Mailman 3 July 2004 - Mailman-Users

Nothing Mailman Logs Directory
by Bruce Embrey July 5, 2004

July 5, 2004

Mailman List: I just upgraded Mailman from 2.1.1 to 2.1.5 through rpm. I checked the /var/mailman/logs directory and it is empty. I have been running Mailman for several months on this particular server so I would have expected to see something in there. How do I enable logging for Mailman? What types of things will it be logging? Bruce Embrey

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migrating templates after upgrade
by Akop Pogosian July 5, 2004

July 5, 2004

I have upgraded mailman installation from 2.0.13 to 2.1.5. The documetation mentions something about updating list templates but I am still not sure how to do it. So far I have run the following commands: cd ~mailman/lists for i in *;do diff -r $i ../templates/en > $i.diffs;done Now, the *.diff files in that directory contain lots of lines like: "Only in ../templates/en: admindbsummary.html" "Only in ../templates/en: adminsubscribeack.txt" Does that mean that I should copy all of those new files over into the mailing list directories? And then there are also some html files that differ but it doesn't look like they have been edited by users. Shouldn't they have been copied over automatically during upgrade? Should I copy them by hand? Is there a programatic way to determine if any of those differing files have been edited by users? -akop

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Backing up user options
by Jolin M Warren July 5, 2004

July 5, 2004

Hello, I am trying to write a script that will email me my mailman user lists. I have no problem getting the list email addresses and real names (using bin/list_members) to include in an email. However, I cannot figure out how to include the user options. In the Mailman FAQ, FAQ 4.9. says: "These commands are essential for building mailing lists and for backing up list information (users, user options, list configuration)." <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.009.htp> However, I can't find anywhere that describes what script will actually output the user options to a text file. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! Cheers, Jolin

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Some mailto's point to wrong places
by Akop Pogosian July 4, 2004

July 4, 2004

I have compiled mailman 2.1.5 with the follwing options: --with-mailhost=host.domain.com --with-urlhost=www.host.domain.com Now, some users (including me) have "search domain.com" in our resolv.conf, so we can visit the web server by simply typing: http://www.host in the address bar in the web browser. When I go to http://www.host/mailman/listinfo this way, I see one strange thing. The web page says: "If you are having trouble using the lists, please contact mailman(a)www.host" instead of using mailman(a)host.domain.com. Is this a bug or a feature? Can I fix it somehow? -akop

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Exim4 and Mailman 2.1.4 and Debian -- SMTP 550 error
by John Ackermann N8UR July 4, 2004

July 4, 2004

Hi -- I have what seems to be a truly odd problem with integrating Mailman 2.1.4 and Exim4 on a Debian box. Google searches haven't gotten me anywhere near the answer. This is a Debian stable (woody) box with Mailman 2.1.4 from backports.org and backported Exim4 from www.logic.univie.ac.at/~ametzler (the exim4-daemon-heavy version). The Exim4 config file is a single file, rather than Debian's new multi-part system; it's based on the default "Internet" Debian exim4 config. I've set it up per the exim.org "howto" on Exim and Mailman. Here's the problem: I can send mail to a list from an account on the list machine, and all recipients (either local or remote) get the message just fine. However, sending a message to the same list from any remote machine yields a "550 unknown user" error for the list name at the sender machine, as follows: test(a)giskard.tapr.org SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO:<test(a)giskard.tapr.org>: host giskard.tapr.org [69.44.62.167]: 550 unknown user The log files don't seem to have any helpful info. Non-mailing list mail from remote machines work just fine, it's only a problem with sending to mailing lists. I'm guessing that a failure to find the list name for a remote sender, but not for a local one, points to some kind of either ACL or address munging problem in the exim4 config file, but I'm tearing my hair out trying to figure out what it might be. Any suggestions on what to look for would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, John Ackermann N8UR jra(a)febo.com -- n8ur(a)tapr.org

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Lost Messages
by Bruce Embrey July 4, 2004

July 4, 2004

Mailman List: I recently upgraded through rpm from 2.1.1 to 2.1.5. Just prior to upgrading one of my lists failed to deliver the messages to all members of a list. The mail server has a limit of 100 recipients per email. I configured mailman for a maximum recipents to 100. My list has 592 members. Am I correct in my assumption that a message to this is broken out into 6 messages (5 with 100 recipients and 1 with 92)? The people who got the message have email addresses throughout the alphabet. Some of the addresses starting with w,f,k received it but then others like e,m, and some other w did not. How do I troubleshoot this and prevent it from happening again. Several messages sent later in the day delivered fine without any problems. Bruce Embrey

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Administrative Hold
by Speedy Gonzalis July 4, 2004

July 4, 2004

Is there a way in 2.1 to set subscriptions on administrative hold via the command line? AOL is blocking my server again (even though I have filled out their white list form) and I want to put all AOL subscriptions on hold so my queue isn't filling up with thousands of retries. Tim

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header stripping
by zzizzle.com July 3, 2004

July 3, 2004

Is it possible to have the software strip a known heading from an email submission to the group? I use forms to send messages into the group, and it has a bunch of garbledy gook on each one, making it un-neat. Does anyone know how to removed the initial goop if you know what it is beforehand? (I.E. It's the same every time).

