Mailman-Users October 2017

mailman-users@python.org

30 participants
29 discussions

Add "sender's name/email" to BODY of mail as header?

by Mal

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

8 months, 1 week

Mailman CGI Error-Group mismatch error

by Wang, Mary Y

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

1 year, 1 month

Find a smtp server to send out emails

by Leon

Hi, This problem is not caused by mailman, but I still want to give it a shot here. I'm hosting a mailing list on top of mailman. Emails are supposed to be sent out by AWS ses. However, ses requires that sender address must be verified, which leads to a problem that emails sent by subscribers to mailing list cannot be sent to other subcirbers, since their addresses are not verified. And it is impossible to verified every subscriber. Are there smtp service providers allowing unverified email address to send out emails, or do I have other solutions? Thanks. Leon

1 year, 7 months

Debugging mass invitations using web page interface...

by The Mailing List Server Admin

Dear Mailman Cognoscenti, I'm helping one of my list owners send out 5K plus invitations to students to subscribe to his mailing list. Our current configuration: Mailman v2.1.20 RHEL v5.11 Semdmail v8.13.8 Apache v2.2.3 Since this was the first time doing this, I suggested breaking the batch input into 3 groups, 50, 500, and the rest. The 50 went fine, as did the 500, but the largest batch gave him a generic web server error: > Internal Server Error > > The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was > unable to complete your request. > > Please contact the server administrator, root(a)conundrum.unh.edu and > inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might > have done that may have caused the error. > > More information about this error may be available in the server > error log. I looked at the logs and I couldn't find anything that hinted at what went wrong. So I asked the owner to send me the last back and I'd give it a try. I wrote a script that removed folks already subscribed to his list and split the remaining subscribers up into 6 files with a thousand records each. I just tried uploading the 1st batch of 1K, with the following options: Subscribe these users now... (*) Invite Send welcome message... (*) No Send notifications... (*) No And entered a 7 line paragraph explaining the invitation. I ended up having the same error happen. Looking at the Mailman logs, I can't see any difference before or after my submission. In the HTTPD logs, I see: >> [Fri Aug 26 19:59:23 2016] [warn] [client 132.177.215.132] Timeout >> waiting for output from CGI script >> /usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin/admin, referer: >> https://lists.unh.edu/mailman/admin/campus.connection/members/add >> [Fri Aug 26 19:59:23 2016] [error] [client 132.177.215.132] >> Premature end of script headers: admin, referer: >> https://lists.unh.edu/mailman/admin/campus.connection/members/add So is there an inherent limit to the number of invites that can be submitted via the web form? As a work around, how would I do large invites on behalf of the owner from the command line, including the 'extra text' that is allowed via the web interface? -- Cordially, the UNH Mailing List Server Admins Bill Costa, senior admin (603) 862-3056

2 years, 1 month

changing domains on Mailman implementation

by Keith Seyffarth

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

3 years, 1 month

spam discard expressions

by Jim Dory

Apparently our host provider performs spam tests only on outgoing, rather than incoming - since my spamassassin blacklists don't have any effect. So I've discovered the filters offered in Mailman after being completely buried by spammers trying to post to our subscriber only list. I've started putting these in Sender Filters: ^[^@]+@bcira\.com$ ^[^@]+@airablo\.com$ ^[^@]+@bfklaw\.com$ ^[^@]+@bettella\.com$ ^[^@]+@areallycool\.com$ ^[^@]+@aristo-tec\.com$ ^[^@]+@benallgood\.com$ ^[^@]+@al-meshkah\.com$ ^[^@]+@atoccs\.stream$ ^[^@]+@authors\.com$ ^[^@]+@aulson\.com$ ^[^@]+@atmyx\.bid$ ^[^@]+@airtecperforms\.com$ but what is the syntax for blocking domains ending in .loan .stream .trade etc, other than .com. I've been reading up on python expressions but at first reading it is a bit overwhelming - hoping for a simple example. I've also started adding in words under Spam filters such as: ^Subject: .*Phentermine ^Subject: .*F\*buddy ^Subject: .*H00kup ^Subject: .*InstaF\*ck ^Subject: .*Instacheat Wondering if anyone would care to share their lists of filters - or a good resource? thanks, Jim

3 years, 7 months

Re: [Mailman-Users] "Bounce action notification" emails for subscribes/unsubscribes

by Terry .

