Mailman 3 May 2018 - Mailman-Users

Debugging mass invitations using web page interface...
by The Mailing List Server Admin Sept. 5, 2019

Sept. 5, 2019

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

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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

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Spam Subscriptions
by David Andrews June 4, 2018

June 4, 2018

I have a mailman installation with over 300 lists. It is cPanel, but I am the administrator so have access to command line etc. I have just two lists that receive a bunch of spam subscribes each day -- hundreds of them, in fact. For some reason -- which is good, they are held, so don't go through, not quite sure why. Two questions -- first is there a file I can erase for each list that will get rid of all the held subscriptions, without breaking anything else. I tried once, and my installation broke -- don't know if it is related, but don't want to try again unless I do it right. Secondly, there is some commonality in the subscribe addresses, are there strings I can use to discard the subscribes so I never have to see them. Below are examples, there is a common word, or a common word, a period ., and another common word, then a plus sign + then a 4 5 or 6 character word, all alpha, and @gmail.com Here are examples: dragonommz+ jwmidnight+ nommz.naidoo+ If I could knock these out, it would be helpful. This has happened several times previously, but has always stopped after a few weeks. This time it has been a couple months. Finally, I know it is probably too late in the Mailman2 cycle to get a new feature, but in the web UI, it would be nice if you could delete all deferred subscriptions. You can do so with deferred messages, that are held, but not subscriptions. Thanks! Dave

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"Freezing" mailing list
by Tatsuo Ishii June 2, 2018

June 2, 2018

Hi, I would like to "freeze" an existing mailing list: I want to keep the mailing list but I want no one newly subscribe the list. Can you please anyone tell me how I can implement it? Best regards, -- Tatsuo Ishii SRA OSS, Inc. Japan English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en.php Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp

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Problems Erasing Subscribe Spam
by Rüdiger Wolf June 1, 2018

June 1, 2018

We're currently dealing with some Subscribe Spam. Dealing with it, I encountered a problem I need help with: I used Mark's scrip list_pending (https://www.msapiro.net/scripts/list_pending) to find out how many Subscriptions we got and which adresses were used. I iterated over all lists I got from list_lists --bare and took just the ones with "type: S". Turns out we got 66608 subscriptions from 66560 different adresses. Luckily, they all match the regex \w*\+\w*(a)gmail\.com, so I tried to wipe the mess whith another script of Mark, erase (https://www.msapiro.net/scripts/erase). It works nicely for a bunch of lists, but I don't get why it doesn't work with all of them. Looking more closely I found in /var/lib/mailman/lists/<listname> the pending.pck file the script is operating on. Does someone have an idea why it might not work for all lists? Regards, Ruediger

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How do I run 2.x mailman more securely?
by Parker, Michael D. June 1, 2018

June 1, 2018

I've been assigned the task of attempting to secure our current implementation of GNU MailMan. Have any of you out there done this? What did you do? Some of the initial items that have been directed my way: 1. Can archiving be totally and permanently be eliminated? 2. How and where are the passwords stored? 3. Can user passwords be eliminated and have the list administrator make any user adjustments which should not be necessary? 4. Does the website have to run in http: since passwords are entered at points in the interactions? Thanks for your guidance and thoughts.

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How does one edit the .pck files?
by Parker, Michael D. May 31, 2018

May 31, 2018

I'd trying to change one of the parameters in one of the .pck files .... How can this file be edited/changed in Linux? I've tried searching but cannot find what I want. Thanks.

