Mailman 3 October 2001 - Mailman-Users

List of mail commands?
by The Berean Oct. 2, 2001

Oct. 2, 2001

This was probably asked before, so forgive the redundancy.... Can Mailman be controlled via email commands in addition to its web interface? I assume the address to send commands to is the list name with "-request" tacked on. If that's true, can anyone provide a list of all possible email commands that can be sent to Mailman? Please email me at Berean(a)C-Squad.org as Im not a current subscriber. I appreciate any help! Thanks in advance, Frank Pagano (The Berean) Owner of C-SQUAD (http://www.c-squad.org) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-mail: Berean(a)C-Squad.org Personal Fax Number: (630) 214-9076 ICQ#: 98723297 AOL Screen Name: Berean333 Yahoo! Messenger ID: tseh_dek ****************************************** "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin, 1759 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.281 / Virus Database: 149 - Release Date: 9/18/01

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Re: [Mailman-Users] remove_members by other users
by J C Lawrence Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

On Mon, 01 Oct 2001 14:18:33 -0700 Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui(a)plaidworks.com> wrote: > On 10/1/01 2:10 PM, "J C Lawrence" <claw(a)2wire.com> wrote: >> Ouch. Please be aware of the implicit security hole you're >> opening here. > Implicit? That's like calling amputation a flesh wound. </ British_understatement> -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw(a)kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Few questions for the Mailman list...
by J C Lawrence Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

On Mon, 01 Oct 2001 10:31:07 +1000 AE Somerville <a.somerville(a)qut.edu.au> wrote: > I was particulalry interested in: 1. How your software stores and > accesses the mailing list information (List Members, > Administrators, Moderators, Members). Currently they are stored as a Python streamed object. The next version of Mailman implements a plugin and abstraction layer such that you could remove the subscriber information to an external source such as an SQL DB, LDAP, or whatever providing you supply the appropriate plugin (which is fairly simple). > 2. What command line tools or non-web-broswer methods are > available to administer the lists. There are command line tools to create and remove lists, to process archives, to add and remove (lists) of members from specific lists, and to provide low-level Pythonic access to the streamed objects (with_list). > 3. What tools are available to make a mass upload of lists members > and owner/moderator details? The subscriber base tools can add and remove members, and can set (most) config options for individual members (such as digest/nomail). > 4. Can we link in authentication (C code) to authenticate to our > password systems? There are hacks in this area for the current version of Mailman. They are indelicate at best. The situation under the upcoming 2.1 is much prettier, but then 2.1 is also not-quite-ready. > 5. Is there a webbased interface for administrator of the mail > list service. Yes. > 6. I'd also like to know what way the lists are stored... Are > they in a flat file/DB/Hash? How's this achieved for your product? Streamed python objects. > 7. And even though we can add our own adjustments to the code for > the purposes of authentication, are there plans for adding support > for industry supported authentication mechanisms such as Cyrus > SASL? <http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/download/sasl/doc/> Yes, and no. Yes, there is (going to be) an abstraction and plugin layer which will allow authentication by any means you supply an appropriate plugin for (and the plugin interface is pretty simple). No, there are no specific plans that I know of for any particular auth mechanisms under that abstraction layer other than the Mailman defaults. Such plugins are expected to derive from and be contributed by the Mailman community. Translation: We'd love to see your plugin! -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw(a)kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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help with configuring mailman
by Peter Jay Salzman Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

dear all, i'm trying to follow the mailman config instructions, but am having trouble. i'm on debian woody, using exim as the MTA. when i run check_perms, i get the following error message: # ./check_perms Traceback (innermost last): File "./check_perms", line 280, in ? checkcgi() File "./check_perms", line 183, in checkcgi exes = os.listdir(mm_cfg.CGI_DIR) OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory i'm not sure, but this looks like it may be a python error. it's sufficiently cryptic (i know no python) that i don't understand it. also, i'm getting loads of cron errors in the mail as well: Traceback (innermost last): File "/var/lib/mailman/cron/qrunner", line 275, in ? lock.lock(timeout=0.5) File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 219, in lock self.__write() File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 350, in __write fp = open(self.__tmpfname, 'w') IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/lib/mailman/locks/qrunner.lock.belial.8007' this also looks like a python error. i don't have a clue what to do. can some kind soul help me figure out what's going wrong? greatly appreciated! pete -- "You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services ..." -- Clause from license for FrontPage 2002