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Changing the host name for a list after its been created.
by Jolin M Warren July 3, 2004

July 3, 2004

Hello, I have recently installed Mailman 2.1.5c2 and am trying to get a feel for how to use it. So sorry in advance if this is a basic question! I have searched the 'mailman-users' list archives but can't find anything that answers my question. When I created my first two lists (the 'mailman' site list and another), I had the following settings in my 'mm_cfg.py' configuration file (host names are examples only): DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'host1.mydom.ain' DEFAULT_URL_HOST = 'host1.mydom.ain' However, I subsequently decided to change the host name to use for the list (both host names point to the same IP address). So I changed my 'mm_cfg.py' file to contain the following: DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'host2.mydom.ain' DEFAULT_URL_HOST = 'host2.mydom.ain' add_virtualhost(DEFAULT_URL_HOST, DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST) Note that at this stage I also read the configuration instructions more carefully and therefore included the 'add_virtualhost' command. I have also gone to the list configuration pages for the first two lists and changed the 'Host name this list prefers for email.' option to point to 'host2.mydom.ain'. Here's the problem: These first two lists still think that the list server is 'host1.mydom.ain'. Both the link in the web page footers and links listed in emails point to: <http://host1.mydom.ain/mailman/...>. (The email addresses all correctly use 'host2', though, including on the web page footers.) This is the base URL given, for instance, in 'help' emails sent from the listserver. If I create a new list now, the new list correctly uses 'host2.mydom.ain' as the host name for all links (both web pages and in emails). My question is, how to I update the first two lists to use 'host2'? If I grep all of the files in the mailman directory, the only ones containing 'host1' are a couple of HTML pages and the 'config.pck' and 'config.pck.last' files for the first two lists. I can't find any setting to change. Maybe the only way to update the host name is for me to delete the first two lists and re-create them. If so, I have two questions: 1. Is there any problem with deleting the 'mailman' site-list while 'mailmanctl' is running? 2. If I export the settings (using 'config_list -o') and exporting the users from each list I am deleting and then re-import the settings and users after creating new lists, will I create exact copies of the lists? Or are there some other settings that need to be exported or set manually after re-creating the lists? Thanks very much for any help you can provide. Cheers, Jolin

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Aliases problem
by Brad Knowles July 2, 2004

July 2, 2004

At 3:57 PM -0700 2004-07-02, Foo, Randy wrote: > I'm running postfix 2.0.16 with mailman 2.1.2., on Red Hat 9. When I > try to create a new list via the web interface, the aliases file does > not get updated. The README.POSTFIX file explains this process. You can find a copy of this file at <http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/mailman/mailman/README.POSTFIX?view=m…> (assuming the CVS web interface on SourceForge is working correctly). In this file, you will find the following section: INTEGRATING POSTFIX AND MAILMAN You can integrate Postfix and Mailman such that when new lists are created, or lists are removed, Postfix's alias database will be automatically updated. The following are the steps you need to take to make this work. In the description below, we assume that you've installed Mailman in the default location, i.e. /usr/local/mailman. If that's not the case, adjust the instructions according to your use of configure's --prefix and --with-var-prefix options. - If you are using virtual domains and you want Mailman to honor your virtual domains, read the section below first! - Add this to the bottom of the $prefix/Mailman/mm_cfg.py file: MTA = 'Postfix' The MTA variable names a module in Mailman/MTA which contains the MTA-specific functions to be executed when a list is created or removed. - Look at the Defaults.py file for the variables POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD and POSTFIX_MAP_CMD command. Make sure these point to your postalias and postmap programs respectively. Remember that if you need to make changes, do it in mm_cfg.py. - Run the genaliases script to initialize your aliases file. % cd /usr/local/mailman % bin/genaliases Make sure that the owner of the data/aliases and data/aliases.db file is `mailman' and that the group owner for those files is `mailman'. E.g.: % su % chown mailman:mailman data/aliases* - Hack your Postfix's main.cf file to include the following path in your alias_maps variable: /usr/local/mailman/data/aliases (no trailing .db). Do not include this in your alias_database variable. This is because you do not want Postfix's newaliases command to modify Mailman's aliases.db file, but you do want Postfix to consult aliases.db when looking for local addresses. You probably want to use a hash: style database for this entry. Here's an example: alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/aliases, hash:/usr/local/mailman/data/aliases - When you configure Mailman, use the --with-mail-gid=mailman switch (actually, this will be the default if you configured Mailman after adding the `mailman' owner). Because the owner of the aliases.db file is `mailman', Postfix will execute Mailman's wrapper program as uid and gid mailman. That's it! One caveat: when you add or remove a list, the aliases.db file will updated, but it will not automatically run "postfix reload". This is because you need to be root to run this and suid-root scripts are not secure. The only effect of this is that it will take about a minute for Postfix to notice the change to the aliases.db file and update its tables. I consider this a minor inconvenience. Unfortunately, since you're using Redhat, I have to assume that you used a binary RPM to install Mailman. See <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.020.htp> for more information. -- Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles(a)skynet.be> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania. SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.

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