Mailman 3 November 2010 - Mailman-Users

Re: [Mailman-Users] Moving / upgrading Mailman from Solaris to Linux
by b19141＠achilles.ctd.anl.gov 11 Nov '10

11 Nov '10

Ivan Fetch <ifetch(a)du.edu> wrote: >Hello, > >We are planning to move our Mailman installation from Solaris to Linux, >and upgrade in the process. I'd love to hear from anyone who has run >production Mailman on Linux. > >What experiences have list members had with RedHat vs. Ubuntu Mailman >packages, vs. compiling Mailman from source? > >At this point, even though I prefer to use packages when possible, I am >leaning toward compiling Mailman from source because of: >1. Red Hat packages are typically more ancient >2. Ubuntu packages seem to include non-standard patches to Mailman > (still sorting this out) > >Additionally, has anyone run into problems with Python packages >provided by Red Hat and Ubuntu? Check the archives of the list. I run Mailman 2.1.13 (soon to be 14) on Ubuntu Dapper (to be converted to the latest LTS release). I built my own Mailman package from the SourceForge source because most of the Debian/Ubuntu patches were undocumented as to what they did, and one removed a necessary library. Contact me off-line for more details. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Barry S. Finkel Computing and Information Systems Division Argonne National Laboratory Phone: +1 (630) 252-7277 9700 South Cass Avenue Facsimile:+1 (630) 252-4601 Building 240, Room 5.B.8 Internet: BSFinkel(a)anl.gov Argonne, IL 60439-4828 IBMMAIL: I1004994

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Mailman Crashes Regularly
by Aaron Kreider 11 Nov '10

11 Nov '10

I'm getting regular mailman crashes every 2-4 weeks. I've had 4 so far. I'm running a centos VPS with mailman 2.1.13. What is the best way to restart mailman? I've been restarting the entire vps, which obviously is a bad idea. What can I do to prevent this from happening? Here is the error log entries from when it crashed: Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19680): No child with pid: 3683 Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19680): [Errno 3] No such process Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19680): Stale pid file removed. Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): Traceback (most recent call last): Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/bin/mailmanctl", line 548, in ? Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): main() Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/bin/mailmanctl", line 367, in main Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): check_for_site_list() Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/bin/mailmanctl", line 277, in check_for_site_list Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): sitelist = MailList(sitelistname, lock=0) Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 115, in __init__ Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): execfile(filename, dict) Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/lists/mailman/extend.py", line 5, in ? Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): from Mailman.MysqlMemberships import MysqlMemberships Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/MysqlMemberships.py", line 49, in ? Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): import MySQLdb Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 19, in ? Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/_mysql.py", line 7, in ? Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/_mysql.py", line 4, in __bootstrap__ Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 881, in resource_filename Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): return get_provider(package_or_requirement).get_resource_filename( Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 1351, in get_resource_filename Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): self._extract_resource(manager, self._eager_to_zip(name)) Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 1372, in _extract_resource Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): real_path = manager.get_cache_path( Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 962, in get_cache_path Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): self.extraction_error() Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 928, in extraction_error Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): raise err Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): pkg_resources . ExtractionError : Can't extract file(s) to egg cache The following error occurred while trying to extract file(s) to the Python egg cache: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/root/.python-eggs' The Python egg cache directory is currently set to: /root/.python-eggs Perhaps your account does not have write access to this directory? You can change the cache directory by setting the PYTHON_EGG_CACHE environment variable to point to an accessible directory. Oct 13 01:30:23 2010 mailmanctl(19694): Oct 13 01:31:11 2010 mailmanctl(22029): PID unreadable in: /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/data/master-qrunner.pid Oct 13 01:31:11 2010 mailmanctl(22029): [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/data/master-qrunner.pid' Oct 13 01:31:11 2010 mailmanctl(22029): Is qrunner even running? Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): Traceback (most recent call last): Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/bin/mailmanctl", line 548, in ? Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): main() Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/bin/mailmanctl", line 367, in main Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): check_for_site_list() Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/bin/mailmanctl", line 277, in check_for_site_list Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): sitelist = MailList(sitelistname, lock=0) Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 115, in __init__ Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): execfile(filename, dict) Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/lists/mailman/extend.py", line 5, in ? Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): from Mailman.MysqlMemberships import MysqlMemberships Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/MysqlMemberships.py", line 49, in ? Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): import MySQLdb Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 19, in ? Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/_mysql.py", line 7, in ? Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/_mysql.py", line 4, in __bootstrap__ Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 881, in resource_filename Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): return get_provider(package_or_requirement).get_resource_filename( Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 1351, in get_resource_filename Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): self._extract_resource(manager, self._eager_to_zip(name)) Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 1372, in _extract_resource Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): real_path = manager.get_cache_path( Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 962, in get_cache_path Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): self.extraction_error() Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r80622-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 928, in extraction_error Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): raise err Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): pkg_resources . ExtractionError : Can't extract file(s) to egg cache The following error occurred while trying to extract file(s) to the Python egg cache: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/root/.python-eggs' The Python egg cache directory is currently set to: /root/.python-eggs Perhaps your account does not have write access to this directory? You can change the cache directory by setting the PYTHON_EGG_CACHE environment variable to point to an accessible directory. Oct 13 01:31:14 2010 mailmanctl(22123): -- Energy Justice Communities Map Developer - http://www.energyjustice.net/map

