Mailman-Users November 2011

mailman-users@python.org

48 participants
40 discussions

inactivating bounce processing to speed up list performance

by Lluis Montoliu

Dear listers, I eventually traced that my mailman installation is delaying the distribution of messages because it is trapped in a bunch of "bounce processing", dealing with undelivered messages, etc... in this regard, could I simply inactivate bounce processing? If I do so I should expect an increase in speed and performance of mailman and a decrease in delays, but I might risk that some members, whose messages could not be delivered for whatever reasons, might loose some of these messages. Is that so? Would you recommend setting Mailman to not performing bounce processing to improve its performance? thanks Lluis

9 years, 7 months

archive_private locks up admin interface?

by Daniel Griscom

I'm using Mailman 2.1.14 on my congregation's website, hosted by site5.com. We use it for a couple of dozen mailing lists, and haven't had many troubles. Problem 1: someone noticed that all the list archives were publicly viewable, and even Googleable, which is a Bad Thing. So, I went into the Mailman admin interface to turn off the archives. In the Archiving Options page, I found the "archive_private" setting. The description was a bit vague, but it seemed to be what I wanted, and currently was set to "public". So, I set it to "private", and submitted. Problem 2: boom! The Admin interface crashed, saying >Bug in Mailman version 2.1.14 > >We're sorry, we hit a bug! > >Please inform the webmaster for this site of this problem. Printing >of traceback and other system information has been explicitly >inhibited, but the webmaster can find this information in the >Mailman error logs. Problem 3: the Mailman admin interface for this list seems to be permanently borked. When I go back to the admin page, I'm invited to log in, but when I do it crashes again with the above message. Restarting Firefox (8.0.1 on OS X 10.5.8), deleting cookies, using a completely different browser: nothing helps. Small good news 1: the list is still processing email. Small good news 2: the other lists' admin interfaces on this machine aren't borked, just the two I tried setting archive_private to "private" on. (I broke the second one so I could test whether emails were being processed.) So, I need help on two items: 1) How do I un-bork those two mailing lists, without losing all of the list settings (especially the list of members)? One note: since this is a shared server, my account is nailed down pretty tightly, and I'm pretty sure I don't even have access to the main mailman directories. So, I'll probably need to pass instructions on to the hosting company's tech support. 2) How can I keep the public from seeing these archives? In truth we don't need them even privately, so either making them private or getting rid of them completely would be fine by me. Of course, if the answer is "set archive_private to private", then I need help on a third item: 3) How can I debug Mailmain's problem with the archive_private setting? Many thanks, Dan -- Daniel T. Griscom griscom(a)suitable.com Suitable Systems http://www.suitable.com/ 1 Centre Street, Suite 204 (781) 665-0053 Wakefield, MA 01880-2400

