Mailman 3 July 2003 - Mailman-Users

How can I change the HTML look & feel of Mailman?
by Roy Santos July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

I would like to change some of the colors and possibly the footers. Since we are using this purely as an Intranet list server, I want to try and give it a closer look & feel to our company branding. If I could make Mailman stay within the pages of the intranet server, that would be better. I just couldn't find any place where I could configure this. Thanks, Roy __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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Php on Mailman pages
by Ian July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

Hi, Is there anyway to include simple PHP on the pages generated by Mailman? I am thinking of the listinfo page for example. Also what are the pages that are generated - I realise that they are generated on the fly - but I can't even work out what type of page is being generated, as putting htm & html into my httpd.conf file to allow php to be displayed on those pages, just makes the raw php code to be displayed. Any thoughts? Ian

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Re: [Mailman-Users] [bug in mm2.1] mailmanctl doesn't set groups.
by Richard Barrett July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

At 16:51 01/07/2003, Jonas Meurer wrote: >*** PGP Signature Status: unknown >*** Signer: Unknown, Key ID xE25F2102 >*** Signed: 01/07/2003 16:51:57 >*** Verified: 01/07/2003 17:56:42 >*** BEGIN PGP VERIFIED MESSAGE *** > >On 01/07/2003 Richard Barrett wrote: > > >the mailmanctl script doesn't set groups. > > >so when i run mailmanctl as root, i become list:list but still have the > > >groups that root has. that's a grave security bug. > > > > I think not. I believe you are mistaking the meaning of the output from > the > > id command you are running. The group affiliations of the process do not > > mean that the uid in the output has privileges of those groups. Just try > > getting the code in the ArchRunner.py to modify a file owned by root with > > no write privileges for other when mailmanctl has ben started by root to > > see what I mean. The process will only have the privileges associated with > > the uid/euid and gid/egid. > >ok, i believe that, You should not have because your first assessment looks to be correct. I tried it for real and found you were right. At a quick glance, it appears as though your proposed bug fix is the only convenient way of resolving using Python. Try again to put the fix into sourceforge bug collector for MM. >but it's still a bug. add user list (running >mailman) to a group (i.e. testgroup), and try to modify a file owned >by someone.testgroup with write privileges only for group (and user if >you want). >that's exactly why i found that bug. the user (list) that runs my external >archiver (lurker) has to be in group lurker. > >bye > mejo > >ps: i'm not subscribed to mailman-developers > >-- >Efficiency and progess is ours one more >Now that we have the Neutron bomb >It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done >Kill kill kill kill kill the poor tonight > > >*** END PGP VERIFIED MESSAGE *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard Barrett http://www.openinfo.co.uk

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list request alias doesn't seem to work
by Jeroen Valcke July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

Another strange problem. Although messages to the list seem to pass just fine, there's a problem with messages sent to the request alias, <listname>-request(a)mydomain.tld These msgs do arrive on the server but aren't processed by MailMan. Searched the MailMan logs but found nothing. Any ideas? -Jeroen- -- Jeroen Valcke sst(a)belnet.be jeroen.valcke(a)belnet.be

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RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates
by Richard Barrett July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

