Mailman 3 October 2006 - Mailman-Users

Recently updated mailman and it quit working
by Jack Gordon Oct. 6, 2006

Oct. 6, 2006

September 6th, I updated mailman and it quit working. The file permissions are all group mailman, but it doesn't send out messages to the private group. My postfix maillog looks like this: Oct 6 10:16:00 mail postfix/local[16020]: 03AFA3F84E: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=0, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:18:27 mail postfix/local[16074]: 0DAF23F7F4: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=0, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:18:28 mail postfix/local[16020]: 8C0913F84A: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=0, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:18:34 mail postfix/local[16026]: EFB0F3F876: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=1, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:18:36 mail postfix/local[16105]: B1A813F847: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=1, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:18:41 mail postfix/local[16074]: 896203F7DE: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=0, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:18:43 mail postfix/local[16107]: 28AB73F84E: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=0, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:18:45 mail postfix/local[16074]: C920E3F873: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=1, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:53:16 mail postfix/local[16546]: 9856E3F7F4: to=<banach-request(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=1, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman request banach) Oct 6 10:53:16 mail postfix/local[16672]: 9856E3F7F4: to=<banach(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=1, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post banach) Oct 6 10:54:07 mail postfix/local[16672]: E00AE3F7F4: to=<banach-bounces(a)math.okstate.edu>, relay=local, delay=1, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman bounces banach) Any hints on where I should look for the problem? Thanks, Jack W. Gordon Jr Systems Administrator Math Department Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Ok 74078 405 744 5541

4 3

Mailman and Postfix on different hosts?
by Anders Norrbring Oct. 6, 2006

Oct. 6, 2006

Simple question, would it be possible to run mailman on one host, and the Postfix MTA on another host? The reason is that I'm configuring a new in/outgoing server that eventually should take over the "old" one, the old should keep the web server functionality, so I'd like to split things up. If it can be done, any hints on how? -- Anders Norrbring Norrbring Consulting

5 9

Changing site domain name
by Chris Puttick Oct. 6, 2006

Oct. 6, 2006

Hi Now I know this will sound like a "didn't read the archives" and/or "didn't read the FAQ" but I did and no solution suggested for similar problems worked. In particular http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.029.htp does not fix the problem: Mailman has been installed on a dedicated clean built box. All lists correctly refer to the actual FQDN of the server in both web and mail addresses and the list server is functional in most respects. However the root/master/? (a better name escapes me but "default" iseems inappropriate, given it is a correctly configured variable) domain of the installation is stubbornly remaining as the IP address of the machine. I wouldn't mind so much, except the machine is in a DMZ and has a non-routeable IP... All suggestions (other than the entries in the FAQ I've already read and tried ;-) ) welcome. Cheers Chris -- http://thehumanjourney.net

2 1

Another puzzler
by Martin Dennett Oct. 6, 2006

Oct. 6, 2006

This one has me completely baffled. Whenever a mail is hitting one of my lists, I'm getting an "undeliverable" bounce message. The message comes from "Mailer-Daemon(a)someisp.com", and the body of the mail states: The message that you sent was undeliverable to the following: bhaggett (UNUSED) Herein lies the problem. "bhaggett" is not a member of the list, nor is "someisp.com" represented on the member list. There is no other information in the bounce message, so how do I find out who the message is really trying to be delivered to? Rgds MD

4 5

Mailman vs. Email Aliases
by Jon Forrest Oct. 6, 2006

Oct. 6, 2006

I'm a new Mailman user. So far things are working OK. I just discovered a wrinkle that I suspect that other mailmen and mailwomen have faced. I follow good Sendmail/Postfix practice by breaking my email aliases file into two sections - one where I define a canonical email name for each person, and the other where I define my email lists (which will be replaced by Mailman-managed lists). In my lists I only use the canonical name so that if somebody's email address changes, I only have to change one thing and then everything else works. To show what I mean, I'll have something like this: smith: smith(a)gmail.com list1: smith list2: smith list3: smith So when smith moves to yahoo.com, I only have to change the first line. However, I'm deliberately setting up each Mailman list to only allow posting from members of the list. This means that the technique above won't work because if I put the canonical name in as the list member, any mail send to the list by smith(a)gmail.com will be rejected. Using smith(a)gmail.com in all the lists goes against the teachings of Sendmail/Postfix, which are righteous. I don't currently see any way around this. What would be nice would be if there were a way to point Mailman to the Sendmail/Postfix aliases file and then change the Mailman check for list membership to do alias expansion. I checked the FAQ but didn't see any mention of this. What am I missing? Cordially, -- Jon Forrest forrest(a)ce.berkeley.edu Computer Resources Manager Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept. 305 Davis Hall Univ. of Calif., Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-1710 510-642-0904

