This the official announcement for Mailman 2.1 alpha 2. Because it's an alpha, this announcement is only going out to the mailman-* mailing lists. I'll make two warnings: you probably should still not use this version for production systems (but TIA for any and all testing you do with it!), and I've already had a couple of bug fixes from early adopters. 2.1a2 should still be useful, but you might want to keep an eye on cvs and the mailman-checkins list for updates.

I am only making the tarball available on SourceForge, so you'll need to go to http://sf.net/projects/mailman to grab it. You'll also need to upgrade to mimelib-0.4, so be sure to go to http://sf.net/projects/mimelib to grab and install that tarball first.

To view the on-line documentation, see

http://www.list.org/MM21/index.html

or

http://mailman.sf.net/MM21/index.html

Below is an excerpt from the NEWS file for all the changes since 2.1alpha1. There are a bunch of new features coming down the pike, and I hope to have an alpha3 out soon. I'm also planning on doing much more stress testing of this version with real list traffic, and I'm hoping we'll start to get more languages integrated into cvs.

Enjoy, -Barry

-------------------- snip snip -------------------- 2.1 alpha 2 (11-Jul-2001)

- Building
    o mimelib 0.4 is now required.  Get it from
      http://mimelib.sf.net.  If you've installed an earlier
      version of mimelib, you must upgrade.

    o /usr/local/mailman is now the default installation
      directory.  Use configure's --prefix switch to change it
      back to the default (/home/mailman) or any other
      installation directory of your choice.

- Security
    o Better definition of authentication domains.  The following
      roles have been defined: user, list-admin, list-moderator,
      creator, site-admin.

    o There is now a separate role of "list moderator", which has
      access to the pending requests (admindb) page, but not the
      list configuration pages.

    o Subscription confirmations can now be performed via email or
      via URL.  When a subscription is received, a unique (sha)
      confirm URL is generated in the confirmation message.
      Simply visiting this URL completes the subscription process.

    o In a similar manner, removal requests (via web or email
      command) no longer require the password.  If the correct
      password is given, the removal is performed immediately.  If
      no password is given, then a confirmation message is
      generated.

- Internationalization
    o More I18N patches.  The basic infrastructure should now be
      working correctly.  Spanish templates and catalogs are
      included, and English, French, Hungarian, and Big5 templates
      are included.

    o Cascading specializations and internationalization of
      templates.  Templates are now search for in the following
      order: list-specific location, domain-specific location,
      site-wide location, global defaults.  Each search location
      is further qualified by the language being displayed.  This
      means that you only need to change the templates that are
      different from the global defaults.

      Templates renamed: admlogin.txt => admlogin.html
      Templates added: private.html

- Web UI
    o Redesigned the user options page.  It now sits behind an
      authentication so user options cannot be viewed without the
      proper password.  The other advantage is that the user's
      password need not be entered on the options page to
      unsubscribe or change option values.  The login screen also
      provides for password mail-back, and unsubscription w/
      confirmation.

      Other new features accessible from the user options page
      include: ability to change email address (with confirmation)
      both per-list and globally for all list on virtual domain;
      global membership password changing; global mail delivery
      disable/enable; ability to suppress password reminders both
      per-list and globally; logout button.

      [Note: the handle_opts cgi has gone away]

    o Color schemes for non-template based web pages can be defined
      via mm_cfg.

    o Redesign of the membership management page.  The page is now
      split into three subcategories (Membership List, Mass
      Subscription, and Mass Removal).  The Membership List
      subcategory now supports searching for member addresses by
      regular expression, and if necessary, it groups member
      addresses first alphabetically, and then by chunks.

      Mass Subscription and Mass Removal now support file upload,
      with one address per line.

    o Hyperlinks from the logos in the footers have been removed.
      The sponsors got too much "unsubscribe me!" spam from
      desperate user of Mailman at other sites.

    o New buttons on the digest admin page to send a digest
      immediately (if it's non-empty), to start a new digest
      volume with the next digest, and to select the interval with
      which to automatically start a new digest volume (yearly,
      monthly, quarterly, weekly, daily).