At 08:59 02/07/2003, Timothy Arnold wrote: >Hi Richard, > >I have edited most of the template files in template/en (for our English >mailing lists). I hope you noted the words of the comment I quoted in my previous post "You should never modify files in the templates/<language> subdirectory, since Mailman will overwrite these when you upgrade. That's what the templates/site language directories are for". Pity to lose all the good work on the next upgrade. >They all work fine. I have even edited the header.html & footer.html for >ht://Dig (btw, is there any way to configure the mailman integration to >change the mailinglist.conf file to point header & footer to the lists >search directory instead of $COMMON?) > >The only pages left to edit are the listinfo page for the 'lists of >lists', the subscriber options page, and the admin interface. I cannot >figure out what template files these are generated by. I looked in >listinfo.py and could not find any reference to html code at all! > >An example: http://lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/mailman works fine, >all nice and branded That looks good >but if you go to http://lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo, it is not >branded. How do I make the lists of lists look like every other part of >the site? > >Thanks for your help. > >Timothy >-----Original Message----- >From: Richard Barrett [mailto:r.barrett@openinfo.co.uk] >Sent: 01 July 2003 19:01 >To: Timothy Arnold >Cc: mailman-users(a)python.org >Subject: RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates > > >At 18:27 01/07/2003, Timothy Arnold wrote: > >That's what I thought... Anyone recommend a good python book? >:) > > > >I presume this is the same for the subscriber options? I am trying to > >make > >as much of the mailman interface that the end user (subscriber) sees > Becta >branded as possible. > >If you are using MM 2.1.2 then you will find a much of the html has been >abstracted to the $prefix/templates directory language subdirectories and >their brethren. > >Although pages are being generated by MM scripts these now tend to >populate template files rather than generate HTML from scratch. > >You can set up/change these templates by language as follows (from the >comments in $prefix/Mailman/Utils.py): > ><quote> > # When looking for a template in a specific language, there are 4 places > # that are searched, in this order: > # > # 1. the list-specific language directory > # lists/<listname>/<language> > # > # 2. the domain-specific language directory > # templates/<list.host_name>/<language> > # > # 3. the site-wide language directory > # templates/site/<language> > # > # 4. the global default language directory > # templates/<language> > # > # The first match found stops the search. In this way, you can > specialize > # templates at the desired level, or, if you use only the default > # templates, you don't need to change anything. You should never modify > # files in the templates/<language> subdirectory, since Mailman will > # overwrite these when you upgrade. That's what the templates/site > # language directories are for. ></quote> <snip> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard Barrett http://www.openinfo.co.uk

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RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates
by Timothy Arnold July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