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Large list and delivery concerns
by Andrew Hodgson 11 Nov '10

11 Nov '10

Hi all, Ok, I have dealt with several Mailman lists in the past, however, all have been relatively small number of subscribers (around 60 subscribers being the limit, with around 2-3 messages per day). However, I have now taken on a list of around 350 subscribers receiving around 10-20 posts a day, and wonder what the most efficient way is to send the messages? I am currently using the default of Mailman sending out the message to the MTA (default Debian Exim on localhost) as one message with lots of recipients. Is it best to fan out these deliveries into more than one message by changing SMTP_MAX_RCPTS and using more than one connection by changing SMTP_MAX_SESSIONS_PER_CONNECTION? Any other suggestions? It has gone well so far, the only issue being initially blocked by Yahoo mail servers, however, I am dealing with this separately. Thanks. Andrew.

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Redundant Mailman servers
by John Wingenbach 11 Nov '10

11 Nov '10

Hi, I am trying to set up redundant/parallel mailman servers. In order to accomplish this, I will have 3 servers which run mailman on them. One server at a time will be determined to be the "admin" point. However, all three will enable distributing email to the pertinent lists. Obviously, archival of the mail to the lists is not enabled or supported. ADMINSERVER -> points to one of SERVERA, SERVERB or SERVERC Email to the lists gets sent to any of SERVERA, SERVERB or SERVERC (MX distributes to all 3 servers). Configurations from ADMINSERVER are to be sync'd to the other 2 servers. The problem I am running into is that when I duplicate the lists to the other servers, the lists which are "advertised" on the current admin server do not show up as advertised. However, config_list shows the lists as advertised. I am duplicating the following files across the servers: /var/lib/mailman/data/aliases /var/lib/mailman/lists/* What am I missing such that /mailman/admin will display the same set of advertised lists? Thanks, John

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Approved message is discarded
by Mark Sapiro 04 Nov '10

