Mailman 3 April 2004 - Mailman-Users

RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: How does Mailman compare with YahooGroups?
by prodos＠prodos.com 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

From: Prodos (Melbourne, Australia) To: Glenn Sieb Howdy! [Prodos:] > >>Would anyone on this list care to offer a comparison? > >>Or, if you are an ex-YahooGroups user, say why you changed > >>to Mailman? Or, if you know of an already existing comparison > >>online somewhere, perhaps you could send me the URL. [Chris Barnes:] > >For pure mailing list capabilities, MM (and other "real mailing list > >managers" such as Lsoft's Listserv, majordomo, etc) have Yahoo groups > >beat hands down. > > > >* no advertising (some of which is of less than acceptable topics for > >lists my kids get!) > > > >* Better response time (depending on your connection) > > > > > >But if you are enamored with the extra features in yahoogroups such > as > >the calendar, file sharing, etc - you might be disappointed. None of > >these others have any of that. Just as well since I hate those > >things anyway... [Glenn:] > Yes--if you're looking for community-based mailing lists, MM will not > do... Will NOT do? Hmm ... okay. > I've toyed with writing something around MM to more emulate the > YahooGroups functionality that way, as A) I _was_ a user of those > features B) People I know who run groups on Yahoo, haven't taken me up > on my offer of hosting on my server, because MM *doesn't* offer > calendars, integrated web-posting, et cetera, that they actively > use.on Yahool. Okay. > Unfortunately, it's the old axiom: It's a Simple Matter of > Programming. Now to only find the _time_ to do that programming. :-/ Maybe a future version of Mailman will offer some of those functions. Thanks for your comments. =]:-) PRODOS http://prodos.com - Internet Radio "Discover the power. Of ideas!"

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RE: How does Mailman compare with YahooGroups?
by prodos＠prodos.com 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

From: Prodos (Melbourne, Australia) To: texas critter & list Dear texas critter, Good morning. Thanks for your reply .... [Prodos:] > > Or, if you are an ex-YahooGroups user, say why you changed > > to Mailman? > [texas critter:] > Because Mailman *works*. Any large free service is bound to > have a level of unreliability and with Mailman, I have reliability, > fast delivery of emails, the ability to save the archives all in > one plain text mbox file to my local hard drive. > Okay. > I never use the web features of Yahoogroups much, I mainly run mailing > lists. Me too. > And with v2.1, Mailman has the most important features of > Yahoogroups, moderating new members, moderating individual members, > stripping html and/or attachments and searching the member list. > Okay. > And there's no advertising! :) And less spam on my own > domains than at Yahoogroups. > Okay. [Prodos:] > > I've been using YahooGroups (previously eGroups) for my various > > discussion and bulletin lists for years. I think they are very good. > > But I'm now looking around for alternatives. [texas critter:] > I still run some Yahoogroups and in some cases, I have > duplicate lists, people can choose to join the YG group > or the Mailman list. Really? May I ask why do you provide such an option? Do some of your members prefer - feel more comfortable with - YahooGroups? Why would that be the case? Do you know? > But I still prefer my Mailman lists over Yahoogroups. > Yahoogroups is free, but you get what you pay for, so I > expect it to not work reliably and to break from > time to time (and Yahoo usually fulfills my expectations ;)). Okay. > But my > Mailman lists just keep going like the energizer bunny. > I think the earlier Energizer adverts featured an Aussie footballer called "Jacko". The guy who used to say "Oy!" Just thought I'd throw that in since McDonalds is now also run by an Aussie. As is Coca Cola. And Fox media. :-) > Since I moved to my own server, I'm discovering all > the things I can do with root access to Mailman. > Okay. Do you mean that you use "Python" to alter the functions of your Mailman list? > If you like and use the Yahoogroups web features, you might find > bulletin boards/forums like PhpBB or Invision boards to be an easier > transition, it's web based but boards can send email notices > of new posts in threads or boards so that keeps people involved > and checking in at the website. > Thanks for that information. > It all depends on what your lists and the membership use and like the > most. > My lists are mainly moderated discussion lists: Physics, pro-Capitalism philosophy and politics, creative thinking tutorials, etc. > (and I loved eGroups and Onelist before that, I still miss them! > and the great people that used to work there before Yahoo > chased them all away.) > That's a pity. > > And what about Majordomo? How does that compare with Mailman? > > I haven't used Majordomo in years but I happened to look at the > Majordomo site recently, v1 (which I used at one time for a couple > years) is straight mailing lists, all admin is thru email commands, > no web interface, no archives. > Okay. > v2 is supposed to really good and with the MajorCool web interface, > similar to Mailman v2. But from what I could see, there's not a lot of > development going on with Majordomo. I prefer using something > that is still being developed and improved. > That makes sense. Okay. The two main concerns I have with Mailman are: 1. That it doesn't allow the moderator to edit the subject line and body of a message. I've found there is a patch which can provide this function @ https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=644129&group_id=1… ... but I wonder how well tested this is. 2. I'm concerned about how easy it will be for a not-very-technical fellow like me to set it up and run. YahooGroups is a breeze to operate. Will I need to learn a language like Python to operate Mailman? (Sorry if my questions are astoundingly dumb.) If you or other [mailman-users] members have any comments on these concerns I would value your thoughts. Thanks. > hth, Very much so! Thanks! :-) Best Wishes, PRODOS "The rich get richer. The poor get richer. Imagine ... Capitalism!" http://CelebrateCapitalism.ORG

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Re: [Mailman-Developers] How to remove X-Confirm-Reading requests from mail headers distributed by Mailman?
by J C Lawrence 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