9 years, 7 months

Re: [Mailman-Users] inactivating bounce processing to speed up list performance

by Lluis Montoliu

Thanks Ralf, I understand. Apologies If I did not make myself understandable. I am not sending garbage to non-existing addresses. All addresses are verified and existing but not all messages appear to be delivered equally well, to my surprise, while some servers appear to refuse messages coming from this list for a while, until they are accepted for distribution, thus delaying overall mailman performance while it keeps trying to deliver, therefore I was considering to cancel bounce processing to speed up mailman performance. When I ask my hosting provider for the SMTP logs there appears to be activity by mailman, bounce processing, when there are no messages to distribute through the list, therefore I inferred that we are experiencing delays in distribution, beyond 30-60 minutes, from a message being sent to a message being distributed, because of this bounce processing actions. This is a list with about 600 members. According to your answer this would not work this way. regards Lluis * Lluis Montoliu<montoliu(a)cnb.csic.es>: > Dear listers, > I eventually traced that my mailman installation is delaying the > distribution of messages because it is trapped in a bunch of "bounce > processing", dealing with undelivered messages, etc... in this > regard, could I simply inactivate bounce processing? No. You need to clean out your lists. Why are you sending out garbage to non-existing addresses at? A properly maintained list has a low percentage of undeliverables - when (as in your case) the undeliverables are exceeding the normal fallout of about 3%, then you're having bad lists. > If I do so I should expect an increase in speed and performance of > mailman and a decrease in delays, but I might risk that some members, > whose messages could not be delivered for whatever reasons, might loose > some of these messages. Is that so? No. > Would you recommend setting Mailman to not performing bounce processing > to improve its performance? thanks Lluis No. Sending mail to non-deliverable adresses is going to get you into blacklists. That's how Hotmail and SenderScore work. Furthermore you're going to hit spamtraps sooner or later. -- Ralf Hildebrandt Geschäftsbereich IT | Abteilung Netzwerk Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Campus Benjamin Franklin Hindenburgdamm 30 | D-12203 Berlin Tel. +49 30 450 570 155 | Fax: +49 30 450 570 962 ralf.hildebrandt(a)charite.de | http://www.charite.de -- Dr. Lluis Montoliu Investigador Cientifico - Research Scientist CSIC Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia (CNB-CSIC) Campus de Cantoblanco C/ Darwin, 3 28049 Madrid (Spain) Tel. +34-91-5854844 / Fax +34-91-5854506 e-mail: montoliu(a)cnb.csic.es skype: lluis.montoliu WEB: http://www.cnb.csic.es/~montoliu/ UAM: http://rincon.uam.es/dir?cw=766897583007812 U756 CIBERER: http://www.ciberer.es Spanish EMMA node: http://www.emmanet.org ISTT: http://www.transtechsociety.org

9 years, 7 months

question about harvesting of non-archived lists by archiveorange.com

by Christopher Adams

Hello all, A list owner of one of our 500+ mailing lists notified me that postings from their non-archived list was being harvested by archiveorange.com and could be found via Google. I found that many of our lists are archived on this site, and this is not something that we really want. I am just querying the list to see if this has happened with others using Mailman. The website explains that archiveorange "subscribes" to lists and then harvests messages. It seems that the only way this could happen to a non-archived list is for the mailbox directories to readable to the outside. Is there something else that is going on here? Thanks for any information that anyone has to offer. -- Christopher Adams adamsca(a)gmail.com

9 years, 7 months

Text for moderated non-member message reject

by Jack G F Hill

I searched and looked, but am unable to find where the text for the message that is sent to a rejected moderation from a non-member ("Non-members are not allowed to post messages to this list") is stored so I can change it to something a tad less cryptic. Situation: Members of our list are also members of other, somewhat topically-related, lists and sometimes cc those other lists. When a member of the "other" list replies, it is held by our list since that individual is NOT a member of our list. I can easily recognize when this occurs, but the default reject message is a bit harsh for our purposes, which are to be somewhat inclusive rather than walled off... Something like "You must be a member of the xyz_group to post messages to the list" (which is what I have manually inserted in place of the default message), if I could but find when the terse message is stored. -- Jack Hill, W4KH - BoatAnchors Listowner/Archiver listown(a)nanniandjack.com "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" "Il n'y a que les idiots qui ne changent jamais d'idee"

