Mailman 3 June 2013 - Mailman-Users

Privacy Options Filtering
by Cyndi Norwitz 01 Jul '13

01 Jul '13

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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newsgroup->mailman moderation
by karl＠freefriends.org 29 Jun '13

29 Jun '13

Greetings, For gnu.org, we have always had gatewaying between Usenet and mailman for quite a few lists, e.g., help-gnu-emacs and bug-gnu-utils. When a message is gatewayed *from* Usenet to the mailing list, Mailman evidently omits any of the usual moderation features (generic_nonmember_action and the like). Mark (Sapiro) mentioned this in http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2008-April/061154.html, and it's also the behavior that we have always seen. Evidently due to the inq.enqueue call in gate_news, around line 179 in 2.1.15. However, spam does get posted to Usenet, and we don't want it to simply be blindly injected into the mailing lists. The workaround we've been using is to add "Newsgroups:" to the "Spam Filter Regexp" with Action=Hold for header_filter_rules (in Privacy Options > Spam filters). That holds the incoming posts from Usenet. But the downside is significant: every Usenet post is held, even when it would otherwise be approved (e.g., it comes from a known whitelisted address). So, we would really like to have posts from Usenet be subject to the normal mailman moderation rules (for purposes of both holding and accepting messages). Is it feasible to hack gate_news to make that happen? Help? Unfortunately my own mailman-fu is not nearly up to the job :(. Thanks, Karl

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running mailman under CISCO LB
by Camelia Botez 28 Jun '13

28 Jun '13

I have the following architecture: CISCO LB using a virtual IP (VIP) 2 RHEL5 servers running mailman ( on each one of them mailman installed by rpm). The mailman installation was done on each server separately and the only nfs common between those servers is "/var/lib/mailman" ( coming from Netapp volume w/r) containing archives , data , lists and spam directories. When I create a list and I send mail to this list@server1 the mail arrives , but if I send the message to list@VIP the mail is lost. There is something I should do in mailman config files to reflect this architecture? I need this in case one of the servers crashes. Thank you

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Reply e-mail options.
by Joe 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

Hello, everyone. What setting do I need to change in order to have mail sent to Mailman lists show two e-mail addresses for reply ? I have been a member of other lists in the past and remember mail having the address of the list plus the address of the sender displayed. My own lists are only showing the address of the list for reply and the address of the sender does not appear. How can I change this behavior ? Thanks, Joe.

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URL of scrubbed attachments missing in the list archive
by kardan 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

Hi, as listadmin I received a notification, that a 3mb email has been moderated. I found the scrubber option and activated it. Afterwards I let the mail pass and viewed it in the archive. The mail is there, but without attachment (as intended) nor any link to it (contrary to my expectation). I have seen the scrubbing feature has been implemented in 2004 [1] and assume it is well tested. The pipeline option [2] came to my attantion, but I would like to keep the current order. There have been no other FAQ entries regarding attachment than this [3]. This is not related to the long URL issue [4] as the URL does not appear at all. I also did not find it among the launchpad bugs [5]. Also I searched the archive for missing URL etc. so I assume this has not been reported yet. To check, if this is an instance of #265869 (Scrubber/attachment bug on NetBSD) a I asked the mailman admins but there was no such log entry, also they use debian. To reproduce one can try: * setup a ML wihtout scrubbing enabled * send a mail to the list that exceeds the size limit * after the mail appeared for moderation, activate scrubbing * accept the mail and look in the archive if the URL is there Can somebody reproduce this? Thanks, Kardan 1] http://sourceforge.net/p/mailman/patches/291/ 2] http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=7602227 3] http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030548 4] http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Stable+URLs 5] https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/265869 6] https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bugs?field.searchtext=attachment+URL

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Is there any throttle function in mailman?
by Javad Hoseini-Nopendar 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

