Mailman 3 May 2025 - Mailman-Users

mailman-loop sending mail to undesirable address
by Macs R We April 9, 2026

April 9, 2026

I tried posting this twice at the website and it appears to blackholed both times, don’t know whether it’s a new-user moderating thing or what. So apologies if this is a duplicate Hopefully, this is simple. I know nothing about the innards of Mailman -- I've been just using it as a black box for a decade and it's been working fine. Today, in the process of handling a subscriber's non-delivery complaint, I came across this error message in WHM's Mail Delivery Reports: From Address: mailman-loop(a)server.wickenburg.us Sender: Sent Time: Feb 22, 2025, 6:48:18 PM Sender Host: server.wickenburg.us Sender IP: 127.0.0.1 Authentication: unauthorized Spam Score: 0 Recipient: root(a)cloud-ci.unifiedlayer.com Delivered To: Delivery User: Delivery Domain: cloud-ci.unifiedlayer.com Router: reject Transport: **rejected** Out Time: Feb 22, 2025, 6:48:18 PM ID: 1tm16p-00000000BOG-aS00 Delivery Host: server.wickenburg.us Delivery IP: 127.0.0.1 Size: 0 bytes Result: The mail server could not deliver mail to root(a)cloud-ci.unifiedlayer.com. The account or domain may not exist, they may be blacklisted, or missing the proper dns entries. The recipient identified is not anything I ever set up. "unifiedlayer" belongs to my hosting provider, so this may be some sort of default or unset value. I've scoured the Mailman configuration screens for anything resembling this, or any field I should have provided but left blank, and I'm buffaloed. Where is Mailman getting this value from, and how to I change it to something more useful?

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Upgrade instructions
by G. Armour Van Horn June 7, 2025

June 7, 2025

I have a couple of Mailman lists on a server happily running 2.1.9 but I am also a moderator on a very active list that's running on 2.1.12. I do not host this list, just volunteer because I have some experience with Mailman. That list has started to get some significant bounces due to the DMARC issue that isn't addressed in this older version. The host intends to upgrade so that we can address that but they report that they haven't been able to make archives searchable in their experimentation with 2.1.16. I don't know if that search function is part of the more recent versions of Pipermail or if they've installed something else. I'm nervous about attempting to upgrade, given the paucity of documentation for that, particularly the fact that it tells me to use the same configuration options I used for the current install and I haven't a clue what those might have been. If I could find some more robust upgrade docs I'd like to try the upgrade in case I could contribute anything to the problem with the large list. Today I had to clear the bounce flags on 47 members. Not all that hard, but tedious. Van -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Sign up now for Quotes of the Day, a handful of quotations on a theme delivered every morning. Enlightenment! Daily, for free! http://www.qotd.org/subscribe.html For photography, web design, hosting, and maintenance, visit Van's home page: http://www.domainvanhorn.com/van/ -----------------------------------------------------------

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Writing to list bounces with 'user doesn't exist'
by Sean McBride May 14, 2025

May 14, 2025

Hi all, So I have/had a working postfix+dovecot setup, and then I installed mailman2. It largely works. The web interface works, I can create lists, list creation emails are sent to the admin (me), but trying to write to a list (as a member) fails with a bounce. My maillog shows: ``` May 12 12:19:48 hostname postfix/lmtp[83792]: ED07A32156: to=<testlist(a)example.com>, relay=mx.example.com[private/dovecot-lmtp], delay=0.6, delays=0.59/0/0/0.01, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (host mx.example.com[private/dovecot-lmtp] said: 550 5.1.1 <testlist(a)example.com> User doesn't exist: testlist(a)example.com (in reply to RCPT TO command)) ``` Indeed I wouldn't expect dovecot to know any such user, so I'm not sure what step I've missed... In my postfix main.cf I have: ``` mydomain = example.com myhostname = mx.example.com mydestination = $myhostname localhost.$mydomain localhost myorigin = $mydomain virtual_alias_maps = hash:/usr/local/etc/postfix/virtual-aliases, hash:/usr/local/mailman/data/virtual-mailman alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases, hash:/usr/local/mailman/data/aliases ``` In my mm_cfg.py I have: ``` MTA = "Postfix" POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = ['example.com'] DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'example.com' DEFAULT_URL_HOST = 'mailman.example.com' VIRTUAL_HOSTS.clear() add_virtualhost(DEFAULT_URL_HOST, DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST) ``` Any clues would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Sean

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Is postfix owner_request_special needed for mailman2?
by Sean McBride May 8, 2025

May 8, 2025

Hi all, I'm migrating a server with older postfix & older mailman2 and noticed one setting in postfix's main.cf: owner_request_special = no The postfix docs for this setting say: "Enable special treatment for owner-listname entries in the aliases(5) file, and don't split owner-listname and listname-request address localparts when the recipient_delimiter is set to "-". This feature is useful for mailing lists." Which I don't really grok. I'm not sure why it's set to `no` on the older server. Any thoughts? Thanks, Sean

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