First of all, I want to say Mailman is exactly what I have wanted but didn't know existed. I run a dozen or so mail lists with web archives and news gating using a glued together mess of shell scripts, C programs, Perl scripts, and procmail scripts. It's one of those things that started as a simple task and sort of evolved over time. Now that the number of lists are growing, it is fast becoming an administration nightmare. Mailman is the perfect solution. Thanks to all you who made it available.
Now for the problem I have encountered. I've concluded that it has 99.9% probability of being an INN configuration problem, but one which directly effects the operation of Mailman. I'm posting here on the gut feeling that others here have encountered the same thing. When Mailman connects to the news server using the NNTP class in the Python dist, it is connecting via innd directly and therefore only has a limited subset of the commands. I get this same limited subset of commands by telneting to news.bticc.net 119 from the same host it runs on. However, if I telnet in from my other box, I get the full set of commands and the newslog shows the connection being handled by nnrpd. If I configure Mailman to send the messages to the INN running on the remote host, it works fine.
For the most part, my INN configuration is the default Redhat configuration for INN-2.0 with only paths, hostname, and newsfeeds changed. I know the solution is probably quite simple such as a tweak in one of the INN configuration files, but I have not yet determined exactly what it is. If anyone knows what tweak, I would greatly appreciate a hint.
I am not directly subscribed to the list, so if anyone replies, please Cc: a copy to me directly. Thanks for your time.
Regards, Jarrod Kinsley
P.S. Prior to finding Mailman, I had been contemplating a hack to hypermail to implement SQL based archive indexing. One of the lists I archive has over 36000 messages in it, and I would like to be able to do global subject, author, thread, date (and possibly keyword) lookups over the entire archive. Right now each month has its own set of indexes. Has anyone proposed such an idea for Mailman? I might tinker around with it after I familiarize myself with the internal workings of Mailman and after I get a more pressing project finished.
"JK" == J Kinsley <jkinsley@horus.bticc.net> writes:
JK> Mailman is the perfect solution. Thanks to all you who made it
JK> available.You're welcome!
JK> Now for the problem I have encountered. I've concluded that
JK> it has 99.9% probability of being an INN configuration
JK> problem, but one which directly effects the operation of
JK> Mailman. I'm posting here on the gut feeling that others here
JK> have encountered the same thing. When Mailman connects to the
JK> news server using the NNTP class in the Python dist, it is
JK> connecting via innd directly and therefore only has a limited
JK> subset of the commands. I get this same limited subset of
JK> commands by telneting to news.bticc.net 119 from the same host
JK> it runs on. However, if I telnet in from my other box, I get
JK> the full set of commands and the newslog shows the connection
JK> being handled by nnrpd. If I configure Mailman to send the
JK> messages to the INN running on the remote host, it works fine.
JK> For the most part, my INN configuration is the default Redhat
JK> configuration for INN-2.0 with only paths, hostname, and
JK> newsfeeds changed. I know the solution is probably quite
JK> simple such as a tweak in one of the INN configuration files,
JK> but I have not yet determined exactly what it is. If anyone
JK> knows what tweak, I would greatly appreciate a hint.Hmm, from my quick scan of nntplib.py from the Python 1.5.2 distrib indicates that it just makes a normal ol' socket connection to the specified gateway host (it uses the default NNTP port tho'). So it must be an INN configuration problem you're having. I have no idea what to do here though -- we have no local news server and I definitely don't have the time to get one installed to investigate this. However if you (or anybody else) does come up with a solution, please post it here. I doubt that'll be a patch to Python or Mailman, but I can include some text in the Mailman documentation.
JK> P.S. Prior to finding Mailman, I had been contemplating a
JK> hack to hypermail to implement SQL based archive indexing.
JK> One of the lists I archive has over 36000 messages in it, and
JK> I would like to be able to do global subject, author, thread,
JK> date (and possibly keyword) lookups over the entire archive.