04 Nov '10

On 10/29/2010 8:11 AM, André van Kan wrote: > Hi Larry, > > Although we have the same problem, ours is even weird in > some aspects. I made an test-list - groep3 - with two members. > If mail is send by a non-member, all messages are discarded > after approval: > > Oct 29 15:59:09 2010 (20460) groep3: Discarded posting: > From: acvankan(a)gmail.com > Subject: test after restart > Oct 29 16:04:30 2010 (21937) groep3: Discarded posting: > From: acvankan(a)gmail.com > Subject: last one Please post to the list, not to me personally. However, the above messages, presumably from Mailman's vette log, come from two different PIDs. Thus, I'm guessing that you are approving these messages via the admindb web interface, and something is going wrong in that process resulting in the message being discarded by the admindb CGI itself. > BUT if messages are sent by senders as mentioned in [Sender Filters] / > "List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted" > THEN messages are delivered (of course without the necessity of approval). > > Since the vette-contents is rather concise, I editted > IncomingRunner.py'sErrors.DiscardMessage as follows, according > a earlier posting about this subject: > syslog('vette', 'Message discarded, msgid: %s, handler: %s', > msg.get('message-id', 'n/a'), handler) > but to no avail. Nothing changes in the output-format. Because the message is not discarded by IncomingRunner. It is discarded by the HandleRequest method in Mailman/ListAdmin.py called from Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py. > Since all our lists suffer the same problem, a generic > configuration error may be assumed, but I've no idea > how to fix it. Any hint would be gratly appreciated. Have you modified admindb.py in any way? Does the web admin interface work? What Mailman version is this? How exactly are you approving messages? -- Mark Sapiro <mark(a)msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

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What Causes Random Unsubscribe Notices
by David Andrews 04 Nov '10

04 Nov '10

I run mailman with about 175 lists, and 6000 users, many of whom belong to multiple lists. I have personalized e-mail set to yes, and the following in the footer which produces a personal options link for the user in each message: To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for %(real_name)s: %(user_optionsurl)s Several times a week I get mail from a user saying they got an unsubscribe confirmation message and hadn't done anything to trigger it. I believe them because I have gotten some too. This behavior seems to have started when I started adding personalized footers. Is it somehow caused by the long string of personalized links left in messages when people reply and don't trim off bottom. Some of these message chains can get pretty long. Or, is there something else that causes the generation of seemingly random unsubscribe confirmation messages? Dave David Andrews: dandrews(a)visi.com Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dandrews920

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non-delivery to virtual domain
by David Newman 04 Nov '10

04 Nov '10

(Apologies for re-raising a topic I asked about here a couple of years ago. The instructions on Sourceforge have changed a bit since then.) New server runs OpenBSD 4.7, postfix 2.65, mailman 2.1.14, and virtual domains. Mail sent to/from virtual domains works fine. Different story with Mailman. Although postfix says a message addressed to a list is "sent" to all addresses, subscribers from virtual domains on this server do not receive the message. Subscribers on other domains not on this server do receive the message. There's no indication of trouble in the Mailman logs or in maillog. I've followed the setup instructions here, doing section 6.1.2 before 6.1.1 (given the link about doing virtual stuff first): http://mailman.sourceforge.net/mailman-install/postfix-virtual.html http://mailman.sourceforge.net/mailman-install/postfix-integration.html I've pasted the config files below. Thanks in advance for clues on getting Mailman to deliver to virtual addresses on this server. dn server hostname: mail.domain1.tld virtual domains: domain1.tld # (not its real name!) domain2.tld domain3.tld ----- from /etc/postfix/main.cf: .. myhostname = mail.domain1.tld mydomain = domain1.tld mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost, $mydomain .. alias_maps = hash:/etc/mail/aliases, hash:/usr/local/mailman/data/aliases virtual_alias_maps = proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/sql/forwardings.cf proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/sql/email2email.cf hash:/usr/local/mailman/data/domain1-tld hash:/usr/local/mailman/data/virtual-mailman ----- from /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py: MTA = 'Postfix' MAILMAN_SITE_LIST = 'mailman' DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'domain1.tld' DEFAULT_URL_HOST = 'mail.domain1.tld' DEFAULT_URL_PATTERN = 'https://%s/mailman/' PUBLIC_ARCHIVE_URL = 'https://%(hostname)s/pipermail/%(listname)s' IMAGE_LOGOS = '/icons/' POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD = '/usr/local/sbin/postalias' POSTFIX_MAP_CMD = '/usr/local/sbin/postmap' POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = [ 'domain2.tld', 'domain3.tld' ] # Clear the Defaults.py VIRTUAL_HOSTS entry VIRTUAL_HOSTS.clear() add_virtualhost('DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST', 'DEFAULT_URL_HOST') add_virtualhost('domain2.tld', 'domain2.tld') add_virtualhost('domain3.tld', 'domain3.tld') ----- /usr/local/mailman/data/aliases # The ultimate loop stopper address mailman-loop: /usr/local/mailman/data/owner-bounces.mbox # STANZA START: mailman # CREATED: Sat Oct 30 11:23:37 2010 mailman: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post mailman" mailman-admin: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman admin mailman" mailman-bounces: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman bounces mailman" mailman-confirm: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman confirm mailman" mailman-join: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman join mailman" mailman-leave: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman leave mailman" mailman-owner: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman owner mailman" mailman-request: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman request mailman" mailman-subscribe: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe mailman" mailman-unsubscribe: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe mailman" # STANZA END: mailman # STANZA START: s # CREATED: Sat Oct 30 11:35:12 2010 s: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post s" s-admin: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman admin s" s-bounces: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman bounces s" s-confirm: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman confirm s" s-join: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman join s" s-leave: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman leave s" s-owner: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman owner s" s-request: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman request s" s-subscribe: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe s" s-unsubscribe: "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe s" # STANZA END: s ----- /usr/local/etc/mailman/data/domain1-tld: domain1.tld IGNORE @domain1.tld @mail.domain1.tld ----- /usr/local/mailman/data/virtual-mailman: # LOOP ADDRESSES START mailman-loop(a)domain1.tld mailman-loop # LOOP ADDRESSES END # STANZA START: s # CREATED: Sat Oct 30 11:35:12 2010 s(a)domain1.tld s s-admin(a)domain1.tld s-admin s-bounces(a)domain1.tld s-bounces s-confirm(a)domain1.tld s-confirm s-join(a)domain1.tld s-join s-leave(a)domain1.tld s-leave s-owner(a)domain1.tld s-owner s-request(a)domain1.tld s-request s-subscribe(a)domain1.tld s-subscribe s-unsubscribe(a)domain1.tld s-unsubscribe # STANZA END: s -----