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analytics tool for mailman?
by Jeffrey Westgate May 31, 2018

May 31, 2018

I have a list-owner asking if there is a way for us to provide him " list analytics like number of posts over time, new members over time, etc? " I don' know of any, or how that would even work.... except for a horrible stroll through the archive... anybody got any tools that do analytics? -- Jeff Westgate DIS UNIX/Linux System Administrator ________________________________________ From: Mailman-Users [mailman-users-bounces+jeffrey.westgate=arkansas.gov(a)python.org] on behalf of mailman-users-request(a)python.org [mailman-users-request(a)python.org] Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2018 11:00 AM To: mailman-users(a)python.org Subject: Mailman-Users Digest, Vol 171, Issue 26 Send Mailman-Users mailing list submissions to mailman-users(a)python.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to mailman-users-request(a)python.org You can reach the person managing the list at mailman-users-owner(a)python.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Mailman-Users digest..."

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[Mailman-cabal] GDPR
by Stephen J. Turnbull May 31, 2018

May 31, 2018

I hate to disagree with everybody, but ... We need to get an articulare European lawyer, or at least find someone who has studied the subject. I don't know the credentials of anyone who has posted on this list, so I would be careful. There was a post a few months back listing a bunch of stuff that person claimed we needed to support for our users (ie, list owners) to be able to conform to GDPR. (Sorry, on a plane right now, search is painful.) I have no idea if that person was clueful, but I suspect he was a privacy activist and so would be biased toward stringent interpretation. Still that post is where I'd start. On the FUD end of the spectrum, there are claims that the IPs in your webserver log are subject to redaction on request. There are counterclaims that that is FUD. ;-) I don't know the credentials of either claimant. It is my understanding that you may need to remove posts from archives on request. AFAIK neither Mailman 2 nor Mailman 3 supports that in the sense of making it possible to do it without editing the archives by hand (and in Mailman 2's case, rebuilding the archives), which requires login access to the host. There are also claims that if you don't profit from the data stored in your host's records, you're safe. Some people have posted "all posts yours are automatically permanently ours" rules of usage -- but I don't think EU law necessarily allows that, because GDPR rights may very well be inalienable "creator's rights". I have no way to evaluate these claims, but at the very least you have to worry about frivolous claims (insert Michael Cohen/Rudy Guiliani joke here). Footnotes: [1] If someone reading this thinks they know GDPR well enough to (1) present basic concepts and risks (while liberally sprinkling IANALs and TINLAs around) and (2) point people at real lawyer blogs, *please* speak up. I'm not deprecating your knowledge, just I haven't seen such here. Pointing at the official lawyerly stuff isn't really helpful, I'm sure we can all google for that. What we need is a curated list of sane sources.

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[Mailman-cabal] GDPR
by Andrew Hodgson May 31, 2018

May 31, 2018

Guys, Thanks for all the discussion around this topic. I have been in further communication with the people working on GDPR with us. Background: I run Mailman lists for a couple of charities as a voluntary contribution to the charities, the charities have money that their disposal and we want to reduce exposure both for me personally and the charities involved. These are just rough notes: - Archive purge requests. We have discussed the same items as on the list to date. I am looking at doing a simple grep for the relevant person's details and changing that. The main reason for doing this is that if we just remove the author's messages they will be in a thread of other messages and our users typically don't remove quoted material. Current advice from the GDPR people is we may have to delete the whole thread. Still under discussion, this is also complex because threads and subjects change, if we delete the whole thread there may be messages from the same author in other threads that don't have correct atribution etc. - Audit logs for data access. it is not clear who is accessing subscription data for the list as there is just a single owner and moderator account. Unsure if current logging data in either MM2 or MM3 is "good enough" for this. MM3 may solve the issue about single accounts. - Relevant people seem to be happy that running a discussion list not used for marketing purposes should exempt us from some of the marketing type rules regarding data processing. - People seem happy with the system default logs as long as we can audit access to the logs (which we are able to as there is little access to the boxes themselves). - Likely that I will have to move the lists to a host the charities control themselves and a separate host for each charity. This will increase costs so we may need to look at an alternative solution like a hosted list service as I am not setting myself up as a list hosting business. Again all this up for interpretation. The largest ones for me at the moment is regarding auditing access to the Mailman admin access and the archive purging requests. Andrew.

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