Mailman 3 November 2000 - Mailman-Users

Re: [Mailman-Users] Re: broadcast only
by Dan Mick Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

> I would *love* to have an option to click "Announce Only" list and when the > user gets the welcome message it's *clearly* noted that it's: > > 1. Not a list they or others (other than the authorized admins/company/etc.) > can send messages to. > 2. Somehow indicates the frequency that they will receive messages > (customizable to each list). Well, I guess I don't see the need for a mailing-list manager for such things, because it seems like they're nearly-always a "broadcast-only, you are subscribed because you're someone I've been given the right to broadcast to" list, for which normal aliases work *very* well. The trick to avoid backposts is to send the message with "To:" set to yourself, and "Bcc:" the alias; then everyone on the alias gets the mail, any replies go directly to the "To:" address and not the list, and no one has to know the name of the list. Mailman need not be involved in this; the archival, member-sub-unsub, and other value-adds of an MLM aren't useful for this application. Sometimes the tool doesn't work well because it's the wrong tool. If there's some feature of Mailman I'm missing, there is another option for mail rejection: SpamReject.py can be hand-edited to reject mails by comparing headers to a Python regular expression. While it's editing Python source code, it doesn't really require knowledge of Python to do it (only Python's flavor of regular expressions, and a bit of knowledge of the format of a list literal). This sort of rejection sends no response, and triggers no approval mechanism; it just drops the message onto the floor. With a little more Python coding, one could write a parallel to SpamDetect.py that would format up an autoreply, or maybe even reorder the module order in HandlerAPI.py to do Replybot before SpamDetect (I don't know if this will work or not) to have the Replybot module autorespond, and then have SpamDetect or its brother drop the message.

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admin password problem
by Torjus Jensen Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

We just installed the latest mailman 2.0 on a Red Hat 6.2 system. Everything works fine, except logging into the admin pages. We get "Authentication Failure" messages regardless of whether we use s given list password or the site admin password. We've checked permissions (check_perms), and all possible log files, but there are no logged error messages. I saw from the November archives that others had experienced the problem, but did not find a solution posted. Does anyone know how to fix this? ------------------------- Torjus Jensen http://www.edudex.com <http://www.edudex.com>

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Questions about scanners
by Dan Mick Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

> P.S.: Just before sending this message I cracked it!!! > > Take a look at http://list.scansoft.com. It contains exactly the good > intended link i predicted... > > Who's gonna take action? I would, but I don't think that's it. That's just a link to www.list.org; it isn't a "mailto:mailman-users@python.org". I don't see how you could get from that to the emails we're seeing (without a whole lot of clueless click-through, which we'll never stop).

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SOurceforge time machine
by Nigel Metheringham Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

download.sourceforge.net seems to have regressed and has nothing later than the 2.0 beta releases. I'm raising a bug with sourceforge, but currently downloads should be done from elsewhere. Nigel. -- [ - Opinions expressed are personal and may not be shared by VData - ] [ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham(a)VData.co.uk ] [ Phone: +44 1423 850000 Fax +44 1423 858866 ]

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Re: [Mailman-Users] newlist or other cgi solution?
by Nigel Metheringham Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

When it comes down to it, all that needs doing to have a cgi newlist (and a rmlist?) is for someone to code it - there isn't a lot of deep magic needed. A bigger problem is the authentication etc for it - currently you need mailman uid on the server to make a list. I guess the equivalent is knowing the main mailman password - but this all ties in with other questions about a user database with real rights etc. Finally, you need a way to tell the MTA about the list. With exim *nothing* else is needed since it all happens by magic (assuming people are using the exim mailman config). With sendmail you need to edit an aliases file and rebuild it, which might need more privilege that I would be willing to give a CGI. Has anyone come up with a magic recipe for sendmail? [I know postfix can be done, think qmail hasn't as yet] Nigel. -- [ - Opinions expressed are personal and may not be shared by VData - ] [ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham(a)VData.co.uk ] [ Phone: +44 1423 850000 Fax +44 1423 858866 ]

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NameError traceback
by Greg Abbas Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

