Mailman 3 April 2013 - Mailman-Users

Editing Mailman's text files
by Pete Bell May 8, 2024

May 8, 2024

Hi. I'm a new member of this group but have been running an email list with Mailman for a long time. I am now setting a list up again and want to give a "look and feel" to the list which has more branding of my user group as a whole, and less of a Mailman-feel. I seem to remember that besides editing the public HTML pages, it is possible to edit the text files which Mailman automatically sends out for certain needs (such as 'approve.txt', 'adminsubscribeack.txt', 'invite.txt', and so on). A. Is this still the case? B. If so, where can I find them? (in case they've changed from the ones I have from long ago). C. Where do they need putting, so that Mailman can use them again? It's important that I should tell you that Mailman on my webhosts servers is a "server-wide" installation, and I don't get to edit anything which other clients to their servers need. This would be only for my own use, and as such I need to know where these files go in my own webspace, and how to get Mailman to use them instead of the default ones. I should also say that I have done this before, so unless the facility to do this has been ditched in recent years, I *should* still be able to do it ! Does Mailman perhaps look for these files somewhere in my webspace (which I have to give a specific name), and if it doesn't find them it goes on to find its default versions of these files? Thanks in advance for your help. Pete Bell, UK

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Running two list with same email prefix
by Andrea Cappelli Feb. 27, 2024

Feb. 27, 2024

Hi all, I'm running a mail server with Debian Lenny, MTA is Postfix and i will use postfix-to-mailma.py script to run list I would set up Mailman for running mailing list with same email prefix on different domains, obvious with different list names For example we have ml.domain1.com and ml.domain2.net, i would like to have LISTADDRESS LISTNAME tech(a)ml.domain1.com tech-ml.domain1.com tech(a)ml.domain.2.net tech-ml.domain2.net In this way i can have the same address on differente domains and Mailman (my version is 2.1.11) can distinguish between lists because the list name is different. The list name will be also used to access web interface, so we have http://ml.domain1.com/mailman/admin/tech-ml.domain1.com http://ml.domain2.net/mailman/admin/tech-ml.domain2.net Is possible to accomplish this task? Any idea?

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Hide list address?
by Ricardo Kleemann Nov. 17, 2023

Nov. 17, 2023

Hi, Is there any way to configure Mailman such that, for an announcement-only type list, when a message is sent to the list, the To: shows the member's address, rather than the list address? Some list software allows the ability to hide the list address itself, so that address is not advertised. I couldn't find any configuration specific to that.

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Add "sender's name/email" to BODY of mail as header?
by Mal Feb. 17, 2021

Feb. 17, 2021

I want all mails sent to the list to come from the list's email address... But, in this case, if the user forgets to sign their name at the bottom of their mail body, effectively the mail to the list is anonymous...! Is there a way to add the user name (or email address) to the top of each mail so that the mails have the name of the sender, while the mail itself comes from the list address? I have looked high and low for an answer, but noone seems to have the solution. Thank you! Mal

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Mailman CGI Error-Group mismatch error
by Wang, Mary Y Sept. 10, 2020

Sept. 10, 2020

Hi, I received the following error this morning. So I rerun configure again with the following command: ./configure --with-cgi-id=apache --prefix=/var/mailman. I'm still getting the same error. Is there any place that I can look for so that I can debug this problem better? Perhaps, looking at the config history file or something. Any other places that I can check the cause of this error? "Mailman CGI error!!! The Mailman CGI wrapper encountered a fatal error. This entry is being stored in your syslog: Group mismatch error. Mailman expected the CGI wrapper script to be executed as group "nobody", but the system's web server executed the CGI script as group "apache". Try tweaking the web server to run the script as group "nobody", or re-run configure, providing the command line option `--with-cgi-gid=apache'." Thanks Mary

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Making a Mailman legacy archive searchable?
by David Roth May 23, 2014

May 23, 2014

Is there anything open-source to make a Mailman legacy archive searchable? What would be useful is a way for visitors to a website to be able to search the Mailman archives using a keyword and have it display those mail messages. I'm also thinking of having a tag cloud made up of the most commonly used words from the given Mailman archive. So when one of those tag cloud words is clicked on it lists as an index those messages. Any suggestions? Thanks! David Roth

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MM-2.1.15: Small bug regarding the "request forgery check"
by Ralf Hildebrandt May 12, 2014

May 12, 2014

Today I check the subscribers list ("Membership Management... Section") on one of our lists and called up the legend using "Click here to include the legend for this table." After clicking on that link, the page did indeed display the legend, but the page now starts with: Error: The form lifetime has expired. (request forgery check) -- Ralf Hildebrandt Charite Universitätsmedizin Berlin ralf.hildebrandt(a)charite.de Campus Benjamin Franklin http://www.charite.de Hindenburgdamm 30, 12203 Berlin Geschäftsbereich IT, Abt. Netzwerk fon: +49-30-450.570.155

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accessing relay mailman server from its own network
by Anne Wainwright May 4, 2014