Thanks, I think I understand now. I had a look in htmlformat.py and searched for *.png and found where the images were being defined for the footer. Edited the definition and found it updated all footers. Great! I had a look in listinfo.py and found where MailmanLogo was being called... Doc.AddItem(MailmanLogo). Simply commented this out and it works, the footer was removed from the listinfo page. I am guessing I could create a new definition in htmlformat.py for the standard Becta footer and call it from listinfo.py? Thanks, Timothy. -----Original Message----- From: Richard Barrett [mailto:r.barrett@openinfo.co.uk] Sent: 02 July 2003 11:42 To: Timothy Arnold Cc: mailman-users(a)python.org Subject: RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates At 08:59 02/07/2003, Timothy Arnold wrote: >Hi Richard, > >I have edited most of the template files in template/en (for our >English >mailing lists). They all work fine. I have even edited the header.html & >footer.html for ht://Dig (btw, is there any way to configure the mailman >integration to change the mailinglist.conf file to point header & footer >to the lists search directory instead of $COMMON?) You have a couple of options: 1. The per-list htdig.conf template is $prefix/templates/en/htdig_conf.txt. The same acquisition inheritance applies for it as for the other MM 2.1.2 template files. 2. You can define a value for the MM config variable HTDIG_EXTRAS in $prefix/Mailman/mm_cfg.py. See $prefix/Mailman/Defaults.py to notes on the variable. Using either of these two approaches you can assign values Htdig configuration file variables such as search_results_header and search_results_footer in the per-list htdig.conf template. See http://htdig.org/attrs.html or http://htdig.org/confindex.html for more info. If you wanted per-list and per-virtual-host header.html and footer.html then you would probably want to use Option 1 above. Option 2 is equivalent to the site templates and is, with MM 2.1.x, no longer strictly necessary. It was introduced when the htdig integration patch was initiall developed for use with MM 2.0.x (templates embedded in the source code then) and I have left it in place for compatibility with sites updating from MM 2.0.x >The only pages left to edit are the listinfo page for the 'lists of >lists', the subscriber options page, and the admin interface. I cannot >figure out what template files these are generated by. I looked in >listinfo.py and could not find any reference to html code at all! These pages represent a different problem as they are created dynamically by the various MM CGI scripts. These scripts create instances of HTML'ish objects. Having assembled these object to create an object representation of the page, a recursive call to Format() functions on each of the classes is used to generate the HTML version of the page. There is thus a reasonable separation between content and rendering. The good news is that this HTML generation is concentrated in the class definitions in the file $prefix/Mailman/htmlformat.py The bad news is you have to read and modify some Python if you want to change things. But attacking htmlformat.py will give you leverage over the HTML output being generated using this approach by the following MM CGI scripts: admin.py, admindb.py, confirm.py, create.py, edithtml.py, listinfo.py, options.py, private.py, rmlist.py, roster.py, subscribe.py Take a look at the Python source in htmlformat.py. It is really quite man readable. I do not know how much programming experience you have but if it is limited then "Learning Python" by Lutz and Ascher (pub O'Reilly) covers more than enough ground for making the changes you need to htmlformat.py; your examples show you have the HTML end of things hacked. Once you have adapted to using indentation instead of braces for block structure you will find Python is a very clean syntax to use. Also, the ability to run python interpreter interactively can really speed development work up. If you want any support on this get back to me off list. >An example: http://lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/mailman works >fine, >all nice and branded but if you go to >http://lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo, it is not branded. How do I >make the lists of lists look like every other part of the site? > >Thanks for your help. > >Timothy > >-----Original Message----- >From: Richard Barrett [mailto:r.barrett@openinfo.co.uk] >Sent: 01 July 2003 19:01 >To: Timothy Arnold >Cc: mailman-users(a)python.org >Subject: RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates > > >At 18:27 01/07/2003, Timothy Arnold wrote: > >That's what I thought... Anyone recommend a good python book? >:) > > > >I presume this is the same for the subscriber options? I am trying to > >make as much of the mailman interface that the end user (subscriber) > >sees > Becta >branded as possible. > >If you are using MM 2.1.2 then you will find a much of the html has >been abstracted to the $prefix/templates directory language >subdirectories and their brethren. > >Although pages are being generated by MM scripts these now tend to >populate template files rather than generate HTML from scratch. > >You can set up/change these templates by language as follows (from the >comments in $prefix/Mailman/Utils.py): > ><quote> > # When looking for a template in a specific language, there are 4 places > # that are searched, in this order: > # > # 1. the list-specific language directory > # lists/<listname>/<language> > # > # 2. the domain-specific language directory > # templates/<list.host_name>/<language> > # > # 3. the site-wide language directory > # templates/site/<language> > # > # 4. the global default language directory > # templates/<language> > # > # The first match found stops the search. In this way, you can > specialize > # templates at the desired level, or, if you use only the default > # templates, you don't need to change anything. You should never modify > # files in the templates/<language> subdirectory, since Mailman will > # overwrite these when you upgrade. That's what the templates/site > # language directories are for. ></quote> > >Take a look at these template files and evaluate the template search >hierarchy before concluding that hacking the Python code is the only >way forward. > > >Thanks, > >Timothy > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: Paul H Byerly [mailto:paul@thcwd.com] > >Sent: 01 July 2003 16:56 > >To: mailman-users(a)python.org > >Subject: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates > > > > > > That is what I get for answering a question when I should not > >yet be awake. I belive that page is generated by a cgi script > >(mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo), which is going to make editing a real problem. > > > >At 09:37 AM 7/1/2003, you wrote: > > >That edits the listinfo for the list, not the list of lists... > > > > > >Thanks, > > >Timothy. > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > >From: Paul H Byerly [mailto:paul@thcwd.com] > > >Sent: 01 July 2003 15:07 > > >To: mailman-users(a)python.org > > >Subject: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates > > > > > > > > >"Timothy Arnold" wrote: > > > >The problem I am having at the moment is trying to figure out how > > > >to edit the main listinfo page > > > >mailman.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo and the > > > end >user subscription page. We would like to make the site as > > > branded as > > > >possible (except for admin interface). Does anyone know how to > > > >achieve this? > > > > > > From the admin page click "Edit public HTML pages on the > > > right side a little above the Logout link. > > > > > > > > ><>< Paul > > > ><>< Paul > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------ > >Mailman-Users mailing list > >Mailman-Users(a)python.org > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users > >Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py > >Searchable Archives: > >http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ > > > >This message was sent to: timothy.arnold(a)becta.org.uk Unsubscribe or > >change your options at > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/timothy.arnold%4 > >0bec > ta.org.uk > > > > > >********************************************************************* > >* > >This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and > >intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they > >are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify > >the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message > >has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. > >www.mimesweeper.com > >********************************************************************** > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------ > >Mailman-Users mailing list > >Mailman-Users(a)python.org > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users > >Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py > >Searchable Archives: > >http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ > > > >This message was sent to: r.barrett(a)openinfo.co.uk Unsubscribe or > >change your options at > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/r.barrett%40open > >in > >fo.co.uk > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Richard Barrett http://www.openinfo.co.uk > > > >********************************************************************** >This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and >intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they >are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify >the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message >has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. >www.mimesweeper.com >********************************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard Barrett http://www.openinfo.co.uk ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com **********************************************************************