      DEFAULT_DIGEST_VOLUME_FREQUENCY is a new configuration
      variable, initially set to give a new digest volume monthly.

    o Through-the-web list creation and removal, using a separate
      site-wide authentication role called the "list creator and
      destroyer" or simply "list creator".  If the configuration
      variable OWNERS_CAN_DELETE_THEIR_OWN_LISTS is set to 1 (by
      default, it's 0), then list admins can delete their own
      lists.

      This feature requires an adaptor for the particular MTA
      you're using.  An adaptor for Postfix is included, as is a
      dumb adaptor that just emails mailman@yoursite with the
      necessary Sendmail style /etc/alias file changes.  Some MTAs
      like Exim can be configured to automatically recognize new
      lists.  The adaptor is selected via the MTA option in
      mm_cfg.py

- Email UI
    o In email commands, "join" is a synonym for
      "subscribe". "remove" and "leave" are synonyms for
      "unsubscribe".  New robot addresses are support to make
      subscribing and unsubscribing much easier:

      mylist-join@mysite
      mylist-leave@mysite

    o Confirmation messages have a shortened Subject: header,
      containing just the word "confirm" and the confirmation
      cookie.  This should help for MUAs that like to wrap long
      Subject: lines, messing up confirmation.

    o Mailman now recognizes an Urgent: header, which, if it
      contains the list moderator or list administrator password,
      forces the message to be delivered immediately to all
      members (i.e. both regular and digest members).  The message
      is also placed in the digest.  If the password is incorrect,
      the message will be bounced back to the sender.

- Performance
    o Refinements to the new qrunner subsystem which preserves
      FIFO order of messages.

    o The qrunner is no longer started from cron.  It is started
      by a Un*x init-style script called bin/mailmanctl (see
      below).  cron/qrunner has been removed.

- Command line scripts
    o bin/mailmanctl script added, which is used to start, stop,
      and restart the qrunner daemon.

    o bin/qrunner script added which allows a single sub-qrunner
      to run once through its processing loop.

    o bin/change_pw script added (eases mass changing of list
      passwords).

    o bin/update grows a -f switch to force an update.

    o bin/newlang renamed to bin/addlang; bin/rmlang removed.

    o bin/mmsitepass has grown a -c option to set the list
      creator's password.  The site-wide `create' web page is
      linked to from the admin overview page.

    o bin/newlist's -o option is removed.  This script also grows
      a way of spelling the creation of a list in a specific
      virtual domain.

    o The `auto' script has been removed.

    o bin/dumpdb has grown -m/--marshal and -p/--pickle options.

    o bin/list_admins can be used to print the owners of a mailing list.

    o bin/genaliases regenerates from scratch the aliases and
      aliases.db file for the Postfix MTA.

- Archiver
    o New archiver date clobbering option, which allows dates to
      only be clobber if they are outrageously out-of-date
      (default setting is 15 days on either side of received
      timestamp).  New configuration variables:

      ARCHIVER_CLOBBER_DATE_POLICY
      ARCHIVER_ALLOWABLE_SANE_DATE_SKEW

      The archived copy of messages grows an X-List-Received-Date:
      header indicating the time the message was received by
      Mailman.

    o PRIVATE_ARCHIVE_URL configuration variable is removed (this
      can be calculated on the fly, and removing it actually makes
      site configuration easier).

- Miscellaneous
    o Several new README's have been added.

    o Most syslog entries for the qrunner have been redirected to
      logs/error.

    o On SIGHUP, qrunner will re-open all its log files and
      restart all child processes.  See "bin/mailmanctl restart".

- Patches and bug fixes
    o SF patches and bug fixes applied: 420396, 424389, 227694,
      426002, 401372 (partial), 401452.

    o Fixes in 2.0.5 ported forward:
        Fix a lock stagnation problem that can result when the
        user hits the `stop' button on their browser during a
        write operation that can take a long time (e.g. hitting
        the membership management admin page).

    o Fixes in 2.0.4 ported forward:
        Python 2.1 compatibility release.  There were a few
        questionable constructs and uses of deprecated modules
        that caused annoying warnings when used with Python 2.1.
        This release quiets those warnings.

    o Fixes in 2.0.3 ported forward:
        Bug fix release.  There was a small typo in 2.0.2 in
        ListAdmin.py for approving an already subscribed member
        (thanks Thomas!).  Also, an update to the OpenWall
        security workaround (contrib/securelinux_fix.py) was
        included.  Thanks to Marc Merlin.