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Few questions for the Mailman list...
by J C Lawrence Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

On Mon, 1 Oct 2001 14:55:13 -0400 Greg Ward <gward(a)mems-exchange.org> wrote: > BTW, this holds for Mailman 2.0 and earlier. I believe Mailman > 2.1 uses "pickle" (another, more powerful persistence mechanism > for Python) for list config information. 2.1 implements a plugin and abstraction layer such that you can, if you write the appropriate plugin, store your subscriber database externally to Mailman, such as in an SQL DB, LDAP, etc. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw(a)kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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post to a list via web
by dkh＠london.com Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

Anyone know of an add-on/extension/contribution that will allow folks to post to a mailing list via the web interface, preferably inside pipermail's display (ie reply to this message, post new message kind of thing coming from the person logged in and not via a single gateway address). Have a user who wants to bend mailman a bit so that it provides some of the functionality of e-groups, smartgroups etc. Suprisingly, there don't seem to be a lot of projects out there that allow this kind of thing, at least that I've found. Apparently due in part to the goal of using bbs/community discussion software to keep users coming back to a site. There are obviously things like usenet/mailing list gateways but being thats a bit much plus would want to take advantage of the user id's/passwords that Mailman is already maintaining. I'm not very up on python but I would assume that this wouldn't be an overly daunting extension. Could use a different mail archive package like hypermail which has the ability but then you wouldn't, as far as I can see, be able to have the same thing for a private archive. No way to take advantage of the user id and password etc. Thoughts or alternatives appreciated.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Suggestions for Queuing bulk mailings?
by J C Lawrence Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

On Mon, 1 Oct 2001 15:22:40 -0400 Jim Kutter <jim(a)ebizq.net> wrote: > Also can anyone give me hard times for qmail+mailman with a very > large list (> 30K members)? I've heard it's "really fast" but that > doesn't help me make the sale for qmail... Hard stats in the MTA field are difficult if not impossible to achieve. There are just too many external factors such as variant RTT, percentage and distribution of slow MXes, distribution of target MXes and their percentage distribution over the load, size of RCPT TO bundling, etc etc etc. Statistically, its a large and thorny problem with any particular numbers derived in one instance likely not applicable elsewhere except as a hint. The most fundamental aspect of MTAs is that they are really not limited by MTA software performance. They are limited by disk IO. While there are minor differences in the exact behaviour of the different MTAs when they run up against the disk IO wall, the numbers when they all do are remarkably similar. This shouldn't be surpising when you consider the requirements for commited writes via open()/fsync()/close(). There are three performant MTAs currently on the Open Source market: Exim, Postfix, and QMail. Exim is a monolothic design much in the manner of SMail, from which it was derived. The author, Philip Hazel, is responsive and helpful. It has excellent documentation, an active support community and the most human readable and understandable config files of any MTA I've seen. it also happens to come with an excellent Mailman HOWTO. In tests here Exim's performance curves were similar to Postfix's, with a lower attack curve and similar delivery rates at the inflection points of constantly-busy and queue-saturated. Exim is particularly good (and aggressive) about maintaining a persistent hints database for slow MXes. If slow MX processing forms a significant percentage of your spool handling. Exim also has extensive config options for minimising/controlling load distribution on the host system which can be useful for multi-purpose servers or timed load distribution. Postfix used a distributed minumum trust design that's somewhat similar to QMail's. The main differences in its design as compared to QMail is that Postfix compromises less with standard interfaces and file system standards. The author, Wietse Venema, is responsive and helpful, and has a long and largely illustrious history in the security community (author of TCP wrappers etc). The Postfix documentation is thorough but sparse. The config files are easily read, but are not as clear as Exim's. In tests here Postfix's delivery rates were similar to Exim's with a higher initial attack curve (and subsequent higher system loading) but similar values at the inflection points. Postfix's queue handling si similarly intelligent to Exim's with the exception that Postfix does not maintain a slow MX hints DB. I didn't bother evaluating QMail. I've little patience with DJB deliberate abrasiveness, less interest in the violence he delivers to the FHS, and just can't be bothered with his lack of licensing. Not worth the time or bother. Cursory examination of other's stats (such as Amanda's) suggests that its performance and load curves are very similar to Postfix's. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw(a)kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Suggestions for Queuing bulk mailings?
by J C Lawrence Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

