Mailman 3 January 2008 - Mailman-Users

check_perms question
by John Fleming 03 Jan '08

03 Jan '08

Running 2.1.9 on Debian etch (stable), lists working fine except qrunner silently dies and noone notices until someone realizes they haven't seen any mail lately. Currently worked around with cron job restarting Mailman. Googling around, some have suggested this might be related to permissions...? Whether my perms are related to the above problem or not, I apparently do have some permissions problems as shown by running check_perms. There were initially 70-some problems, most if not all of which were related to group being root instead of list. I ran check_perms -f (as root) and many, but not all, were fixed. Now there are 17 that still show having the same problem - group root not list - and I can't seem to fix it. Even using WinSCP and trying to change the group ownership with that instead of check_perms -f does not give lasting results. IOW, I can't seem to change the permissions! I'm not a Linux expert, obvious from the above... Any suggestions? Would CHMOD from a server terminal be any different? Any other comments? I've checked the FAQ, but I don't see the problem there (or don't recognize it). Thanks! Running Mailman since 2.1.5 with essentially no problems until I upgraded Debian from sarge to etch and Mailman from 2.1.5 to 2.1.9. Thanks! - John

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Message Excerpt
by Cyndi Norwitz 03 Jan '08

03 Jan '08

Okay, I searched the FAQ and found nothing even remotely related. And I got a list from my ISP of all the changes they've made to the standard install and it's not among them. When a message comes through for moderation I can click on it and then I get the full header and the "Message Excerpt." The problem is that it truncates (hense the "excerpt"). With spam, I don't care, because I'm obviously going to reject it. But I have several listmembers who are on permanant moderation because they don't understand what a copyright is and they try to post entire articles. Or they cut and paste a long web page (not from their own site). Or they quote entire digests. Stuff like that. I can't always tell from the Message Excerpt if that is happening and I've made mistakes. So I have to go into my email and look for the notification of the moderation request. The full text of the attempted post is in there. It's a pain though, and I don't plan to always have immediate notification turned on. I would really like to be able to see the full text in that window. Or to be able to click on a link that shows it to me. At the very least, something that tells me how many lines are in the email would be great. On the summary page it says the number of bytes. But that doesn't help that much because it depends on the density of the lines (and it's hard to remember what bytes mean in terms of post length). Plus that information is not on the detail page! I have to go back and forth to see it. Is there anything I can do? Is there anything my ISP can do? Is this a new feature request? Thanks, Cyndi

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refresh my cross post list with updated members in sub lists after every 10 minutes
by Vinita Aggarwal 02 Jan '08

02 Jan '08

Hi I had a cron which used to refresh my cross post list with updated members in sub lists after every 10 minutes. It seems that cron is not working. Please advise how to check that and if someone has deleted that cron then how to make that. I am a new person in this team and seems that someone who had access to my machine has troubled it. Regards, Vinita Aggarwal

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Postfix mysql
by mattias 02 Jan '08

02 Jan '08

I run mailman and postfix I run postfix with mysql How to run mailman with it?

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Thanks to all!
by Sarah 02 Jan '08

02 Jan '08

Hello. I want to thank everyone who has helped me the new list is working flawlessly, so far. I'm not the one hosting it but you guys have helped me through with some of the options on the interface. I'm glad this is up and running, finally! Sarah Alawami MSN: chellist(a)hotmail.com skype: marrie1 Website; www.marrie.org To check out my podcast go to http://feeds.feedburner.com/funfilled For information on the list where you can discuss the podcast check out http://tffp.marrie.org/mailman/listinfo/tffpdiscussionlist_tffp.marrie.org > Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

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HowTo Notes - Mailman and Sendmail Integration
by Tony Lembke 01 Jan '08

