Albert ARIBAUD writes:

Regarding your suggestion of better spam detection at the earliest stage, I agree wholeheartedly. But while I might be able to suggest mailman settings to the list owner, heavier actions such as changing the spam detection methods in place on the list are out of question.

Well, it might be possible in cases of repeated spam to add rules to the mailman spam checker.

If not, or that's not timely enough, it's too bad, because I suspect that to get treatment of 5xx statuses changed based on the DSN text you'll need to hack the source and restart Mailman (Python will automatically recompile out-of-date .pycs, so you don't need to worry about rebuilding Mailman). But that sounds like a heavier action too.

Don't lose hope yet, though, I'm not authoritative on this, I just seem to remember that to the the case.

Yao Fololo wrote:

I just install Mailman on a new server. The moderator of one of my lists has received a request for approval but when he clicks on the link, there is no message to approve.  Any help?

Either there is an old or test or backup installation that is sending the moderator notice (this would be the case if the moderator is getting daily notices about the same message), or possibly someone else (the poster) canceled the post before the moderator got to it.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

Mark Sapiro a écrit :

Albert ARIBAUD wrote:

...

Well, I can't argue that in this instance free.fr does a better job of detecting spam than the list, but a) free.fr does not provide mailing lists beyond the most basic functionality, and b) I'm not in position to suggest moving the list as I'm not the owner, only a member.

Regarding your suggestion of better spam detection at the earliest stage, I agree wholeheartedly. But while I might be able to suggest mailman settings to the list owner, heavier actions such as changing the spam detection methods in place on the list are out of question.

So you agree that the problem is that the management of the Mailman installation and/or the list is not effective in keeping spam off the list, but you ask us change Mailman to solve it.

Uhm... Precisely no, I don't ask that. I even specifically asked for any solution *except patching and recompiling* mailman! What I am after is advice on *configuring* a mailman setup so that at least spam rejections don't increase bounce count.

Note also that this does not imply that spam rejections should be ignored altogether; if someone can advise on a solution where spam rejections do not increase bounce count *and* get signalled to the mailman list/server owner (so that he knows his own spam protection goofed), then I'll be quite happy with it!

Note that if the list server had spam detection as effective as yours, there would be no problem. Perhaps you can change your own spam detection to just drop rather than reject a message with Precedence: list.

I'm afraid I cannot influence my provider's spam rejection at SMTP session time. I have some control mon mail that was accepted at SMTP time, but that's too late wrt my bounce counter problem.

Anyway, a request to change Mailman to mitigate the effects of ineffective management is not necessarily unreasonable, but I think it is in this case. The definition of a 550 in both RFCs 2821 and 5321 is:

550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable (e.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy reasons)

You ask that any 550 (or 5xx) that mentions spam be ignored by Mailman, but what about all those 550s generated with text like "Service Unavailable" or other generic reasons which I suspect are as common in rejections of spam as reasons that mention spam specifically.

Uhm... No, I don't ask that *all* 5xx rejects be ignored, only that *those 5xx rejects that mention spam* be ignored, not that *any 5xx* be ignored--see my original post. Indeed, ignoring all 5xx rejects would render the whole bounce counter idea useless, so I'm definitely not talking about this.

Mailman's bounce recognition is already overloaded with kludges and heuristics. Adding even more for this is not going to happen.

And, my suggestion to change your spam detection is only intended to encourage you to think about what a can of worms you'd be opening when you try to do things like this.

As far as suggesting changes to the owner goes, what is the list's policy for non-member posts? Discarding or Holding them blocks a lot of spam. Rejecting is bad because it will bounce spam to the From: address which is certainly forged, and Accepting just invites spam on the list.

They're discarded as far as I know -- the owner is aware -- as I am -- of 'spam fighting 101' rules such as the "no open list" and "no bouncing spam to From:" ones you raised here.

Also, if the list allows subscription without admin approval, new members should be moderated by default.

I'm not sure about moderation. I will forward this point to the list owner.

If the list is active (at least 1 post per day) and spam is only delivered every second or third day, setting bounce_info_stale_after to 1 and possibly reducing the threshold score may solve the problem without impacting bounce processing for dead addresses.

Thanks. Seeing as the list in question has had on average fifty messages per day during the last ten days, the conditions you state are met. I'll forward your suggestion to the list owner.

Amicalement,

Albert.