Hi everybody I like very much to use mailman, but I am always concerned about hosting the mailing list by my own website. In fact, my website host, limits the number of allowed emails to 300 emails per hour. I have a mailing list with about 70 members and right now, the average rate of email sending is one email per week, which means 70 emails per week. Of course that is not beyond the permitted limit, but I would like to expand my activities. I would like to advertise for my mailing list, so more and more members will com to this list, but there is always a big concern. if in the peak time, the users send more than 5 emails in an hour (more than 300 emails per hour), or if the number of my members goes higher, it will be very likely that some of the emails sent to this mailing list will be rejected or returned by the mailing list. Is there any throttle feature in mailman that manages the high traffic of emails in a way that I can make sure no email will be rejected or returned? Thank you

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Ordering of messages in the moderation queue by date?
by Perry E. Metzger 26 Jun '13

26 Jun '13

I run a heavy traffic list where all messages are moderated, and conversations are long. I typically would prefer to see the queue of messages awaiting moderation in time order, not alphabetically by email address as happens by default. I presume this is not possible in the existing code, but how hard would it be to fix? -- Perry E. Metzger perry(a)piermont.com

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Character encoding for mass subscribtion?
by Urwald Urwald 26 Jun '13

26 Jun '13

Hello. I want to mass-subscribe some mail addresses in mailman. I have a list of (spanish) names and the mail addresses. The names usually contain non-ascii characters like a with akute (á), e with acute (é), n with tilde (ñ) and so on. Mailman doesn't import these names correctly. Why not??? I've tried it with entering the list in the web browser. Not working correctly. I've tried to upload a UTF8-encoded text file. Not working correctly. I've tried some other encodings. Not working. However, I've tested it with a file containing only 1 mail address and "áéíóóúñÑ" as name. Finally the upload was working when I used 8859-15. Than I have converted my big address list to 8859-15, and now it didn't work anymore. Yes, I can reproduce that. Does mailman try to auto-recognize the character encoding? How can I get this working??? I need some help. Cheers Tim

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Subscriber Lists
by Doug Walker 25 Jun '13

25 Jun '13

Good day, I use a mailman host site who takes care of all the technical stuff. I have been administrator of 5 email discussion lists the last 3 months and am slowly and surely becoming more proficient at it. I know I can use the "list" command option to get a nice list of subscribers by email address. But, I also need to put out a list that has both the subscribers "Real Name" and their email address. Is there any way I can do this? Doug

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trouble to send out emails
by J Gao 25 Jun '13

