Mailman 3 December 2016 - Mailman-Users

changing domains on Mailman implementation
by Keith Seyffarth Sept. 20, 2018

Sept. 20, 2018

Is there an efficient way to change the domain name that mailman is affiliated with? I have two mailing lists that were created for an organization before that organization had their own domain. At the time the organization was sure they did not want their own domain and would not be getting a domain. Since then, they have chosen to get a domain and set up a web site. I would like to move their mailing lists onto their domain. It looks like the process for this is: 1) get the list of subscribers 2) delete the mailing list from the one domain (losing the archives) 3) create the mailing list on the new domain 4) subscribe the list of subscribers This process doesn't seem too difficult, but I would prefer to keep the archives, if possible. Both domains are on the same server, running CentOS7 and PLESK 12.5, if that makes a difference. Thanks, Keith

2 2

Mailman 2.1.23 install on Ubuntu Desktop 16.04
by Caesar Samsi Dec. 30, 2016

Dec. 30, 2016

Hi all, Mark, Barry, Ive finally formalized my cookbook to install mailman. The base installation is a mail server (the usual suspects: postfix and dovecot) that hosts multiple domains (virtual domains). I wanted the flexibility of virtual domains so I can consolidate mail server hosting for several domains that I have. The cookbook can be found here: https://caesarsamsi.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/install-a-lamp-server-and-mail… due to its file size (about 140KB) which can’t be attached to this mailing list email. You could probably use the insights from the cookbook to install mailman on a simple one domain mail server. Let me know if clarification is needed and typos or errors found. Cheers, I hope you enjoy the journey! Caesar.

1 0

After migrating list to new server, config.pck database gets truncated by web UI
by Jay Sekora Dec. 29, 2016

Dec. 29, 2016

(Note PS at bottom!) Hi. I'm prepping to migrate a bunch of lists (one at a time, due to huge number of lists and huge size of archives) from one server to another, and I've hit a snag with the first list I'm trying. After migrating the list (as described below), I can go to the lists admindb page on the new server and get the list of pending requests that was on the old server, but immediately the request database gets truncated. (It stays a valid pickle file, it just gets all the requests emptied out of it, so the file itself is much shorter but non-zero length.) This happens *when I load* the admindb page, not when I submit the form. That seems really weird to me, since I'd expect a page load would only read the pickle, not write it. The old server is running Debian and Mailman 2.1.13 (from the Debian package). The new server is running Ubuntu and Mailman 2.1.16 (from the Ubuntu Trusty package; we need to run Trusty for now for complex and uninteresting reasons; I'd rather run 2.1.18, and may look into running that on Trusty once I get the basic migration issues resolved). Relevant UIDs and GIDs (www-data:www-data and list:list) are the same on both systems. Short version: I rsync -aSHov /var/lib/mailman/lists/$listname/ new-server:/var/lib/mailman/lists/$listname and similarly copy the public and private archives (preserving symlinks as needed). check_perms on both systems reveals similar errors which look cosmetic (things like rotated logs, temporary directories where I've copied things, and the like), but I haven't yet let it run to completion because of the volume of our archives. Then I change host_name via the web interface and m.web_page_url interactively with withlist (using fix_url seems not to work when changing http: to https:) and m.Save(). One *possibly* relevant detail is that the new host doesn't currently have a valid certificate. (It's using the old host's cert, and I manually allow the exception in my web browser for testing.) But for Mailman 2, the only http{,s} traffic should be sent from my browser, right? This kind of has the feel of a permissions problem, but clearly the CGI scripts can read from and write to the request.pck database. (And changes to the list config data in config.pck seem to be working normally.) As I said, check_perms hasn't run to completion yet because it's plowing through the (already pre-rsync'ed) archives, but it got through the things in /var/lib/mailman/lists and didn't find anything wrong with this list. There's nothing interesting in the Mailman logs (which Debian/Ubuntu put in /var/log/mailman), and the only thing in the Apache error logs is a warning that the cert it has configured doesn't match its hostname. Anybody have any ideas? Jay PS -- I composed this all last night. Today, the behavior has changed: This morning, a new message was received by the list (forwarded from the old list server to the new list server, and added to request.pck on the new server by the new Mailman installation). Now, when I load the admindb page, the old requests (which were in the request.pck copied from the old server) are all immediately thrown away (although displayed in the admindb form) but the new request which came in this morning remains. So it kind of looks like something about the old requests causes the list to think they're invalid and discard them when it loads them. I initially saw this behavior with "require_explicit_destination" on and "acceptable_aliases" empty, but turning off "require_explicit_destination" and putting just the local part of the list address in "acceptable_aliases" doesn't make any difference. -- Jay Sekora Linux system administrator and postmaster, The Infrastructure Group MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