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Formatting archives that don't have newlines...
by Bausch, Jean July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

Pug Bainter (pug at pug.net) said something that sounded like: > I have a problem (mostly with M$ Outlook users) that when a user > sends a message without newlines in it (because their email client > auto-displays it "properly" for them), the message gets stored just > like this in the archives as expected. The problem is that when the > message gets pulled up in the webpages, they will appear as one long > line instead of being formatted to the size of the browser width. If you have a UNIX system take a look at the fmt command. On Solaris I modified the mail aliases as follows (in /etc/aliases): testlist: "|LC_CTYPE=en_US fmt -s -w 80|/export/home1/mailman/mail/mailman post testlist" LC_CTYPE may be needed for the correct treatment of Umlauts and other special characters. Without the variable those were simply erased by fmt. -- Jean Bausch

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not getting sent out of the system. how to change ?
by Bausch, Jean July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

If you are using the new version of mailman, you have to start mailmanctl (it took me a while to find it, too). For a one-time-start it's enough to call bin/mailmanctl start in the mailman home directory. To have it started on each reboot you must include it in the /etc/init.d directory (or whatever it is called in RedHat). The INSTALL file in the directory where you unpacked your mailman describes this very well. -- Jean Bausch

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RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates
by Richard Barrett July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

At 08:59 02/07/2003, Timothy Arnold wrote: >Hi Richard, > >I have edited most of the template files in template/en (for our English >mailing lists). They all work fine. I have even edited the header.html & >footer.html for ht://Dig (btw, is there any way to configure the mailman >integration to change the mailinglist.conf file to point header & footer >to the lists search directory instead of $COMMON?) You have a couple of options: 1. The per-list htdig.conf template is $prefix/templates/en/htdig_conf.txt. The same acquisition inheritance applies for it as for the other MM 2.1.2 template files. 2. You can define a value for the MM config variable HTDIG_EXTRAS in $prefix/Mailman/mm_cfg.py. See $prefix/Mailman/Defaults.py to notes on the variable. Using either of these two approaches you can assign values Htdig configuration file variables such as search_results_header and search_results_footer in the per-list htdig.conf template. See http://htdig.org/attrs.html or http://htdig.org/confindex.html for more info. If you wanted per-list and per-virtual-host header.html and footer.html then you would probably want to use Option 1 above. Option 2 is equivalent to the site templates and is, with MM 2.1.x, no longer strictly necessary. It was introduced when the htdig integration patch was initiall developed for use with MM 2.0.x (templates embedded in the source code then) and I have left it in place for compatibility with sites updating from MM 2.0.x >The only pages left to edit are the listinfo page for the 'lists of >lists', the subscriber options page, and the admin interface. I cannot >figure out what template files these are generated by. I looked in >listinfo.py and could not find any reference to html code at all! These pages represent a different problem as they are created dynamically by the various MM CGI scripts. These scripts create instances of HTML'ish objects. Having assembled these object to create an object representation of the page, a recursive call to Format() functions on each of the classes is used to generate the HTML version of the page. There is thus a reasonable separation between content and rendering. The good news is that this HTML generation is concentrated in the class definitions in the file $prefix/Mailman/htmlformat.py The bad news is you have to read and modify some Python if you want to change things. But attacking htmlformat.py will give you leverage over the HTML output being generated using this approach by the following MM CGI scripts: admin.py, admindb.py, confirm.py, create.py, edithtml.py, listinfo.py, options.py, private.py, rmlist.py, roster.py, subscribe.py Take a look at the Python source in htmlformat.py. It is really quite man readable. I do not know how much programming experience you have but if it is limited then "Learning Python" by Lutz and Ascher (pub O'Reilly) covers more than enough ground for making the changes you need to htmlformat.py; your examples show you have the HTML end of things hacked. Once you have adapted to using indentation instead of braces for block structure you will find Python is a very clean syntax to use. Also, the ability to run python interpreter interactively can really speed development work up. If you want any support on this get back to me off list. >An example: http://lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/mailman works fine, >all nice and branded but if you go to >http://lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo, it is not branded. How do I >make the lists of lists look like every other part of the site? > >Thanks for your help. > >Timothy > >-----Original Message----- >From: Richard Barrett [mailto:r.barrett@openinfo.co.uk] >Sent: 01 July 2003 19:01 >To: Timothy Arnold >Cc: mailman-users(a)python.org >Subject: RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates > > >At 18:27 01/07/2003, Timothy Arnold wrote: > >That's what I thought... Anyone recommend a good python book? >:) > > > >I