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Message text not showing up in digests or archives - Skipped content of type multipart/alternative
by Carl Shuller 04 Nov '10

04 Nov '10

A sporadic number of messages in digest and archives are showing up with out the original message text and instead "Skipped content of type multipart/alternative" is showing up. I did a search and found a few others had experienced this problem some years ago but there wasn't any real follow up to the original posts, none that were helpful anyway. I was hoping folks on this list might have some insights. Thanks so much. Carl

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Frequent use of clone_member
by Ivan Fetch 02 Nov '10

02 Nov '10

Hello, We are changing student email from mailboxes, to forwarding addresses. Among other challenges, we are exploring various ways to deal with students who are subscribed to closed (only subscribers may post) mailing lists. (There are a lot of similar challenges when switching to an email forwarding model - any list members who have gone through this, I would love to pick your brain!) One possibility we're exploring, is to change a student's mailing list subscriptions, when they change their forwarding address. We would iterate through these address changes and run clone_member, like: Clone_member --remove --admin old(a)our.domain new(a)outside.domain We could end up processing as many as 500 address changes nightly (running clone_member for each one), with each run of clone_member iterating through all mailing lists. I'm concerned that this is much more than clone_member was intended for. Can Mailman developers or heavy uses of Mailman comment on this? Thanks very much, Ivan.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailman DOA after power outage crash.
by Tanstaafl 01 Nov '10

01 Nov '10

On 2010-10-31 7:00 AM, "J.A. Terranson" <measl(a)mfn.org> wrote: > Thanks for the flush information: even though this was a unique > situation (every box in the rack was damaged, several beyond repair > [including the backup server]), living in the middle of the tornado > capital of the world means it could realistically happen again, so > thats a really good one to know. Sounds to me like you should make it a priority to get your servers communicating with your UPS's to perform safe shutdowns for extended power outages?

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