Mailman 3 November 2001 - Mailman-Users

help
by Matt Garman 29 Nov '01

29 Nov '01

hi there, I work for the First United Methodist Church of Seattle. We use your service to send out the email version of our newsletter. I've recently been given stewardship of maintaining the list and have a basic question. Currently, the way the list is configured for us, we only have email addresses listed. I would like to have a field for names to be included as well, in tandem with the addresses; this way we can easily determine by member's names whether someone is subscribed to the list or not. Can you help me with this? I just want names to able to be added. thank you Matt Garman SFUMC Office Assistant

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Backing up Mailman list installations
by J C Lawrence 29 Nov '01

29 Nov '01

<<Reply-To: set>> A moderately frequent request on these lists has been, "How can I back up my Mailman lists/membership/etc?" I happened to be in the area today touching up the scripts I use. Please feel free to adapt freely. Note: You'll need to have a reasonably recent version of nmh installed as the scripts rely on the MH tools to build a MIME message: http://www.mhost.com/nmh/ The scripts: ~/bin/mimemail: --<cut>-- #!/bin/bash #set -x subject=$1 file=$2 addr=$3 echo "To: ${addr} From: nobody Subject: ${subject} #application/octet-stream [${subject}] ${file} " | /usr/bin/mh/mhbuild - > /tmp/mimemail.tmp.${$} /usr/lib/mh/post -verbose -watch /tmp/mimemail.tmp.${$} rm /tmp/mimemail.tmp.${$} --<cut>-- ~/bin/mailman.backup --<cut>-- #!/bin/bash #set -x datestr=`date +%Y%m%d` host=`hostname -f` file=mailman.lists.${datestr}.tar.gz filepath=~/backups/${file} sendto="root" cd /var/lib/mailman tar zcf ${filepath} lists cd ~/backups mimemail ${file} ${filepath} ${sendto} #rm ${file} --<cut>- Yeah, there are some hard coded paths in there. Sue me. I never said they were pretty, merely that they worked. Brief explanation: mimemail takes three arguments: the Subject: of the message its going to send, the file it is going to send, and the address it is going to send it to. mimemail depends on the nmh tools to build the MIME message. mailman.backup takes no arguments. It creates a compressed tarball of ~mailman/lists in the file ~/backups/mailman.lists.YYMMDD.tar.gz eg: mailman.lists.20011128.tar.gz And then uses mimemail to send that file to root@localhost (edit/change if you want) before deleting it. To use drop them in a cronjob something like: 0 6 * * 0 /home/archiver/bin/mailman.backup A sample execution should look something like: $ ./mailman.backup -- Posting for All Recipients -- -- Local Recipients -- root: address ok -- Recipient Copies Posted -- Message Processed The result will be that every time the cronjob runs it will send you (in this case root(a)host.dom) a message looking something like: Subject: mailman.lists.20011128.tar.gz From: nobody(a)kanga.nu Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 21:12:55 -0800 To: root(a)kanga.nu <MIME attachment application/octet-stream> Where the MIME attachment is the tarball constructed by ~/bin/mailman.backup. Edit the value of sendto in mailman.backup if you want them going somewhere else. I've added this to FAQ at: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.006.htp -- 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: MIME Digests
by tneff＠bigfoot.com 29 Nov '01

29 Nov '01

MIME "Digests" (ultimate misnomer) still suck, even if somebody misidentified them with the words Outlook Express. They exist because the architecture allowed it, not to solve a practical problem. Regardless of terminology, we should make sure that Mailman users know how to avoid them.

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Problem with checkdbs script
by Gedaliah Wolosh 29 Nov '01

29 Nov '01

Hi This script produces the following output: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/mailman/cron/checkdbs", line 92, in ? main() File "/home/mailman/cron/checkdbs", line 43, in main count = mlist.NumRequestsPending() File "/home/mailman/Mailman/ListAdmin.py", line 96, in NumRequestsPending self.__opendb() File "/home/mailman/Mailman/ListAdmin.py", line 69, in __opendb self.__db = marshal.load(fp) EOFError: EOF read where object expected I am running 2.0.8 on a solaris 2.6 machine. The reminders are sent out, so the script is working but I do not understand this output. Is this something I shoud be concerned about? _________________________________________________________________ Gedaliah Wolosh, Ph.D. 973 596-5437 New Jersey Institute of Technology Fax 596-2306 323 King Blvd GITC 2203 gwolosh(a)njit.edu Newark, NJ 07102

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FW: Output from "cron" command
by Grace, Terry 29 Nov '01