9 years, 7 months

stuck bounce-events write

by Richard Haas

Greetings. Last week, we ran into a rather odd event (first time we've seen it in a decade or so of Mailman ops), where a bounced message kept writing to its /var/mailman/data/bounce-events-PID.pck file, until it filled the disk -- it wasn't a series of bounces (same delivery times on every received header), it was the same bounce written over and over again (about 5000 times), unfortunately, that bounce contained a 7 MB base64 encoded attachment. I thought I'd toss the details out here, to see if anyone had a thought on what caused this, or (other than implementing a disk watching cron job, which we already have), how to avoid it in the future ... though it certainly seems like a fluke. Anyhow, the message was first sent to the list at 16:41:35 (after manual list owner approval of the moderated posting), and was posted normally at: /var/mailman/logs/post:Nov 16 16:41:35 2011 (1560) post to [somelist]-news from [someone](a)my.org size=7705563, message-id=<AB96A557B3C21F4298987419BF86FA1B672214168A@[my domain]v>, success The message had a PDF attachment, and was from the list owner. The list had about 120 members, and most of the members (there were some other undeliverable addresses) got the message. The list owner got the message. There appeared to be nothing bogus about the attachment. The first bounce seemed normal: Delivery failed for the following reason: Server entsrmbx01.teledyne.com[74.201.16.49] failed with: 550 #5.1.0 Address rejected <someone>@teledyne.com This has been a permanent failure. No further delivery attempts will be made. ... and then the first bounce was written to the /var/mailman/data/bounce-events pck file at: Received from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by [myserver] (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3272D601E21 for <[somelist]-news-bounces@myserver>; Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:41:55 -0500 (EST) ... but was written another 5000 times with it's PDF attachment. ... at 17:43 local, the disk filled with: Nov 16 17:43:13 [hostname] postfix/smtpd[27239]: NOQUEUE: reject: MAIL from localhost[127.0.0.1]: 452 4.3.1 Insufficient system storage; proto=ESMTP helo=<localhost> Nov 16 17:43:13 [hostname] postfix/smtpd[27239]: warning: not enough free space in mail queue: 36216832 bytes < 1.5*message size limit Oddly, the bounce-events file's last write was considerably earlier: -rw-rw-r-- 1 mailman mailman 37867700224 2011-11-16 16:52 bounce-events-01556.pck The only questionable log entries I can find after/around the message posting is for an abort of the Archrunner and Bouncerunner before the disk filled: Nov 16 17:06:08 2011 (1533) Master qrunner detected subprocess exit (pid: 1555, sig: 9, sts: None, class: ArchRunner, slice: 1/1) [restarting] Nov 16 17:06:14 2011 (27568) ArchRunner qrunner started. Nov 16 17:06:18 2011 (1533) Master qrunner detected subprocess exit (pid: 1556, sig: 9, sts: None, class: BounceRunner, slice: 1/1) [restarting] Nov 16 17:06:20 2011 (27573) BounceRunner qrunner started. Since the [somelist]-news list in question doesn't have archiving enabled (never has), so I the ArchRunner restart. There were no other qrunner restarts since 6:33 that morning, and the only later ones were when admin staff went in to clear things up. So chronologically: - 16:41 first bounce occurs and is written to bounce-events by PID 1556 - 16:52 PID 1556 makes (according to the file system) its last write to bounce-events-1556.pck - 17:02 ArchRunner and BounceRunner get restart signals, PID 27573 is the new BounceRunner - 17:43 the disk fills to the point postfix starts complaining ... that doesn't add up unless one presumes PID 1556 hung around and kept writing bounce-events-1556.pck from 17:02 to 17:43 (and probably beyond). Does the above add up to anything for anyone else? Is there something else that should be checked? Thanks for any insight. -- Richard Haas <rhaas(a)rhaas.us> GnuPG public key ID: 1CB7F0E2 --

9 years, 7 months

Site admin per mail domain

by Christian Lerrahn

Hi, Please forgive me if my question is a display of ignorance. I've only very recently switched from ezmlm-idx to mailman and am still trying to get my head around the difference in concept. I've searched the FAQs and archives but wasn't actually too sure what exactly to use as search terms. I have noticed that Mailman identifies lists by there names only but allows them to run in different mail domains. I realise that I can also have different domains and host names for the web interfaces. However, what I cannot find out for sure is if a site admin only exists per Mailman install or also per mail domain. In other words, can I have an admin who is allowed to create new lists (something I understand to be exclusively a site admin task) for a certain mail domain but not on other mail domains. If I was running lists test test1 test2 and they were reachable on test(a)lists.example.com, test1(a)lists.example.net, test2(a)lists.example.org could I have one account which can create lists in example.com, another one which can create lists in example.net and still another one which can create lists in example.org? Also, is there a trick to have lists test3(a)lists.example.net and test3(a)lists.example.com simultaneously without needing to work with aliases somehow? Cheers, Christian