On Mon, 01 Oct 2001 13:08:58 -0700 arandall <Amanda> wrote: > I recently made a post to the effect of the speed of qmail - I > have it running on a junk machine that nobody else wanted (see the > respect Linux gets around here?! geez); it's an old HP Vectra > workstation, p200 (233? I forget) with 64MB ram, and it queues up > all thirty thousand messages in about five minutes. Of the ones > for which we're able to get an immediate SMTP connect, they are > all gone out in approximately fifteen minutes. The several hundred > users with mailservers to which we can't get an immediate connect > (from any mail server in the building, not just qmail) sometimes > take hours to send, but the fault lies somewhere between point A > and B (I suspect *at* point B in most instances) and not with > qmail. FWVLIW I have very similar statistics (which I reported here) under Postfix. My system is chunkier (Dual PII-333), is reasonably well connected (3 T3'sm one to MAE West, two to other local peers/transits). IIRC delivery time for 1,000 RCPT TOs (200 spool entries) down to the only-slow-MXes left is circa 3 minutes. IIRC while there were some issues surrounding Mailman's queue runner to get 20K RCPT TOs (4,000 spool entries) off to the MTA in a unified lump (given that I have no lists that large currently and so much use several messages whose total receipt base sums to 20K) is slightly less clean/rigorous testing suggested that Postfix would drain the same queue down to slow MXes in about 7 minutes. ObNote: I haven't tested or looked at QMail in detail as I've little patience with DJB, less interest in the violence he delivers to the FHS, and just can't be bothered with his lack of licensing. The early apparency here is that the main performance differences between Exim and Postfix surround their handling of slow MXes and in particular, Exim's maintenance of a persistent MX hints DB for appropriate delivery strategies. Thus, at least philosophically Exim seems preferable for loadings with high(er) slow MX rates. > How do ya like them apples? :-) They seem like very non-sendmail-like apples. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw(a)kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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Suggestions for Queuing bulk mailings?
by Jim Kutter Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

Hello, I know this really isn't the place for this kind of question, but I'm desperate :) I need to send a newsletter to ~37K people every Monday *night*. We were using Majordomo, and an editor would use a web tool that sent an e-mail to the webmaster (at like 10am monday morning), telling him to send the mailing at XX time that night. So he used "at" to queue a bulk_mail command for majordomo. At XX time that night it would start sending. A day or two later it would finish (sendmail was the MTA) That stunk, so I switched to Mailman when I came onboard (now that list goes out in ~ 5 hours), and the new procedure is for one user (the editor) with permission to post to send an e-mail to the list. That works, but they still want to queue it so it goes out at night. I don't think Mailman can do this, so does anyone have any ideas on how to have something setup to start sending at a certain time? Also can anyone give me hard times for qmail+mailman with a very large list (> 30K members)? I've heard it's "really fast" but that doesn't help me make the sale for qmail... One last item. What's the best way to setup a list as a newsletter? I currently have posting restricted to one or two users, archives are off, held posts are not mailed back to the sender, and the From: header is set to the list name (but it reports list-admin when I get the message - any way to change that?) Thanks a ton -jim Webmaster eBizQ http://www.ebizq.net

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Moderator question
by Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) Oct. 1, 2001

Oct. 1, 2001

Hello Mailman User List: My name is Father Richard Gant, and I am webmaster of http://www.solt3.org I also have a Catholic news list at CIN, the Catholic Information Network. CIN just a few days ago began using the Mailman program. A question: The postings I have set that they need moderator approval. But my own postings are delayed, because they come back to me with needing moderator approval. Can I set Mailman so that I, the moderator, can post directly. May God bless all of you on the list. Father Richard Gant

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