3 5

Re: [Mailman-Users] Installing http://packages.ubuntu.com/zesty/mailman, stuck at "Temporary failure"
by Caesar Samsi Dec. 24, 2016

Dec. 24, 2016

[adding list back for archive] I’ve also added: POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = ['yugi.us<http://yugi.us>','mail.yugi.us<http://mail.yugi.us>'] VIRTUAL_MAILMAN_LOCAL_DOMAIN = ‘localhost' Restarted mailman, postfix, and apache2. I still get in /var/log/mail.log Dec 22 12:17:50 localhost postfix/trivial-rewrite[6456]: warning: hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/virtual-mailman is unavailable. open database /var/lib/mailman/data/virtual-mailman.db: No such file or directory On Dec 22, 2016, at 12:10 PM, Caesar Samsi <cmsamsi(a)hotmail.com<mailto:cmsamsi@hotmail.com>> wrote: It’s mail.yugi.us<http://mail.yugi.us/> On Dec 22, 2016, at 12:06 PM, Mark Sapiro <mark(a)msapiro.net<mailto:mark@msapiro.net>> wrote: On 12/22/2016 11:24 AM, Caesar Samsi wrote: *What is the value of the list's host_name attribute (near the bottom of the list's web admin General Options page). * Overview of all yugi.us<http://yugi.us/> mailing lists <http://yugi.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo> Go to <http://yugi.us/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/mailman>, log in and scroll down until you see Host name this list prefers for email. (Details for host_name) (about 5 settings from the bottom). What is that set to? *What's in mm_cfg.py? (Make sure you're looking at the correct one.)* ... #------------------------------------------------------------- # Default domain for email addresses of newly created MLs DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'yugi.us<http://yugi.us/>' #------------------------------------------------------------- # Default host for web interface of newly created MLs DEFAULT_URL_HOST = 'yugi.us<http://yugi.us/>' #------------------------------------------------------------- # Required when setting any of its arguments. add_virtualhost(DEFAULT_URL_HOST, DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST) You are missing POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS. See <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2016-December/081685.html> which says in part POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = ['yugi.us<http://yugi.us/>'] If you want to generate data/virtual-mailman for lists in the mail.yugi.us<http://mail.yugi.us/> email domain, this should be POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = ['mail.yugi.us<http://mail.yugi.us/>'] or POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = ['yugi.us<http://yugi.us/>', 'mail.yugi.us<http://mail.yugi.us/>'] if you want both. -- Mark Sapiro <mark(a)msapiro.net<mailto:mark@msapiro.net>> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

3 12

Mailman Hosting
by Odhiambo Washington Dec. 23, 2016

Dec. 23, 2016

Hi, Does anyone know of a provider who hosts Mailman and who has a good reputation with American ISPs - Verizon and ATT, etc? These providers somehow have notoriety blocking mailing list emails. I'm currently hosting with a provider based in Oz, but having some difficulties when it comes to Verizon and ATT. AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, Yahoo etc are all accepting mails, but majority of the subscribers are with Verizon/ATT and that has really affected one list that I have so I need to change. Please recommend one. -- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 "Oh, the cruft."

9 20

Spam to "-request" address generating backscatter spam
by Edward Hasbrouck Dec. 23, 2016

