Mailman 3 May 2015 - Mailman-Users

set help
by Jon Gardner 25 May '15

25 May '15

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How to know if all messages were distributed
by Regis 25 May '15

25 May '15

Hello, I sent my first mailingfew days ago to an important number of subscribers : about 200 000 (!). However, i wonder if the distribution has been complete... Indeed 72 hours after the mailing, i continue to see permanently about 500 messages in the queue of my messaging server (i have a linux centOS VPS with Qmail). But what is strange is that actually some of those messages were really distributed : I am sure because I got return receipt emails for them ! So i am confused on the total distribution of my mailing to all subscribers : is there a possibility so see the number of messages processed or not yet processed directly from the server (logs...) ? THANKS A LOT :-) Regis.

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SMTP-AUTH and Mailman 2.1.18-1
by Jon Gardner 25 May '15

25 May '15

I’ve been using the SMTPAUTHDirect.py handler to enable Mailman 2.1.x to use SMTP-AUTH. It’s been working great, until I upgraded my server from Mavericks (Mac OS X 10.9 + Server 3) to Yosemite (Mac OS X 10.10 + Server 4). For some reason, Server 4 isn’t permitting “plain” authentication at all. I’m still chasing that down, but in the meantime Mailman can’t send anything at all. Is there a way to make the SMTPAUTHDirect.py handler use cram-md5 authentication instead of plain? TIA, Jon

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getting count of users
by Smith, David 25 May '15

25 May '15

Hi folks, I've written a little script to give me output of the following from any or all listservs we manage. Listname, Last Activity, List Creation Date, Anonymous List, Admins I'd like to add a count of users into the mix, but just cannot seem to get my head around it. Here is my script : """Display the last post time for a list or all lists. Save as bin/FSU_listCheck.py Run via bin/withlist -r FSU_listCheck listname or bin/withlist -a -r FSU_listCheck to do all lists. """ import time def FSU_listCheck(mlist): #This process outputs the following : listname, Last Activity, List Creation Date, Anonymous List, Admins print '%s; %s; %s; %s; %s' % ( mlist.real_name, time.strftime('%Y/%m/%d %I:%M %p',time.localtime(mlist.last_post_time)), time.strftime('%Y/%m/%d %I:%M %p',time.localtime(mlist.created_at)), mlist.advertised, mlist.owner ) I am sure it's some sort of mlist.usernames and then maybe using a cmd= 'wc -l' , but I cannot get it to jibe.. any help? Thanks! Dave Smith drsmith(a)fsu.edu<mailto:drsmith@fsu.edu> (850)645-8024 Linux Administrators its-unixadmins(a)fsu.edu<mailto:its-unixadmins@fsu.edu> (850)644-2591 Information Technology Services Florida State University

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Migrating a list to a new email address
by Bill Christensen 23 May '15

23 May '15

Hi all, I have a long running list with thousands of subscribers that needs to move to a new set of email addresses. The existing list is announce-only, so doesn't get a whole lot of traffic - typically at most a few outgoing emails a year. But some time back a bot started sending spam registrations via hits to the web server in the form <domain name> /mailman/subscribe.cgi/bwbnewsletter?email=<bogus_registrant>@<somedomain.tld><mailto:ruanwei12@hotmail.com>&fullname=&pw=123456789&pw-conf=123456789&language=en&digest=0&email-button=Subscribe. I long ago routed real users to an alternative signup, but the spam keeps coming, unrelenting, and are now anywhere between 1k and 10k per day. I'm thinking that the best way to deal with this is to move everything, including the archives, to a newly created list on the same domain name. The alternative signup method i've set up works, so if i set the new list to "Advertise this list..." = NO in Privacy, I'm hoping the spammers won't figure out that the new mailman list exists. I could also set it up as a closed list if that's possible since the new registrations will be entered manually in bulk, though I don't see any settings which disallow all subscriptions. So I'd like confirmation on how to move a list to a new address under the same domain. I figure I need to: 1) take a backup copy of the <oldlistname>.mbox file in /archives/private 2) take a copy of the current subscriber list (already done using the list_members command) 3) create the new list, aliases, etc and associated email addresses 4) remove /archives/private/<newlistname>.mbox 5) rename <oldlistname>.mbox to <newlistname>.mbox 5b) do I need to replace all instances of <oldlistname> with <newlistname> everywhere they occur in the .mbox file? Would doing so cause any problems? 6) rebuild the archives 7) test the new list 8) bulk subscribe the subscriber list to <newlistname> 9) delete the old list Did I miss anything? Thanks in advance.