presume this is the same for the subscriber options? I am trying to > >make > >as much of the mailman interface that the end user (subscriber) sees > Becta >branded as possible. > >If you are using MM 2.1.2 then you will find a much of the html has been >abstracted to the $prefix/templates directory language subdirectories and >their brethren. > >Although pages are being generated by MM scripts these now tend to >populate template files rather than generate HTML from scratch. > >You can set up/change these templates by language as follows (from the >comments in $prefix/Mailman/Utils.py): > ><quote> > # When looking for a template in a specific language, there are 4 places > # that are searched, in this order: > # > # 1. the list-specific language directory > # lists/<listname>/<language> > # > # 2. the domain-specific language directory > # templates/<list.host_name>/<language> > # > # 3. the site-wide language directory > # templates/site/<language> > # > # 4. the global default language directory > # templates/<language> > # > # The first match found stops the search. In this way, you can > specialize > # templates at the desired level, or, if you use only the default > # templates, you don't need to change anything. You should never modify > # files in the templates/<language> subdirectory, since Mailman will > # overwrite these when you upgrade. That's what the templates/site > # language directories are for. ></quote> > >Take a look at these template files and evaluate the template search >hierarchy before concluding that hacking the Python code is the only way >forward. > > >Thanks, > >Timothy > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: Paul H Byerly [mailto:paul@thcwd.com] > >Sent: 01 July 2003 16:56 > >To: mailman-users(a)python.org > >Subject: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates > > > > > > That is what I get for answering a question when I should not > >yet > > be awake. I belive that page is generated by a cgi script > >(mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo), which is going to make editing a real problem. > > > >At 09:37 AM 7/1/2003, you wrote: > > >That edits the listinfo for the list, not the list of lists... > > > > > >Thanks, > > >Timothy. > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > >From: Paul H Byerly [mailto:paul@thcwd.com] > > >Sent: 01 July 2003 15:07 > > >To: mailman-users(a)python.org > > >Subject: [Mailman-Users] Re: Templates > > > > > > > > >"Timothy Arnold" wrote: > > > >The problem I am having at the moment is trying to figure out how > > > >to edit the main listinfo page > > > >mailman.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo and the > > > end >user subscription page. We would like to make the site as > > > branded as > > > >possible (except for admin interface). Does anyone know how to > > > >achieve this? > > > > > > From the admin page click "Edit public HTML pages on the right > > > side a little above the Logout link. > > > > > > > > ><>< Paul > > > ><>< Paul > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------ > >Mailman-Users mailing list > >Mailman-Users(a)python.org > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users > >Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py > >Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ > > > >This message was sent to: timothy.arnold(a)becta.org.uk Unsubscribe or > >change your options at > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/timothy.arnold%40bec > ta.org.uk > > > > > >********************************************************************** > >This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and > >intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they > >are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify > >the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message > >has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. > >www.mimesweeper.com > >********************************************************************** > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------ > >Mailman-Users mailing list > >Mailman-Users(a)python.org > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users > >Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py > >Searchable Archives: > >http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ > > > >This message was sent to: r.barrett(a)openinfo.co.uk > >Unsubscribe or change your options at > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/r.barrett%40openin > >fo.co.uk > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Richard Barrett http://www.openinfo.co.uk > > > >********************************************************************** >This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and >intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they >are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify >the system manager. >This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by >MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. >www.mimesweeper.com >********************************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard Barrett http://www.openinfo.co.uk

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Problems with permissions on aliases.db file
by Ryan Shultz July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

I have a problem with the aliases.db file for a postfix install with the newest mailman on rehat 9. In the maillog of the box every time I send to it it says that permission denied. I have used the check_perms script and everything is fine. I am at a loss. It does not seem to want to work. It was recognizing the aliases entries before but I must have changed something to make it stop. Any help? Thanks.

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