On Sun, 4 Apr 2004 16:02:38 +0200 Brad Knowles <brad.knowles(a)skynet.be> wrote: > As I said, this is a slippery slope. Once you start down the path of > "But program XYZZY does this, why can't you?!?", it becomes very > difficult to get back to the real issue of what features truly are > needed, for what reason, and what size of community would best be > served by focusing on what work. Past an early point an easy distinguishing factor is: Are you interested in it enough to write a patch? Are you interested in it enough to maintain a patch? -- 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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Correct Terminology for Mailman
by Brendan Chard 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

It seems that a lot of terms are floating around out there that all mean (in some fashion) an electronic mailing list that allows member communication. My question pertains to the word "listserv". Is it ok to refer to a list on a mailman server as a "listserv"? I know there is a mailing list server product out there called LISTSERV, but has it gotten to the point that say the word "Kleenex" has? What are quick one or two word descriptors that folks are using to refer to their mailman lists? Thanks, -Brendan brendan(a)chard.net

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RE: [Mailman-Users] Re: How does Mailman compare with YahooGroups?
by prodos＠prodos.com 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

From: Prodos (Melbourne, Australia) To: Chris Barnes Good morning! [Prodos:] > > Would anyone on this list care to offer a comparison? > > Or, if you are an ex-YahooGroups user, say why you changed > > to Mailman? Or, if you know of an already existing comparison > > online somewhere, perhaps you could send me the URL. [Chris:] > For pure mailing list capabilities, MM (and other "real mailing list > managers" such as Lsoft's Listserv, majordomo, etc) have Yahoo groups > beat hands down. > > * no advertising (some of which is of less than acceptable topics for > lists my kids get!) > Okay. > * Better response time (depending on your connection) > Okay. > But if you are enamored with the extra features in yahoogroups such as > the calendar, file sharing, etc - you might be disappointed. No, I never use any of those functions, personally. > None of > these others have any of that. Just as well since I hate those things > anyway... > Okay. Thanks for those comments. Most appreciated! =]:-) Best Wishes, PRODOS http://prodos.com - Internet Radio "Discover the power. Of ideas!"

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News -> Mail: no mail!
by NFN Smith 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

I'm in the process of setting up a server with the following: - Fedora Core 1 - Mailman 2.1.4, installed from RPM supplied with Fedora; - Sendmail 8.12.10, also installed from RPM; - INN 2.3.5 I'm doing this setup as an internal server, so I'm not exchanging traffic with the Internet at larger. Where I currently am is that I have Mailman working fine as a mailing list server, and no problems at all with INN as a news server. I also am not having any difficutly of getting mail to news. However, where I am having difficulties is in getting messages composed in news back to mail. In my mailman configs, I'm pretty much running with default settings -- in fact, the only things I'm specifying in my mm_cfg.py are the necessary settings for the server name. I do have all the supplied activities running in the mailman user's crontab, and those are running on the specified schedules. The specific place where I'm having problems is when I run gate_news, I'm getting no response, other than a single log entry in /var/log/cron: Apr 27 15:00:01 bronze CROND[12436]: (mailman) CMD (/usr/bin/python -S /var/mailman/cron/gate_news) If I run gate_news from a shell prompt, I get a pause for a few seconds, and then a new prompt, but no other output. I've checked all of my logs, including /var/log/maillog and /var/log/mailman/*, and there are no updates to any of these logs following gate_news runs. I also checked all the steps in the troubleshooting section (3.14) of the Mailman FAQ. The only thing that turned up other than what should be is that that a check_perms check showed that the permissions of the files in /var/mailman/qfiles were incorrect. On the advice of check_perms, I ran 'chmod 02775 *' on the directory. (These files have owner:group set to: mailman:mailman ). I then restarted all the mailman services by rebooting the machine. Following that, I'm still having the same behavior. What I'm missing has to be something small, but I'm not seeing it. Any clues? Thanks in advance. Smith Composed by sacbeemail. Get Your Free E-mail at http://www.sacbeemail.com . Or visit Northern Californias premiere news and information website at http://www.sacbee.com .

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Backup / Recover of Lists or mailman application.
by Franco, Ruben 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

In the event of the corruption of an individual list or loss of the entire Mailman server, are there any tips for recovery for either individual lists or for restoration the entire mailman application from a tape backup? Are there any specific directories or files that need to be restore to recover an individual list from backup?

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Who Broken
by Webmaster 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

I have a MM 2.13 list on a cPanel box. When I go into the admin pages I see there are in excess of 5,000 people subscribed to the list. I send the email to listname-request(a)domain.com with the 'who' command so I can get a listing of subscribers but all I get is either a reply telling me the usage of the 'who' command or an email with no addresses listed as being subscribed. I have tried sending 'who' with and without the password. I have tried sending 'who' as the subject and in the body. I have tried setting the privacy option for view subscriptions to all three values. Any idea why I cannot get MM to send me the subscriber list? I have this client moving to a new server and they need a list of subscribers before the move. Thanks, DB

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Archives?
by Paul Tomblin 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

Does anybody have any suggestions for archiving software better than the built-in pipermail? I'd really like something with searching and sorting functionality. -- Paul Tomblin <ptomblin(a)xcski.com> http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/ "The government turns every contingency into an excuse for enhancing power in itself" -John Adams

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Posts To List Not Working: But Admin Emails Do
by Karl R. Balsmeier 27 Apr '04

27 Apr '04

Creation and subscription to lists works great, email is making it from the mailman host to the mail server, but when I post to a list, (i have test users who have joined the list, etc.), nothing comes through? Where are the mailman logs? I'll check em out'...

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