25 Jun '13

Hello, I need some help here. I am building a new mail server to replace our old one. I installed postfix, courier, MailScanner on the Centos 6.4. The last I installed mailman v3 and I'm having trouble to make it work. Our old email server has almost same setup, only that server is built 3 years ago with mailman v2. On the new server, I setup some mail list, and transfer subscriber account from our old server. The I test it sending a email to the list. Here is the maillog onthe new server: ------------------------------------ Jun 21 16:32:47 szeta postfix/smtpd[29323]: connect from localhost[127.0.0.1] Jun 21 16:32:47 szeta postfix/smtpd[29323]: 7D76E825BA: client=localhost[127.0.0.1], sasl_method=LOGIN, sasl_username=jgao(a)my-domain.com Jun 21 16:32:47 szeta postfix/cleanup[29334]: 7D76E825BA: hold: header Received: from szeta.my-domain.co (localhost [127.0.0.1])??by szeta.my-domain.com (Postfix) with ESMTPA id 7D76E825BA??for <sjv-dev(a)my-domain.com>; Fri, 21 Jun 2013 16:32:47 -0700 (PDT) from localhost[127.0.0.1]; from=<jgao(a)my-domain.com> to=<sjv-dev(a)my-domain.com> proto=ESMTP helo=<szeta.my-domain.com> Jun 21 16:32:47 szeta postfix/cleanup[29334]: 7D76E825BA: message-id=<446473f75a3499b515b007856debce2b(a)my-domain.com> Jun 21 16:32:49 szeta MailScanner[29315]: New Batch: Scanning 1 messages, 1277 bytes Jun 21 16:32:49 szeta MailScanner[29315]: Virus and Content Scanning: Starting Jun 21 16:32:50 szeta MailScanner[29315]: Spam Checks: Starting Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta MailScanner[29315]: Requeue: 7D76E825BA.A7BE0 to 7DAA4825BE Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta MailScanner[29315]: Uninfected: Delivered 1 messages Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta postfix/qmgr[29297]: 7DAA4825BE: from=<jgao(a)my-domain.com>, size=577, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta MailScanner[29315]: Deleted 1 messages from processing-database Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta postfix/virtual[29352]: 7DAA4825BE: to=<sjv-dev(a)my-domain.com>, relay=virtual, delay=6.2, delays=6.1/0.06/0/0.08, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (unknown user: "sjv-dev(a)my-domain.com") Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta postfix/cleanup[29334]: B3566825BB: message-id=<20130621233253.B3566825BB(a)szeta.my-domain.com> Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta postfix/qmgr[29297]: B3566825BB: from=<>, size=2859, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta postfix/bounce[29354]: 7DAA4825BE: sender non-delivery notification: B3566825BB Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta postfix/qmgr[29297]: 7DAA4825BE: removed ------------------------------------ I see here: Jun 21 16:32:53 szeta *postfix/virtual*[29352]: 7DAA4825BE: to=<sjv-dev(a)my-domain.com>, relay=virtual, delay=6.2, delays=6.1/0.06/0/0.08, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (*unknown user: "sjv-dev(a)my-domain.com"*) Then I got a auto response from mailman say the deliver is failed. When I compare with the old server. I see it looks different when postfix relay the mail: [root@zeta log]# grep 04CD480D3 maillog Jun 21 10:00:05 zeta MailScanner[30548]: Requeue: B8C218070.A97C1 to 04CD480D3 Jun 21 10:00:05 zeta postfix/qmgr[24123]: 04CD480D3: from=<jgao(a)my-domain.com>, size=1102, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jun 21 10:00:06 zeta *postfix/local*[1633]: 04CD480D3: to=<sjv-dev(a)zeta.my-domain.com>, orig_to=<sjv-dev(a)my-domain.com>, relay=local, delay=4.6, delays=4.3/0.01/0/0.28, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent *(delivered to command: /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post * =============================================== Here is some of the settings related: (I'm using virtual domain/users with mysql) /etc/postfix/main.cf: virtual_alias_maps = proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_forwardings.cf, mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_email2email.cf,mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_aliases.cf /etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_aliases.cf: user = mail_admin password = my_passwd dbname = mail query = SELECT forw_addr FROM mxaliases WHERE alias='%s' hosts = 127.0.0.1 /etc/aliases: # STANZA START: sjv-dev # CREATED: Wed Aug 11 09:10:34 2010 sjv-dev: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post sjv-dev" sjv-dev-admin: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin sjv-dev" sjv-dev-bounces: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces sjv-dev" sjv-dev-confirm: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm sjv-dev" sjv-dev-join: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join sjv-dev" sjv-dev-leave: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave sjv-dev" sjv-dev-owner: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner sjv-dev" sjv-dev-request: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request sjv-dev" sjv-dev-subscribe: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe sjv-dev" sjv-dev-unsubscribe: "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe sjv-dev" # STANZA END: sjv-dev mysql> select * from mxaliases; +---------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+ | alias | forw_addr | +---------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+ | mailman(a)my-domain.com | mailman(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-admin(a)my-domain.com | mailman-admin(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-bounces(a)my-domain.com | mailman-bounces(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-confirm(a)my-domain.com | mailman-confirmt(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-join(a)my-domain.com | mailman-join(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-leave(a)my-domain.com | mailman-leave(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-owner(a)my-domain.com | mailman-owner(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-request(a)my-domain.com | mailman-request(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-subscribe(a)my-domain.com | mailman-subscribe(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | mailman-unsubscribe(a)my-domain.com | mailman-unsubscribe(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-admin(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-admin(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-bounces(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-bounces(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-confirm(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-confirmt(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-join(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-join(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-leave(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-leave(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-owner(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-owner(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-request(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-request(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-subscribe(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-subscribe(a)szeta.my-domain.com | | sjv-dev-unsubscribe(a)my-domain.com | sjv-dev-unsubscribe(a)szeta.my-domain.com | +---------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+ I'm not sure what cause the mail delivery failed. Please help. Thanks a lot. J Gao -- __ _|==|_ ('')__/ >--(`^^') (`^'^'`) `======'

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