29 Nov '01

Anyone have any idea why I started getting these during the daily digest run and/or how to fix? Thanks for any help. -----Original Message----- From: mailman [mailto:mailman] Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 12:00 PM To: mailman Subject: Output from "cron" command Your "cron" job on snoopy /usr/local/bin/python -S /opt/mailman/cron/senddigests produced the following output: Traceback (innermost last): File "/opt/mailman/cron/senddigests", line 65, in ? main() File "/opt/mailman/cron/senddigests", line 42, in main send_list_digest(mlist) File "/opt/mailman/cron/senddigests", line 53, in send_list_digest ToDigest.inject_digest(mlist, digestfile, topicsfile) File "/opt/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/ToDigest.py", line 170, in inject_digest msg = digest.asMIME() File "/opt/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/ToDigest.py", line 242, in asMIME return self.Present(mime=1) File "/opt/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/ToDigest.py", line 313, in Present lines.append(self.__mlist.digest_footer % self.TemplateRefs()) ValueError: unsupported format character ' ' (0xd) Get to know us http://www.thestar.com - Canada's largest daily newspaper online http://www.toronto.com - All you need to know about T.O. http://www.workopolis.com - Canada's biggest job site http://www.torontostartv.com - Webcasting & Production http://www.newinhomes.com - Ontario's Largest New Home & Condo Website http://www.waymoresports.com - Canada's most comprehensive sports site http://www.tmgtv.ca - Hometown Television

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How to open
by PPP 29 Nov '01

29 Nov '01

I'm having difficulty opening the mailman setup file could you please tell me how? Phil.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Backing up Mailman list installations
by J C Lawrence 29 Nov '01

29 Nov '01

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001 02:09:17 -0500 Jon Carnes <jonc(a)haht.com> wrote: > Cool scripts. Hacks really. > I used to do something similar, and then I moved over to using > "ncftp" to drop the tarball off on my backup-server. A matter of > preference, but I like that better than mailing myself the > tarball. Originally I kept the tarballs as versioned files in a ZOO archive. I didn't like this as ZOO suffers as a tool and there was no distribution. Then I used to SSH/scp the tarballs to myself on another system. I didn't like this as it required that the tool that did the file copy must be able to authenticate itself on the other system (ie SSH public key authentication). I didn't like that as compromise of the local system thereby implied compromise of the the other system as well (or at least questions of untrusted shell access). Not good. No I mail them. No trust models required other than the fact that I'm implicitly exposing the tarballs en-route to interception, and thus the password/membership base as well. Well, that would be a problem except that the root account on that box delivers to a local mbox which I collect over an IMAP-SSL connection (the wonders of fetchmail). So, I get a decent trust model *and* distribution. -- 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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User database for htaccess
by Jon Carnes 28 Nov '01

28 Nov '01

Okay, I mucked with the script I sent you for about a half an hour and this is what I came up with: === touch /etc/httpd/.htaccess.mpdladaux for i in `~mailman/bin/list_members mpdladaux` do PASS="`strings ~mailman/lists/mpdladaux/config.db | \ grep -i -A1 $i |head -5 |tail -1 | sed 's/s$//' `" htpasswd -b /etc/httpd/.htaccess.mpdladaux $i $PASS done === This should work for you without any modifications. Note: I've found a better way of dumping the data out of the config list (than using "strings") which would let this work across all versions of Mailman, but that would require an other hour and this should work just fine! Jon Carnes ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mailing List, Spotted Dog" <maillist(a)spotteddog.com> To: <jonc(a)nc.rr.com> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 10:43 PM Subject: RE: [Mailman-Users] User database for htaccess > I really appreciate your help on this as I'm sure that I am only making it > more complicated than it has to be. > > The setup I have is under > /home/mailman > > > The list I am trying to set this for is > mpdladaux > > And I would like the password database to reside at > /etc/httpd/ > > I have an understanding of the .htaccess and htpasswd program as I have a > few other directories that are protected by htaccess, but I'm not to keen > on making it automated, up to now I have had to do it all by hand, but with > users being able to change their passwords at will it makes it kind of > frustrating for me. > > > Thanks > Patrick Agee > pagee(a)spotteddog.com >

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News gateway and member_posting_only
by 依瑪貓 28 Nov '01

28 Nov '01

Dear all, Hi. I'm new to this list. I don't know whether someone has mentioned before. I have a list that is trading posts with a news gateway. I want to restrict this list to member_posting_only (to avoid spams), while allowing posts from this trusted news gateway (they will deal with their spam themself). Does anyone know what to do? -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' imacat(a)mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key: http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.txt <<Woman's Voice>> News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's: http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ TLUG List Manager: http://www.linux.org.tw/mailman/listinfo/tlug

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How to do umbrella lists
by Ernst Taumberger 28 Nov '01

28 Nov '01

I apologize if this is somewhere in the docu (I looked but in vain) but ... What I want to do is to capture the members of a number of lists (staff of various departments) into a list that contains all the members of all the member lists. Can I do this with umbrella lists, and if so, how? Ernst

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