2 3

%variable for fullname in verify.txt
by Jimmy.do＠omicron-lab.com Oct. 6, 2006

Oct. 6, 2006

Hi all, We are trying to customize the verify.txt which is used in the Email subscription confirmation to the user. We would like to personalize it by adding the user's fullname when they registered. What is the %variable for the user's fullname we can use in the verify.txt file? Since the user's fullname is optional on the registration form so may be blank, does the verify.txt file support some type of conditional code so only display the user's fullname when it is not blank? Thank you in advance for any suggestion. Sincerly, Jimmy

2 1

Making Archives password protected
by Douglas Denny Oct. 5, 2006

Oct. 5, 2006

Hello, I am list administrator on a Mailman list. Users have asked me to password protect the archives. I cannot find this option in my list interface. This option does not seem to do anything: I s archive file source for public or private archival? * private I am using version 2.1.7. Can someone tell me how to make the archives only viewable by list subscribers? -Doug

3 2

Threading for integration with message board
by Robert Hsiung Oct. 5, 2006

Oct. 5, 2006

Hi, everyone, Do any of you know of an easy way to organize email into threads? Have any of you integrated a Mailman list and a message board? I have a message board that I'd like users to be able to post to by email (instead of having to go the web site), and what I'm finding hard is integrating posts that are emailed with those that are submitted from the web site. My first idea was to use Mailman, with the message board based on the threaded archives, but Mailman doesn't actually seem to do a great job of threading, plus I'm afraid I'd need to learn Python (what I'm comfortable with is Perl). My other idea is to do it myself, by using the post number of the post being replied to as the "+detail" part of the reply-to address. The message board script gives each post a post number. If it emails out post 123, for example, with a reply-to address of: list+123@server and a user replies to that, the sendmail aliases file can pipe it to the message board script: list+*: |path-to-script which can then extract the "123" from the reply-to header and thread it after post 123. It seems to me the easiest way to thread is with the number of the post being replied to, and I can't think of another way to make sure an email reply includes it. What do you all think? I guess the second part is kind of off-topic here, but I hope it's OK to ask. Thanks, Bob

4 10

automatically subscribe
by John Heim Oct. 5, 2006

Oct. 5, 2006

I need to write a script to add users to a Mailman list. The trick is that the script will not be running on the same machine that Mailman is running on. When I add a user to our system, I need to kick off this script so that if the new user is in the faculty group, their email address is automatically added to the faculty Mailman list. I am thinking that I could do this via the email interface. Ie. Generate a mail message to faculty-request. That sort of works. The only problem is that I need to do it as the list administrator or moderator so that the user doesn't get a confirmation message. Essentially, I need it to work as if I used add_members. With add_members, the user just gets a message that he has been subscribed. Can I authenticate as list administrator and then subscribe some other email address? This doesn't seem to work: To: faculty-request(a)math.wisc.edu set authenticate <password> address=administrator(a)math.wisc.edu subscribe newfaculty(a)math.wisc.edu

2 1

Sporadic, fractional non-delivery
by Jason LaMar Oct. 5, 2006

Oct. 5, 2006

We have an on-campus list with about 1,900 student subscribers that has been functioning properly for months. Recently, however, an extremely small percentage of students -- about 1% that we're aware of -- have stopped getting messages from the list. Here are some of the specifics ... 1. Mailman and the MTA (Sendmail) both reside on the same well-configured Red Hat Linux ES server, which serves as our primary on-campus e-mail server, too. 2. Doing grep on specific account names through all the Mailman logs hasn't turned up any issues. 3. All impacted students are receiving "normal" (non-Mailman) messages just fine from the same on-campus domain, which (again) is driven by the same Sendmail instance. 4. No differences can be found at the Linux account level -- directory permissions, user configuration, etc. -- between those who are receiving the messages and those who aren't. 5. The impacted account names have been confirmed to reside in the Mailman config.pck file and via the Web GUI Membership Management screen with typical (non-digest) delivery preferences set. I should note that some of these students are automatically forwarding their University e-mail to an off-campus account -- like Gmail or Hotmail -- and obviously that introduces another layer of message filtering. But many of these students are using on-campus IMAP or POP e-mail resources only, and a spot check immediately after a message is distributed via Mailman reveals that they still aren't getting anything from the list. Any ideas to help our investigation on the Mailman and/or Sendmail side? Is there some extra verbose logging that could be turned on? Thanks, Jason _________________________ Jason LaMar Director of Information Services Ohio Wesleyan University | Delaware, OH 43015 AIM/Yahoo IM: jasonrlamar | MSN/Google Talk: jasonrlamar(a)gmail.com Tel: 740-368-3131 | Fax: 740-368-3272 | Web: http://www.owu.edu/

2 1