9 years, 7 months

http / https interfaces

by Pierrik Le Guennec - Domicile

Hello, I have installer last maiman on debian lenny, by apt-get. There are 404 errors for interfaces on a domain. http://<domain>/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/<list> http://<domain>/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/<domain> There are mail warnings : Nov 18 13:38:02 <server> postfix/postmap[5085]: warning: /var/lib/mailman/data/virtual-mailman.db: duplicate entry: "<list>@<domain>" (and other aliases) /var/lib/mailman/data/aliases seems ok. But /var/lib/mailman/data/virtual-mailman has a problem : there are several lists of <domain> which are not deleted. I tried to delete and recreate the list, same problem. And same problem with all lists on that domain. After reinstalling mailman, I have almost the same problem. Now, there are no errors with virtual-mailman.db. But if I delete a list of this domain, it stays in virtual-mailman. For others domains, no problem. I have found that web admin/users interfaces are https URLs for the domain mail of this list, and not http URL. And the links from admin/users interfaces are https URLs, and coded as http URLs. In mm_cfg.py, there is DEFAULT_URL_PATTERN = 'http://%s/cgi-bin/mailman/' And no https directive in <domain>.vhost Mystery... Where can I search ? Thanks !

9 years, 7 months

Mailman sending to Exchange 2010 Mail service.

by Collins, Alex

Hi Everyone. We run Mailman as a department. Our core mail service is Exchange 2010. Exchange is running in Shadow Redundancy mode which means it uses a Message DE duplication system. I'm lead to believe that this is based on the Message-ID. (Please correct me if I'm wrong !) In short, if a user posts to more than 1 list, Exchange dedupes the message on the way back. This means users only get 1 list message. It's causing Chaos ! So: RFC's and the non PC tampering of message headers aside: How can I use Mailman (or even sendmail) to remove the Message-ID so that Mailman will set its own Message-ID and we can actually send messages to more than one list. I'm 100% aware that this is not a Mailman issue. If I'm too far OT, I send my apologies. TIA -- Alex Collins. Library Systems and Support Officer. Rivermead Library. Tel: 0845 XXX XXXX alex.collins (at) anglia.ac.uk http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk This product is printed with 100% recycled electrons ! -- EMERGING EXCELLENCE: In the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008, more than 30% of our submissions were rated as 'Internationally Excellent' or 'World-leading'. Among the academic disciplines now rated 'World-leading' are Allied Health Professions & Studies; Art & Design; English Language & Literature; Geography & Environmental Studies; History; Music; Psychology; and Social Work & Social Policy & Administration. Visit www.anglia.ac.uk/rae for more information. This e-mail and any attachments are intended for the above named recipient(s)only and may be privileged. If they have come to you in error you must take no action based on them, nor must you copy or show them to anyone please reply to this e-mail to highlight the error and then immediately delete the e-mail from your system. Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Anglia Ruskin University. Although measures have been taken to ensure that this e-mail and attachments are free from any virus we advise that, in keeping with good computing practice, the recipient should ensure they are actually virus free. Please note that this message has been sent over public networks which may not be a 100% secure communications Email has been scanned for viruses by Altman Technologies' email management service - www.altman.co.uk/emailsystems

9 years, 7 months

using mailing list folder in archive template

by Jason Fayre

Hello, I am relatively new to Mailman. I am administering a server with around 200 lists on it. I am setting up Swish-e to provide searchable list archives. Each list has it's own search. In the search form, I need to be able to reference a cgi script. Each list has its own cgi script in the mailman cgi-bin folder. The names of the cgi scripts are the same as the folder containing the mailing list in mailman. I thought I could just use %(listname)s in my templates to reference this. Unfortunately, this is returning the friendly list name, not the name of the folder where the list resides. I can change my cgi script names if I need to, but I was wondering if there is a template tag I can use to insert the name of the list as it appears in the mailman lists directory. Also, is there a list of the mailman tags that can be used in these templates? Thanks!

9 years, 7 months