner_mail, pw) File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 724, in Create self.Lock() File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 1379, in Lock self._lock_file.lock('w|', 1) File "/usr/lib/python1.5/posixfile.py", line 190, in lock flock = fcntl.fcntl(self._file_.fileno(), cmd, flock) IOError: (37, 'No locks available') ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ After browsing through the mailing-list archive, I thought the existing patch would work, but it doesn´t. I even tried inserting 'linux2' into posixfile.py, but with no result. I´m working with SuSE 6.1 with Python 1.5.1 and mailman 1.0. Thanks for help! Wolfram Stumpf stumpf(a)rancon.de

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Capitalization of host name and URL
by Len Lattanzi 20 Sep '99

20 Sep '99

It looks like if I use 'Example.org' for host_name and 'http://www.Example.org/mailman/' for web_page_url then 'http://www.example.org/mail/listinfo' will not find the list. This is a bug, right?

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archive search
by Bek Oberin 20 Sep '99

20 Sep '99

Somebody posted patches a while back to add a search facility to the archives - is there any intention to fold this back into the distribution? And could somebody bounce it to me - I'm having trouble finding it because the mailman list archives don't have a search facility. There's irony here :) bekj -- : --Hacker-Neophile-Eclectic-Geek-Grrl-Queer-Disabled-Boychick-- : gossamer(a)tertius.net.au http://www.tertius.net.au/~gossamer/ : Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from : little things ... I am tempted to think there are no little : things. -- Bruce Barton

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Creating New List via Web Interface
by J C Lawrence 20 Sep '99

20 Sep '99

On Thu, 16 Sep 1999 11:35:54 -0700 Matthew Kaing <bora(a)employees.org> wrote: > Hi, can anyone confirm if Mailman if going to support Web based > Create, Modify, and Delete? It is wirth observing that creating and deleting lists via a web interface is not entirely trivial. For one it is inherently tied to the MTA's aliases file, which, by crazy coincidence, is NOT necessarily either in a standard format OR a standard location. Now MailMan can handle half of that by mandating where the aliases will be stored, but that does nothing about file formats and MTA dependencies. IIRC, Qmail for instance uses a non-sendmail aliases file format. -- J C Lawrence Life: http://www.kanga.nu/ Home: claw(a)kanga.nu ---------(*) Work (Linux/IA64): claw(a)varesearch.com ... Beware of cromagnons wearing chewing gum and palm pilots ...

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