01 Jan '08

I've recently spent a fair deal of time integrating mailman with sendmail to automate the creation of alias files. A number of postings to this list were helpful. It's all working now, so I thought my notes may be helpful to speed things up for someone else. I apologise if there are any mistakes or false steps. Thanks to the Mailman developers and Ed Greenberg To be read in conjunction with the mailman installation instructions at <http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/index.htm> and the post by Ed Greenberg at <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2004-June/037518.html> ------------- Step 1 I'm using Apache2, Mailman 2.19 and FreeBSD4 and Python 2.4 ------------- Step 2 As root #adduser I used -> user: mailman, group:mailman, password: n ------------- Step 3 create Installation Directory (as root) su# cd /usr/local/ su# mkdir mailman su# chown mailman mailman su# su mailman su# cd mailman su# chgrp mailnull . su# chmod a+rx,g+ws . ------------- Step 4 Now, go to the directory where you have downloaded mailman su# cd /usr/home/xxxxx/mailman-2.1.9 Change back to user root su# su root You can ascertain the correct option for --with-mail-gid from /etc/ mail/sendmail.cf su# grep "DefaultUser" /etc/mail/sendmail.cf => #O DefaultUser=mailnull So use mailnull su# su root su# make clean su# configure --with-mail-gid=mailnull I'm on FreeBSD so use this command su# make DIRSETGID=: install Now check permissions su# cd /usr/local/mailman su# bin/check_perms -f My webserver runs as nobody (check httpd.conf on your system to confirm) su# grep "User " /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf => User nobody su# cd archives su# chown nobody private su# chmod o-x private ------------- Step 5 Add this to your httpd-vhosts.conf, or httpd.conf depending on which version of Apache you are using <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName lists.practiceimprovement.com.au TransferLog /dev/null DocumentRoot /usr/home/lists/htdocs/ ScriptAlias /mailman/ /usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin/ Alias /pipermail/ /usr/local/mailman/archives/public/ </VirtualHost> and restart apache ------------- Step 6 Integrating sendmail and mailman mm-handler would not work for me (after considerable amount of time trying) - I think because by server was medicine.net.au and the address I wanted to use was practiceimprovement.org.au, even though practiceimprovement.org.au was correctly set up on dns to be delegated to the right server. So I used Ed Greenberg's approach at <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2004-June/037518.html> which seems better to me. Note: On Freebsd I first had to build sudo! create the file /usr/sbin/mailman.aliases c su# pico /usr/bin/mailman.aliases containing the lines below => /bin/cp /usr/local/mailman/data/aliases /etc/mail/mailman.aliases /usr/bin/newaliases Note: I spent a lot of time bugtesting as I used 'cp' in the mailman.aliases script rather than /usr/cp (it worked from the command line but not the web interface) make it executable su# chmod 755 /usr/sbin/mailman.aliases Change your sendmail.cf file to include the new alias file (for me, add this to medicine.net.au.mc) define(`ALIAS_FILE', `/etc/mail/aliases,/etc/mail/mailman.aliases') (and then as root) su# /etc/mail/make install restart Update your sudoers file ('nobody' is the user apache runs under - check your httpd.conf) su# visudo add=> nobody ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases mailman ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases ------------- Step 7 my mm_cfg.py has these added DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'practiceimprovement.com.au' DEFAULT_URL_HOST = 'lists.practiceimprovement.com.au' DEFAULT_URL_PATTERN = 'http://%s/mailman/' add_virtualhost(DEFAULT_URL_HOST, DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST) IMAGE_LOGOS = '/images/' MTA='Postfix' POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD = '/usr/local/bin/sudo /usr/local/sbin/ mailman.aliases' POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = [] Follow the rest of the instructions from step 7 on at -> <http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/index.html> ----------------- Testing When you create a list using /bin/newlist, you should find that the file /etc/mail/mailman.aliases has been created / updated. (I had some permissions to sort out in a few directories before it all worked smoothly) The error log is helpful at /usr/local/mailman/logs/error These commands can be helpful for troubleshooting, after you have successfully created a testlist and subscribed yourself to that list To test mailman su# echo "From: tony(a)pi.com.au To: testlist(a)pi.com.au Subject: Happy New Year test mail body " | /usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post testlist If that works, use this to test your sendmail/mailman integration su# echo "From: tony(a)pi.com.au To: testlist(a)pi.com.au Subject: Merry Xmas test mail body " | /bin/sendmail -tony(a)pi.com.au testlist(a)pi.com.au Hope this helps someone and would welcome corrections or improvements. Happy New Year, Tony Lembke

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Restoring Lists
by Dennis Putnam 01 Jan '08

01 Jan '08

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I had a disk failure and had to restore my Mandriva system from backup. Everything seems to work except Mailman. Well, mailman works but it does not recognize any of my old lists. How do I get Mailman to see the lists again? TIA. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32) iD8DBQFHeWGB/fiWYqZ2tVQRAvE+AJ9eBhtqYK7Jwg3oIdb/EyF5j5ERZACgvfyh 6J2L47K02sEJ/NHazJhVOwk= =puOi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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