Server config problems
Hello:
I am a longtime Mailman list owner/moderator, and I just moved all my web sites and accompanying lists to InMotion, which makes Mailman available via cPanel on VPS and dedicated accounts. InMotion supports Mailman pretty poorly, a fact I had forgotten, having left them back in 2006.
Because of what I figure is a server misconfiguration or a cron problem, I don't receive moderator notifications from any of my lists. I do not have the time or ability to track down the problem myself, and InMotion's people have no experience or training with Mailman. (In fact, I remembered InMotion's poor Mailman support while searching the archives of this very list and running across a post I made in 2006 about this very same problem.)
Is there anyone on this list who has the expertise and willingness to work with InMotion to troubleshoot and fix this problem for a reasonable fee to be negotiated? It may even be fixable using the SSH access on my account.
Profuse apologies if this is an inappropriate post. I have also checked the consultants page on the Mailman web site and contacted one of those companies, but I don't know whether they mostly do hosting. I really don't want to move my sites and lists again, having just gotten everything in one place.
Thanks,
Tracey
On 10/11/2014 04:07 PM, Tracey McCartney wrote:
Because of what I figure is a server misconfiguration or a cron problem, I don't receive moderator notifications from any of my lists.
The daily summary of moderator requests is sent by a cron, but if a list's admin_immed_notify is Yes, those notices are sent without help from cron.
cPanel lists generally use Exim as the MTA and if any delivery tp Mailman works at all, delivery to LISTNAME-owner generally works, so, assuming it's not cron, try mailing LISTNAME-owner and see if that gets delivered to the list's owner and moderator addresses.
Is there anyone on this list who has the expertise and willingness to work with InMotion to troubleshoot and fix this problem for a reasonable fee to be negotiated? It may even be fixable using the SSH access on my account.
If this is a VPS and you have root access to it, you probably have the access needed to fix it.
My own sanity preserving rules are "I don't work for money" and "I don't touch your server", at least not in ways that are not available to the world.
However, I'm more than happy to work with you or InMotion through this list, but not as a paid consultant. I can't speak for anyone else here.
-- Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Hey, Mark, thanks for the response. Here is what I pulled together after my first post:
admin_immed_notify is Yes, so probably no cron problem, as you said.
Delivery to LISTNAME-owner does NOT appear to work.
Notifications that go to the admin, such as subscribes and unsubscribes, work fine. Notifications that go to users, such as notifications that their message is held up in moderation, work fine. General traffic works fine.
Notifications to the moderator that someone has asked to subscribe (our lists are set up for approval only) do not work. Notifications to the moderator that something is held up in moderation do not work.
In most cases, the moderator and admin have had the same e-mail address, but I have tried with two different ones, with the same results. I have checked spam boxes and have not found anything.
And yes, I have since figured out how to use SSH on my server but don't really know what to look for. It seems odd that admin notifications would work fine but not moderator ones.
The question for me always seems to boil down to whether my own sanity is best preserved trying to fix this where it is or to do yet another host move. :/ I don't know why this host won't get its #$^& together re. Mailman.
Thanks,
Tracey
-----Original Message----- From: Mailman-Users [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+tracey=fairhousing.com@python.org] On Behalf Of Mark Sapiro Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2014 7:20 PM To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Server config problems
On 10/11/2014 04:07 PM, Tracey McCartney wrote:
Because of what I figure is a server misconfiguration or a cron problem, I don't receive moderator notifications from any of my lists.
The daily summary of moderator requests is sent by a cron, but if a list's admin_immed_notify is Yes, those notices are sent without help from cron.
cPanel lists generally use Exim as the MTA and if any delivery tp Mailman works at all, delivery to LISTNAME-owner generally works, so, assuming it's not cron, try mailing LISTNAME-owner and see if that gets delivered to the list's owner and moderator addresses.
Is there anyone on this list who has the expertise and willingness to work with InMotion to troubleshoot and fix this problem for a reasonable fee to be negotiated? It may even be fixable using the SSH access on my account.
If this is a VPS and you have root access to it, you probably have the access needed to fix it.
My own sanity preserving rules are "I don't work for money" and "I don't touch your server", at least not in ways that are not available to the world.
However, I'm more than happy to work with you or InMotion through this list, but not as a paid consultant. I can't speak for anyone else here.
-- Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/tracey%40fairhousing.c om
Tracey McCartney writes:
The question for me always seems to boil down to whether my own sanity is best preserved trying to fix this where it is or to do yet another host move. :/
If it's *just* Mailman and you have ssh access (and permission to change the configuration files), we can walk you through it. Keep notes, as a poorly done upgrade by the host could cause the issue to regress. But if otherwise you're satisfied with the host, well, we'll always be here -- no need to change.
I don't know why this host won't get its #$^& together re. Mailman.
Well, it could be a symptom of inadequate staffing (in some sense, of course you rarely get more than you pay for). But I suspect many hosting services expect that cPanel and Mailman take care of everything and chalk issue up to user error. It's a compliment to us, of sorts. :-)
On 10/12/2014 05:31 PM, Tracey McCartney wrote:
Delivery to LISTNAME-owner does NOT appear to work.
Notifications that go to the admin, such as subscribes and unsubscribes, work fine. Notifications that go to users, such as notifications that their message is held up in moderation, work fine. General traffic works fine.
Notifications to the moderator that someone has asked to subscribe (our lists are set up for approval only) do not work. Notifications to the moderator that something is held up in moderation do not work.
All of the above symptoms are explained by the fact that mail to LISTNAME-owner doesn't work. For various historical reasons, notifications of changes in list membership (successful (un)subscribes) are sent directly to the address(es) in the list's owner and moderator attributes while notifications of held messages and subscriptions and daily moderator summaries sent by cron are all sent to the LISTNAME-owner address and normally received by Mailman and resent to the owner/moderator address(es).
You (or someone) needs to examine the logs of the MTA (Exim or whatever it is) to find out what the issue is.
If the MTA is Exim, the command
sudo exim -bt LISTNAME-owner@DOMAIN
will give some relevant information.
Note, if mail to the LISTNAME-owner address doesn't bounce, it is probably being delivered somewhere, just not to Mailman.
-- Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
To follow up on this problem, I am in the process of leaving InMotion behind because it appeared that it was going to be difficult to get the root access I would need to read the logs and diagnose this problem.
I have almost finished moving my sites to EMWD.com, which had hosted my large-ish listserv before I tried to consolidate everything at InMotion. So far so good - my lists are running well, my moderator notification problem is fixed, and my Drupal sites appear to be running smoothly. It will be VERY nice if I have finally found a host where everything will run and I don't have to split my sites among 2-3 hosts. And Brian doesn't take 7 hours to respond to a support request. :)
Thanks to Mark and others who were willing to help me debug this thing. In the end I decided InMotion doesn't deserve my business if they can't support a ubiquitous MLM that every decent cPanel host offers by default.
Tracey
participants (3)
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Mark Sapiro
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Stephen J. Turnbull
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Tracey McCartney