Dec. 23, 2016

My mail server has been blacklisted by several major e-mail providers because of backscatter spam generated by my Mailman installation: (1) Spammers harvest the "listname-request(a)domain.com" address from a public Web page (presumably the Mailman admin page). (2) Spam with forged "From:" headers is sent to "listname-request(a)domain.com". (3) Mailman sends "subscribe confirmation" messages to the addressees in the forged "From" fields. How can I stop this? I am willing to give up "subscribe to this list by e-mail", and require all subscriptions to be via the Web. I used to use, and manage, mailing lists that handled all subscribe and unsubscribe requests by e-mail. But now almost all genuine subscription requests to my lists are made through the Web interface. (I also used to run e-mail auto-responders, for example to send an FAQ in response to any e-mail message sent to a special e-mail address. I have stopped them all, for similar reasons -- they were attracting spam with forged "from" addresses, thus generating spam to those "from" addresses.) I have found several discussions of variants of this issue on this list, going back at least 10 years. But so far as I can tell, there is not yet a simple option in the Web admin (or a config file) for each Mailman list, "Accept subscription requests by e-mail? Yes/No". I understand that this may take time to implement, but this problem has been known for a very long time. I would like to see this put on the feature request list, however that is done. In the meantime, I need a workaround if I am to continue using Mailman at all. I would still prefer to have e-mail confirmation of new subscriptions, but I don't think that would cause as much of a backscatter problem: The "-request" address can be harvested form the public Web, but the "-confirm" address would be much less likely to do so. But if it is simpler to implement, it would be OK to require new subscriptions to be confirmed through the Web interface. Temporarily, I have completely disabled the list that was attracting spam to its "-request" address. This isn't a viable long-term option. Is there any workaround, either through the Web interface or by editing Mailman configuration files, to disable the "-request" address or cause all mail to that address to be dropped without generating a reply? FWIW, I am using Mailman through Plesk, which offers it as an option. Plesk knows that "-request" is already in use by Mailman, and won't let me create that address or alias or manage it except through Mailman. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer, Edward Hasbrouck ---------------- Edward Hasbrouck <edward(a)hasbrouck.org> <https://hasbrouck.org> <https://twitter.com/ehasbrouck> +1-415-824-0214 "The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World" (5th ed., 2011) <https://hasbrouck.org/PN> Consultant to The Identity Project: <https://papersplease.org> GnuPG/PGP public key: <https://hasbrouck.org/ehasbrouck.asc> fingerprint: 0B0B 8F74 CEA3 83AB 97B3 F6AF BB7E F636 165C 22F5

4 12

edit confirmation request?
by Dave Stevens Dec. 22, 2016

Dec. 22, 2016

I have a potentially large subset of users for a new list whose firm will make difficulties about them clicking on a link in Mailman's confirmation request email. I'd like them to only have the option to reply in order to confirm. I don't see a way to edit the confirmation email's text or, alternatively, to turn off the clickthrough option for new subscriptions. Anyone know how to do this? D -- Reporter to Mahatma Ghandi after his tour of east London "What do you think of western civilization, Mr. Ghandi?" Ghandi - "I think it would be an excellent idea!"

2 1

Fwd: Installing http://packages.ubuntu.com/zesty/mailman, stuck at "Temporary failure"
by Caesar Samsi Dec. 22, 2016