May 4, 2014

Hello, My mailing lists run on a relay server installed as per FAQ 4.88 Accessing the web interface across the internet works fine but accessing while on the host network is not so fine. Instead of the DSL (dyndns) address I use the server name or IP address and all goes fine unless I query the mailing list addresses. Then i am returned to login again and so on ad infinitum. Same if I try to list them. I note that when I mouse-over the menu options the browser bottom line shows the server name (or IP) address that I have used. When I mouse-over the 0-9A-Z membership listing then the DSL forwarding address shows. FAQ 4.29 would indicate that I could change the DEFAULT_URL_HOST setting for existing lists using fix_url.py - in this case perhaps to the IP address? I suppose that would foul up admin access from across the internet but as that is only me we could live with that. Before fools rush in where angels fear to tread - is this the way to go? Maybe there is a route to have the best of both worlds (easy access from the internet and the local network) many thanks in advance anotheranne

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creating hidden field to stop bot spam subscription request
by The League CA Cities Aug. 2, 2013

Aug. 2, 2013

Hello some of my list are being spammed with bot subscription request. I am looking for a way to add a hidden field to the subscription page of each list that a bot would see but a human user will not. I would like to have Mailman automatically drop any subscription request that has the hidden field fill out. below is the subscription area for the list and I have added the subject field. the subject field is what i would like to hide and have drop the request. Subscribe-Box> </TD> <TD WIDTH="12%"> </TD></TR> <tr> <td bgcolor="#dddddd" width="55%">Your name & City/Company (required):</td> <td width="33%"><mm-fullname-box></td> <TD WIDTH="12%"> </TD></TR> <TR> <td bgcolor="#dddddd" width="55%">Subject (required):</td> <td width="33%"><mm-fullname-box></td> <TD WIDTH="12%"> </TD></TR> <TR> I am new to HTML and this is as far as i can get at the moment. If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it. I am running Mailman on a Linux server. Thank you Doug

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Privacy Options Filtering
by Cyndi Norwitz June 30, 2013

June 30, 2013

Hi Mark and everyone, I'm going to call this a bug, for lack of a better term. I use Mailman version 2.1.11. It's hosted at my ISP and I have zero control over upgrading. Sometimes they do some custom builds but I doubt that's an issue here. I've had the same set of issues with previous versions. I'm having some issues with: Privacy options: List of non-member addresses whose postings will be automatically discarded. But it's about the list of expressions and not this specific box. First of all, as a wish list, I would love love love if you made some changes to this feature. I know many folks do not filter for spam but I find it very useful. I can add email addresses to the spam list (you don't call it a spam list, but I do) from the moderation panel, which is awesome. The trouble is with editing. 1) Yea! You fixed this one already! The edit box shows 10 lines of addresses at a time. Now you've added a pull-down expand corner to the box, thank you! 2) To add a domain name to the list, you have to use a regular expression in this form: ^[^@]+@(.*\.)?domain\.com$ (or use net, info, etc). In other words, the only way to actually know that is to be a programmer or to ask on this list and save it for years, as I did. Couldn't we just list the domains, in a separate box if required? After all, we just list the email addresses and obviously the software knows how to handle them. If we had a box for domains, couldn't the software be programmed to handle them? 3) To add a username (or partial) to the list, you have to use a regular expression in this form: ^username That is way easier than domain names but still not something most of us just know. And it only works if it's the beginning of the email address. Could there be an easier way? I don't want to run the risk of list owners overdoing this, but some spam usernames are super obvious. Like freecredit or onlinepoker. 4) It would be fantastic if we could add an entire domain name to the list of filters from the moderation panel. Right now it is a multi-step process to do this (and difficult in part because my spam list is so very long). Again, it would have to be done in a way where a listowner didn't overdo it (like discarding everything from yahoo.com or aol.com because some spammers use those addresses). But it is pretty frustrating to have a moderation page with, say, 6 spams in a row from the same domain name (something obvious) but each one uses a different username, and you know hundreds more are coming. Okay, that's the wish list. Now on to the bug. The moderation panel click feature will add ANY email address to the filter lists upon request. There is no check to see if it is a legit email address or not. But if it adds a bad address, it breaks the filter. The filter does still work, but it may not work for all the good addresses. I'm not sure if it works up to the bad address and then stops. I have had this happen many times and there is no warning at all. The only way you know is if you try to edit the filter box list. Then when you save changes, it erases all of your changes and gives you an error message. The error message I got today said there was a bad email address and then it listed ALL of the addresses (and expressions) in my list. Very not useful. I have too many to scan, though I did start from the bottom (the newer ones) and paged up a bit with no luck. The only way to debug this is to cut and paste the entire list to a text file then paste back a few addresses at a time and save the changes to see if it works. It took me about 20 mins. I discovered three bad addresses, not anywhere near each other either, though my guess is they're variations on the same spammer. nets.service@denmark nets.kort@service nets@service-kort In the past, I've had addresses rejected for having certain symbols in the usernames. This is the first time I've seen missing domain name places. I do try to look for bad addresses when I add them to the discard list from the moderation panel, but I get a lot of spam and sometimes I miss them (not to mention that they're not always obvious like these are). I would like to see the bad email error message come up when you ADD the email address. If it's done directly on the Privacy page then leave it exactly as it is now. But please add a check to the moderation page so you can't add a bad email address without at least being warned about it (better if it's rejected). Also, when giving the error message, please say which address(es) is bad. That's it for now. I may not have been posting here for a long time but I'm still a happy Mailman user. Thanks! Cyndi

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