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DMARC hack
by Allan Hansen 23 May '15

23 May '15

Never mind - it started working. I just had to leave the house and come back. Mayby the issues at work can be done that way, too. :-) Allan Hi, I have waited almost a year for AOL and Yahoo to admit that they messed up and to remove their DMARC policy. My AOL and Yahoo subscribers are pretty upset at me because I won’t let them post. A number now have two subscriptions, one for posting (from GMail) and another for receiving the messages. So against my better judgement, I included this hack in Cleanse.py; 22c22 < from email.Utils import formataddr, parseaddr — > from email.Utils import formataddr 69,74d68 < < # Added to deal with DMARC issuej < name, addrs = parseaddr(msg.get('from')) < addrs += '.invalid' < del msg['from'] < msg['from'] = formataddr((name, addrs)) \ No newline at end of file I found it in the discussion list. I don’t get compile errors, but Cleanse.pyc is not being updated. I have stopped and restarted Mailman and I have also rebooted, but same non-action. I have not tried ‘compileall’ and am not eager to, either (permissions, where to invoke, etc). Any suggestions? The host OS is Mac OS X Server 10.5.8 with Mailman 2.1.14 Yours, Allan

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Mapping back from pipermail HTML to a specific message in the raw archive?
by Skip Montanaro 20 May '15

20 May '15

I have a list of spam HTML messages in pipermail archives. I need to clear out their content (no great problem there), but I also want to clean the corresponding messages in the raw mbox file (zap subject, message body, etc, but leave a placeholder message so future archive regeneration doesn't mess up article numbers). Looking at one of these messages (HTML source), I see nothing like a message id which would allow me to unambiguously identify the corresponding raw message. Does something exist? If not, what heuristics have people developed to perform this mapping? Thanks, Skip Montanaro

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Subscription Spam
by Brian Carpenter 20 May '15

20 May '15

Hello My Fellow Mailman Users: Subscription spam is starting to become an issue with some of our mailing lists. Am I correct that the SUBSCRIBE_FORM_SECRET setting will help reduce the amount of subscription spam? Are there any other measures that can be done to reduce this type of spam? The pattern is one email address trying to subscribe to all the mailing lists of domain for several days. Banning the address works until a new email address is being used. Brian Carpenter Owner Providing Cloud Services and more for over 15 years. T: 336.755.0685 E: brian(a)emwd.com www.emwd.com <https://www.facebook.com/pages/EMWDcom/192156034142506> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianemwd>

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List not archiving, not sending mail, mischief log shows 'Hostile listname: <list>"
by Bill Christensen 19 May '15

19 May '15

Mark, Adding the line SUBSCRIBE_FORM_SECRET = 'Some string unique to your site" in mm_cfg.py definitely made a huge difference to the spam registration problem I was having. Looks like I may not need to migrate the list to a new address after all. One more problem to solve. I'm using Gmail for all our email addresses, and pulling the mail into Mailman using Fetchmail. It's been working fine for years. One of my more important lists recently started getting this in the Fetchmail console: post script, list not found: <listname> fetchmail: Error writing to MDA: Broken pipe and the Mailman error log says: <date> gate_news(12061): IOError : [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/opt/local/var/mailman/locks/gate_news.lock.<site FQDN>.12061.0' <date> post(12068): post script, list not found: <listname> Mailman mischief log says: Hostile listname: <listname> In the smtp-failure log I'm seeing Message size exceeds fixed limit In General Options => Maximum length in kilobytes (KB) of a message body. Use 0 for no limit. I have '0'. I've run the check permissions script ( with -f), it changes nothing. It appears that there are 5 messages waiting for delivery, though I don't see them in any of the queues. This appears to have started around the time that I upgraded from Mailman 2.1.17 (or so) to 2.1.20 That list is also not archiving properly, so it clearly has problems All the other lists on the server are working fine as far as I can tell. Any ideas as to what's wrong?

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Could Mailman cope with extra Mime sections intended for Apple Watches?
by Peter Shute 18 May '15

18 May '15

This isn't something that's happening right now, and I doubt it will, but you never know. Apple is playing with mail formats intended to display as a message summary on an Apple Watch, but show the full message on a larger device. Apparently it's a legal format, but lots of mail clients are getting it wrong, and I'm wondering what Mailman would do with a message like that. I don't fully understand the problem, but it seems that reply notifications sent to people participating in discussions in the "Apple Support Comunities" (discussions.apple.com)have recently changed format. Previously they had an html part and a plain text part. Now they have an additional second html part containing the message summary. Mail clients are supposed to go through the Mime sections and select the most suitable one to display. It appears that most are selecting the html summary and not looking any further, so people don't see the full message. It appears that Exchange is even removing the other bits. It hasn't been suggested that Apple will try to do the same thing with user generated email, but who knows? If they do, will Mailman pass all three Mime sections through? It's being discussed here, and someone has posted a sample of the format: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7039218?start=15&tstart=0 Peter Shute

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