Hi Mark & others, Sorry for the delay in responding, and thanks for your generous offer of working with my webhost and/or cPanel to solve this. I passed that offer to my webhost, but it seems they have been able to sort it out with cPanel themselves. Here is the response from my webhost: ========================================== The issue with @mydomain.com was caused due to the setting "Discard the email while your server processes it at SMTP time with an error message" under cPanel>>Email>>Default Address. We've setup "Forward to Email Address" to catchall(a)mydomain.com<mailto:catchall@mydomain.com>. As cPanel support explained, this indicates that all mail that is delivered, but does not have an address (like mailman-bounces@) on this server will be delivered to the default account - this can potentially pose the risk of the email account receiving email for accounts that do not exist, something commonly seen when a domain is being spoofed. Otherwise, it will be rejected with "No such user here". ========================================== They then provided some evidence from a log that the problem was fixed. I then tested lists in all 7 domains, and they all sent subscribe/unsubscribe emails to me perfectly. I then asked Jim Dory (who has participated in this thread) to setup a default address for his list, and it worked for him, too. I’m confused by the wording of the above paragraph from the webhost, but maybe they mean that the server is configured to not allow emails to be sent out *from* addresses which can’t receive emails, and this is to help reduce outbound spam. (For years I’ve known that the webhost was fighting outbound spam by preventing email from being sent out from *domains* which I don’t have on that server, but maybe this even applies to the address level.) So, I guess when Mailman tries to send a subscribe/unsubscribe notification email out from mailman-bounces(a)mydomain.com<mailto:mailman-bounces@mydomain.com> to the list owner address, maybe the server blocks it, since that mailman-bounces(a)mydomain.com<mailto:mailman-bounces@mydomain.com> address doesn’t exist, as such. I tested this theory using a less overkill approach, by not using the "catchall" default address method, but just creating a forwarder (alias) for the address mailman-bounces(a)mydomain.com<mailto:mailman-bounces@mydomain.com> which redirects its mail to one of my mailboxes (even to my catchall mailbox), and that seemed to work! I don't think this is to provide an address which will receive emails resulting from subscribes/unsubscribes (since I don't think that process sends anything *to* the mailman-bounces@... address), but just to satisfy the anti-spam requirements of the system that every sending address should be able to receive email, not just bounce it. Any thoughts on this, Mark/others? Confused? I can only imagine that the problems started recently due to some update to cPanel or other change by the webhost, because having looked through the history of my subscribe/unsubscribe email notifications, it looks as if the problems only started a few months ago, but I don’t think I’ve made relevant changes to those domains for years. (When I asked the webhost about this, they responded "Unfortunately, we cannot be sure about this. The cPanel representatives haven't mentioned about any recent changes to the Exim configuration.") Anyway, here is a summary of my subscribe/unsubscribe notification problems that seem to have been resolved by setting the default addresses for my domains to my catchall address, instead of bouncing emails sent to non-existent addresses: 1. For some of my domains/lists I’d receive notifications as *attachments* to emails which have the subject “Bounce action notification” (as per my 1st post). 2. For some of my domains/lists I’d receive subscribe emails as *attachments*, but not receive anything for unsubscribes. (Might be the other way round sometimes.) 3. For some of my domains/lists I’d receive no subscribe or unsubscribe emails at all (as per my 3rd post). Thanks. Terry

3 years, 11 months

Mailman 2.1.25 released

by Mark Sapiro

I am pleased to announce the release of Mailman 2.1.25. Python 2.4 is the minimum supported, but Python 2.7 is strongly recommended. This is a routine bug fix release with a minor new feature and some accessibility improvements for screen readers. See the attached README.txt for details. Mailman is free software for managing email mailing lists and e-newsletters. Mailman is used for all the python.org and SourceForge.net mailing lists, as well as at hundreds of other sites. For more information, please see our web site at one of: http://www.list.org https://www.gnu.org/software/mailman http://mailman.sourceforge.net/ https://mirror.list.org/ Mailman 2.1.25 can be downloaded from https://launchpad.net/mailman/2.1/ https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mailman/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/mailman/ -- Mark Sapiro <mark(a)msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

3 years, 12 months

Postfix delivers to mailman, but not aliases

by James Dore

Hi list, I recently migrated our mailman server from an old SLES 11 box to Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS, and installed Mailman from the Ubuntu repositories along with Postfix and other prerequisites. Mailman itself is working fine, but I have a handful of regular email aliases in /etc/aliases which do not receive mail, and when examining the logs, get bounced with a “User unknown” error. What did I screw up? (I’ve checked my aliases and they’re good, and I’ve run the newaliases command numerous times). Cheers, James -- James Dore IT Officer New College, Oxford, OX1 3BN 01865 279252 (Mon-Fri 0830-1600) - 01865 612345 All other www.new.ox.ac.uk<http://www.new.ox.ac.uk> [cid:481BAAE5-F170-469A-B15F-59C56158337F@new.ox.ac.uk] New College is registered with the Charity Commissioners. New College Oxford® is a registered trade mark - No. 2588652

3 years, 12 months

Change List Name

by Don Keating

Can a list name be changed? If so, how? Thanks. >don< Donald R Keating DBS Company www.dbscompany.com 803-312-4246 Phone 800-513-2321 Fax

3 years, 12 months