I'm running 2.0rc3 and it's been working well, but then today I encountered the following: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/mailman/cron/qrunner", line 85, in ? from Mailman import MailList File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 43, in ? from Mailman.MailCommandHandler import MailCommandHandler File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailCommandHandler.py", line 77, in ? quotecre = re.compile(r'["\'`](?P<cmd>.*)["\'`]') File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/sre.py", line 62, in compile return _compile(pattern, flags) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/sre.py", line 100, in _compile p = sre_compile.compile(pattern, flags) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/sre_compile.py", line 359, in compile p = sre_parse.parse(p, flags) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/sre_parse.py", line 586, in parse p = _parse_sub(source, pattern, 0) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/sre_parse.py", line 294, in _parse_sub items.append(_parse(source, state)) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/sre_parse.py", line 554, in _parse subpattern.append((SUBPATTERN, (group, p))) NameError: There is no variable named 'SUBPATTERN' I noticed that 2.0 is released, so I'm going to upgrade to that. I went to sourceforge to figure out whether this bug has been reported & fixed, but I couldn't find any "search" functionality in the sourceforge bug tracker. What's the best thing to do when I find a problem like this? Please cc: me on reply. Thanks, -g. p.s. BTW thanks for a great program, Mailman rocks. Long live Python. -- Greg Abbas greg(a)abbas.org http://www.abbas.org

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Re: [Mailman-Users] List spam
by J C Lawrence Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000 08:15:49 -0800 Dan Wilder <dan(a)ssc.com> wrote: > We've had great luck using procmail filters to pre-screen list > submissions. Care to comment/detail further? -- J C Lawrence claw(a)kanga.nu ---------(*) : http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ --=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--

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Re: [Mailman-Users] FAQ? Directing bounces to -owner/-admin
by J C Lawrence Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:31:28 -0500 jamie rishaw <jamie(a)arpa.com> wrote: > Perhaps this is an FAQ, I dont know, but recently I've realized > that when users post to lists, mailer-daemons send bounces of bad > listmember addresses to the poster and not to the -owner/-admin > address. If this is true it means that your local MTA is configured improperly (possible), OR that other remote MTAs are improperly bouncing messages back to some other address than that in the envelope (it happens). > I cannot find any configuration options (other than anonymous, > which is not what I want to do) to do this correctly. This is not a Mailman thing in that Mailman auto-does the Right Thing. If the Right Thing isn't happening, its an MTA problem at some level. Have a look at the headers, and in particular the envelope on your list postings. -- J C Lawrence claw(a)kanga.nu ---------(*) : http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ --=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--

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Re: [Mailman-Users] List spam
by J C Lawrence Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000 14:07:40 +0000 Nigel Metheringham <Nigel.Metheringham(a)VData.co.uk> wrote: > Is this list running open, or are people subscribing and then > spamming? If the latter, is it looking as though someone has > written a Mailman list sub/spam bot, and what can we do to combat > this? I have fairly strong evidence that someome (or several someones) have already written a generic list server spam bot. Its a pretty simple task when you get down to it: -- Obtain email address. -- Spam list server with subscribe message (all the common formats) -- Look for inbound message which talks about "confirm", has what looks like an MD auth string, or which contains an URL which points at the list's domain. -- Bounce said message back to From:/Reply-To and run wget on URL. -- Send spam message. 30 minutes for a half-way competant script kiddie? -- J C Lawrence claw(a)kanga.nu ---------(*) : http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ --=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Re: broadcast only
by J C Lawrence Nov. 30, 2000

Nov. 30, 2000

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000 20:32:47 +1100 (EST) David <david(a)kenpro.com.au> wrote: > excuse my ignorance (no modesty intended!), but if you disable the > post alias, would not that mean that even the admin. couldn't > post? There are a couple obvious solutions: -- Disable the post alias and invoke the mailman wrapper/post manually on a pre-canned message. -- Change the alias for the posting address to something else (which you don't the publich), and then BCC the messages you wish posted to that "secret" address (pay attention to Delivered-To and other revealing MTA-added headers). -- J C Lawrence claw(a)kanga.nu ---------(*) : http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ --=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--

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