JK> Right now each month has its own set of indexes. Has anyone
JK> proposed such an idea for Mailman? I might tinker around with
JK> it after I familiarize myself with the internal workings of
JK> Mailman and after I get a more pressing project finished.Greg Stein's been talking about improving the archiving subsystem. You might check the Mailman archives for some of Greg's ideas. I agree that we could do something better, although we'll always need a pure-Python solution that we can bundle with Mailman even if it's limited. However, it's very likely that no more development will ever be done on Pipermail, so other options are also very important, whether bundled with Mailman or not.
-Barry
On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 14:48:14 -0500 (EST) From: Barry A. Warsaw <bwarsaw@cnri.reston.va.us> To: J Kinsley <jkinsley@horus.bticc.net> Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] mailman/nntplib.py/inn problem
---snip---
JK> For the most part, my INN configuration is the default Redhat JK> configuration for INN-2.0 with only paths, hostname, and JK> newsfeeds changed. I know the solution is probably quite JK> simple such as a tweak in one of the INN configuration files, JK> but I have not yet determined exactly what it is. If anyone JK> knows what tweak, I would greatly appreciate a hint.Hmm, from my quick scan of nntplib.py from the Python 1.5.2 distrib indicates that it just makes a normal ol' socket connection to the specified gateway host (it uses the default NNTP port tho'). So it must be an INN configuration problem you're having. I have no idea what to do here though -- we have no local news server and I definitely don't have the time to get one installed to investigate this. However if you (or anybody else) does come up with a solution, please post it here. I doubt that'll be a patch to Python or Mailman, but I can include some text in the Mailman documentation.
Well, it took awhile, but I ultimately found the cause of the problem. I originally configured INN back when 1.4 was the latest release, then upgraded to 2.0 when it was released. INN 2.0 introduced some additional config files, and ditched the install.ms.* documentation files. After playing with hosts.nntp and nntpd.access fo an hour or so, I decided to search for the missing documentation. It turned out that some of the new changes were initially introduced in INN 1.7 which also still had the documentation. When I upgraded, I just replaced the examples in the new config files with the local configuration. I had placed my news server in incoming.conf which told INN that the news server was configured as a feeder instead of a reader. Feeders get a small subset of the NNTP commands, and POST and GROUP are not part of that subset. When I commented out the local news server from incoming.conf, everything began working.
I had originally hacked GatewayManager.py to make a call to nntplib.help() and determine whether or not POST or IHAVE was being used, then send the message using the appropriate command. That worked, but then I discovered that gate_news did not work because it used the NNTP GROUP command. I guess that's good because it lead to finding the real solution.
JK> P.S. Prior to finding Mailman, I had been contemplating a JK> hack to hypermail to implement SQL based archive indexing. JK> One of the lists I archive has over 36000 messages in it, and JK> I would like to be able to do global subject, author, thread, JK> date (and possibly keyword) lookups over the entire archive. JK> Right now each month has its own set of indexes. Has anyone JK> proposed such an idea for Mailman? I might tinker around with JK> it after I familiarize myself with the internal workings of JK> Mailman and after I get a more pressing project finished.Greg Stein's been talking about improving the archiving subsystem. You might check the Mailman archives for some of Greg's ideas. I
I will do that.
agree that we could do something better, although we'll always need a pure-Python solution that we can bundle with Mailman even if it's
Well, in this case, the solution I was looking at would probably make an addition to the contrib section. I was thinking about using PostgreSQL as the database server with a Python interface. Perhaps a middleware dB interface that could use any database server. It's not something I'm going to be doing anytime soon, but if and when I do, I'll send the code to the list or wherever.
limited. However, it's very likely that no more development will ever be done on Pipermail, so other options are also very important, whether bundled with Mailman or not.
-Barry
Regards, Jarrod
participants (2)
-
Barry A. Warsaw -
J Kinsley