Not exactly what I was hoping for unfortunately. My user creation scripts are Powershell running in a Windows environment. I was hoping to fire off an email to Mailman to subscribe the new user to the appropriate campus announcement list. Maybe I'll get a bit creative and have the Powershell scripts create files to SCP over to the Mailman box and then use "add_members" via a cron job.

Thanks.

Edward Chase Providence College Information Technology

From: Glenn Sieb [mailto:ges+lists@wingfoot.org] Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 9:01 PM To: Chase, Edward; mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] User management via email?

Have you checked into $LOCALBASE/mailman/bin/add_members? You could probably wrap a script around it easily enough.

usage:

/usr/local/mailman/bin/add_members Add members to a list from the command line.

Usage: add_members [options] listname

Options:

--regular-members-file=file
-r file
    A file containing addresses of the members to be added, one
    address per line.  This list of people become non-digest
    members.  If file is `-', read addresses from stdin.  Note that
    -n/--non-digest-members-file are deprecated synonyms for this option.

--digest-members-file=file
-d file
    Similar to above, but these people become digest members.

--welcome-msg=<y|n>
-w <y|n>
    Set whether or not to send the list members a welcome message,
    overriding whatever the list's `send_welcome_msg' setting is.

--admin-notify=<y|n>
-a <y|n>
    Set whether or not to send the list administrators a notification on
    the success/failure of these subscriptions, overriding whatever the
    list's `admin_notify_mchanges' setting is.

--help
-h
    Print this help message and exit.

listname
    The name of the Mailman list you are adding members to.  It must
    already exist.

You must supply at least one of -r and -d options. At most one of the files can be `-'.

Best, --Glenn

On 8/3/11 2:35 PM, Chase, Edward wrote:

I thought that I had done this task as part of my initial testing, but I cannot find that I documented that at all. My Google-fu is coming up very empty on the subject. I've found a number of people asking the same question with few replies. The best I found was a *dated* web page that states that user management is only possible via the web interface.

Is it possible to do user management via email at this time?

Chase, Edward wrote:

Not exactly what I was hoping for unfortunately. My user creation scripts are Powershell running in a Windows environment. I was hoping to fire off an email to Mailman to subscribe the new user to the appropriate campus announcement list. Maybe I'll get a bit creative and have the Powershell scripts create files to SCP over to the Mailman box and then use "add_members" via a cron job.

You can send an email subscribe command for an arbitrary address:

subscribe [password] [digest|nodigest] [address=<address>] Subscribe to this mailing list. Your password must be given to unsubscribe or change your options, but if you omit the password, one will be generated for you. You may be periodically reminded of your password.

 The next argument may be either: `nodigest' or `digest' (no
 quotes!). If you wish to subscribe an address other than the
 address you sent this request from, you may specify
 `address=<address>' (no brackets around the email address, and
 no quotes!)

or just spoof the From: in an email to the list-subscribe address.

However, either of these methods will probably require confirmation by the user or approval by the admin or both depending on the list's subscribe_policy.

The wrapper idea that Glen suggests may be simpler than you realize. See the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/uIA9> for a sample wrapper designed to be called from a web server PHP or other script, but this could be modified to work from an email piped to it via a .forward file for example.

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