Dec. 22, 2016

[resending from right email address] Hi Mark, I’m starting from scratch but with the 2.1.23 mailman package found here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/zesty/mailman I took the amd64 .deb package http://packages.ubuntu.com/zesty/amd64/mailman/download. I have done the following steps: - Linuxmint 18 Sarah (Ubuntu 16 flavor) - LAMP with PHP7 (stock install) - Postfix and Dovecot (stock install) - Updated Postfix and Dovecot config file to serve virtual domains (e.g. yogi.us<http://yogi.us> and samson.us<http://samson.us>) - Downloaded and installed the 2.1.23 mailman package - Edited /etc/mailman/mm_cfg.py and enabled MTA=Postfix - Copied /etc/mailman/apache.conf to /etc/apache2/sites-available/mailman.conf - Used this instead what was in apache.con: <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin/mailman"> Options +ExecCGI AddHandler cgi-script .cgi Options FollowSymLinks Require all granted </Directory> - Enable apache2 cgi module (was not enabled on stock install) sudo a2enmod cgi sudo service apache2 restart http://mail.yugi.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo now produces a nice mailman webpage Note that Postfix services virtual domain. Now I follow: https://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/postfix-virtual.html I use: virtual_alias_maps = <your normal virtual alias files>, hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/virtual-mailman instead of the /usr/local/mailman … as that’s not where the mailman package is installed. I now run /var/lib/mailman/genaliases and voila /var/lib/mailman/data/virtualman and virtualman.db are generated! I added, from one of my previous install I had a file called /etc/postfix/transport with the content of: mail.yugi.us<http://mail.yugi.us> mailman: I sudo reboot just in case. I send an email to mailman(a)yugi.us<mailto:mailman@yugi.us>, it arrives in postfix and mail.log looks like: Dec 22 09:50:05 mail amavis[5567]: (05567-08) Passed CLEAN {RelayedOutbound}, LOCAL [192.168.1.1]:56325 <caesar(a)samsi.us<mailto:caesar@samsi.us>> -> <mailman(a)yugi.us<mailto:mailman@yugi.us>>, Queue-ID: 6C0733FC22, Message-ID: <9035407C-0F0F-4EC1-8E0B-791645C68E4F(a)samsi.us<mailto:9035407C-0F0F-4EC1-8E0B-791645C68E4F@samsi.us>>, mail_id: 50j8MooSZtlh, Hits: -0.002, size: 307, queued_as: DCB473FC72, 2500 ms Dec 22 09:50:05 mail postfix/smtp[6025]: 6C0733FC22: to=<mailman(a)yugi.us<mailto:mailman@yugi.us>>, relay=127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10024, delay=2.6, delays=0.1/0.03/0.01/2.5, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 from MTA(smtp:[127.0.0.1]:10025): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as DCB473FC72) Dec 22 09:50:05 mail postfix/qmgr[5982]: 6C0733FC22: removed Dec 22 09:50:05 mail postfix/smtp[6031]: DCB473FC72: to=<mailman(a)yugi.us<mailto:mailman@yugi.us>>, relay=yugi.us<http://yugi.us>[216.9.1.153]:25, delay=0.52, delays=0.06/0.03/0.07/0.35, dsn=4.3.0, status=deferred (host yugi.us<http://yugi.us>[216.9.1.153] said: 451 4.3.0 <caesar(a)samsi.us<mailto:caesar@samsi.us>>: Temporary lookup failure (in reply to RCPT TO command)) Nothing happens after "Temporary lookup" failure. What to do? Thank you, Caesar. On Dec 16, 2016, at 10:26 AM, Caesar Samsi <cmsamsi(a)hotmail.com<mailto:cmsamsi@hotmail.com>> wrote: Well this certainly might make it easier for me. I'll give the package a try. Thank you. Sent from my Samsung Tablet Mark Sapiro <mark(a)msapiro.net<mailto:mark@msapiro.net>> wrote: On 12/16/2016 08:52 AM, Barry S. Finkel wrote: As I have written before, one can easily create a Debian/Ubuntu package for Mailman 2.x based on the SourceForge source. Contact me for details. This will install Mailman in the directories that Debian/Ubuntu uses, and I assume that installing the package will overwrite any existing Debian/Ubuntu installation. Thanks Barry. Also note there is an article at <https://wiki.list.org/x/17891606> that discusses how to upgrade the Debian/Ubuntu package from source. Also note that there is a current (2.1.23) Ubuntu Mailman package at <http://packages.ubuntu.com/zesty/mailman> with links to the .deb for all supported architectures and similarly for Debian at <https://packages.debian.org/stretch/mailman>. -- Mark Sapiro <mark(a)msapiro.net<mailto:mark@msapiro.net>> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users(a)python.org<mailto:Mailman-Users@python.org> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/cmsamsi%40hotmail.com ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users(a)python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/cmsamsi%40hotmail.com

2 5

Tiny itty bitty bug
by Caesar Samsi Dec. 22, 2016

Dec. 22, 2016

If you go to your mailing list’s admin page. At the very bottom, the domain name is missing the very fist dot: Overview of all mailyugi.us mailing lists<https://yugi.us/listinfo> It should be mail.yugi.us<http://mail.yugi.us>

2 2

Configure options not known
by Matt Morgan Dec. 22, 2016

Dec. 22, 2016

I'm working on upgrading this old (2.1.12) mailman installation so I can start addressing DKIM (etc.) related problems with delivery. I've downloaded 2.1.23. To make sure I was in good shape, I ran configure and make (not 'make install'). They both worked after I installed dnspython. However, the instructions in UPGRADING say run 'configure' with the same options you used in your previous install I don't know, nor does anyone else at this org, what options may have been used to configure the 2.1.12 install. Is there a way to figure it out? Or some way to determine what I might want? If I get them wrong, is there a way to know that and recover? Thank you, Matt

3 9