running External Archiver on background/foreground
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Hi all,
I'm using Mailman for lists management, in a collaboration infrastructure site. I configured Mailman so that an external archiver is used, but I hesitate to run this archiver in background or foreground.
More concretely, in mm_cfg.py conf file, should I put:
PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER = 'cat > /var/run/mailman/mail_tmp; /usr/local/bin/external_arch %(listname)s'
or
PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER = 'cat > /var/run/mailman/mail_tmp; /usr/local/bin/external_arch %(listname)s &'
What do you recommend ? is there a difference, in terms of performance ? Is there a risk of system overload, for one of the 2 solutions, when dealing with too big archives ? (I have some archives exceeding 50 M)
Thank you
--
--Mohamed CHAARI (mailto : mohamed.chaari@st.com)
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Mohamed CHAARI wrote:
The size of the archive is only going to influence /usr/local/bin/external_arch whatever that is. Its performance/run time may or may not depend on the size of the archive.
There are potential issues either way (forground or background). The external archiver command is run with the list locked. This is both good and bad. It eliminates any potential race condition which might overwrite /var/run/mailman/mail_tmp with a second message before the first message is processed, at least if only one list is involved, but it may keep the list locked for a long time if the external_arch process is slow. In addition, if the external_arch shoud do something that locks the list, a deadlock results.
See <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2005-August/045994.html>.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Mark Sapiro wrote:
you mentioned, in the thread above (Aug 2005), that it would be better to have a unique temporary file, to avoid conflict problems ... I've tried this, in mm_cfg.py, using unix timestamp
PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER = 'cat > /var/run/mailman/mail_tmp.$(date +%s); /usr/local/bin/external_arch.pl %(listname)s &'
but without success. is there a way to do it ? should I use Python functions to get unix timestamp for current date ?
thanks
--
--Mohamed CHAARI (mailto : mohamed.chaari@st.com)
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Mohamed CHAARI wrote:
It looks to me as if you have inherited something from Jean-Philippe GIOLA and it is now way more complicated than it needs to be.
Here are my observations on the above:
- The name "mail_tmp.$(date +%s)" may still not be unique. What if two messages arrive to be archived within the same second?
2)How does /usr/local/bin/external_arch.pl determine what file to read? And, if it just picks one, it could be for the wrong list.
3)The reason the above doesn't work at all is mailman interpolates into the PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER string from a dictionary in order to replace %(listname)s with the actual listname, but this interpolation sees the %s date format and replaces it with the entire dictionary. You have to double the % to avoid this. E.g.
'cat > /var/run/mailman/mail_tmp.$(date +%%s); /usr/local/bin/external_arch.pl %(listname)s &'
- The normal way to do this is to not bother with the tempfile stuff at all, but rather to just pipe the message to the external archiver as in
PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER = '/usr/local/bin/external_arch.pl %(listname)s'
Then external_arch.pl can just read it's standard input for the message. If you do it this way, you can't run it in the background because it won't get standard input from the pipe, but the only reason it might need to run in the background is if it does something which locks the list.
I think Jean-Philippe GIOLA was doing these wierd contortions because he wanted both the normal pipermail archive and an external archive, but the normal way to do this is to just do normal archiving in Mailman and subscribe an address to the list to do the external archiving.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Mark Sapiro wrote:
yes
ok
which is our case, because of the call to 'arch'
I think Jean-Philippe GIOLA was doing these wierd contortions because he wanted both the normal pipermail archive and an external archive,
yes this is exactly our requirement
I didn't understand well this solution. can you please explain it, how can a subscriber/address do the external archiving ?
Thank you in advance
--
--Mohamed CHAARI (mailto : mohamed.chaari@st.com)
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Hi
I am not very sound in mailman configuration.
I have a list in which anyone can post. "Hold the positing from non members".
Now, I am getting everyday about 100s of spam emails in that list. Please advise how to deal with this?
Regards, Vinita Aggarwal
-----Original Message----- From: mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org] On Behalf Of Mohamed CHAARI Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 1:12 PM To: Mark Sapiro Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] running External Archiver on background/foreground
Mark Sapiro wrote:
yes
it just picks one, it could be for the wrong list.
3)The reason the above doesn't work at all is mailman interpolates into
And, if the
ok
all, the
background is if it does something which locks the list.
which is our case, because of the call to 'arch'
I think Jean-Philippe GIOLA was doing these wierd contortions because he
wanted
both the normal pipermail archive and an external archive,
yes this is exactly our requirement
I didn't understand well this solution. can you please explain it, how can a subscriber/address do the external archiving ?
Thank you in advance
--
--Mohamed CHAARI (mailto : mohamed.chaari@st.com)
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Vinita Aggarwal wrote:
It is best to start a new topic on a list by creating a new message, not by replying to someone else's post. When you reply to an unrelated post, your post gets threaded in the other topic in the archive and it makes the archive hard to read.
Anyway, the answer to your question is install better spam filtering in your MTA. The best thing is to identify spam at incoming SMTP time and don't accept it in the first place. Next best is to accept it but silently discard it in the MTA - do not bounce it to the claimed sender as this is almost certainly forged.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On 12/7/07, Vinita Aggarwal wrote:
Now, I am getting everyday about 100s of spam emails in that list. Please advise how to deal with this?
Mailman doesn't have great tools for this. Instead, you should configure your mail server to reject or discard the spam messages before they ever get to Mailman.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
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Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2007 13:35:56 -0600 From: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org>
On 12/7/07, Vinita Aggarwal wrote:
Now, I am getting everyday about 100s of spam emails in that list. Please advise how to deal with this?
Mailman doesn't have great tools for this. Instead, you should configure your mail server to reject or discard the spam messages before they ever get to Mailman.
Any ideas how to do this when your ISP is hosting Mailman?
As soon as they finish mass subscribing my address list, my domain name list address will be active with MM and it gets HUNDREDS of spams a day. Since I can't run them through SpamAssasin (that my ISP runs) (with majordomo, msgs sent for moderation have MD headers so you can't check for false positives without opening each msg), I use procmail to get rid of the worst of the spam.
With the migration, I won't be able to use procmail anymore. And SA won't be an option either. I'll be slowly unmoderating most of my list members but many will have to be on moderation for life. And their posts will be mixed in with all the spam on the web interface.
I can ban the spammer's addresses through the interface, and even put some key spam phrases into the interface, but it won't help much.
I've asked in my ISP's usenet group for Mailman and got no answers.
Cyndi
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On 12/7/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
That would be the responsibility of your ISP. If they're not doing their job, then maybe you might want to find a different provider of this particular service.
There are multiple different providers of service for Mailman and Mailman-hosted mailing lists linked from FAQ 1.17 at <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.017.htp>. I believe that at least one of those is actually fairly active on the mailman-users mailing list, although I don't have any personal experience with their particular service.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
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Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 00:27:11 -0600 From: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org>
That would be the responsibility of your ISP. If they're not doing their job, then maybe you might want to find a different provider of this particular service.
Well, I'm happy with my ISP and have no plans to move *again*. But I will ask them again if they can do it. The reply I got from them was: "In the future Sonic.net could integrate SpamAssassin into Mailman but that's not currently on anyones plate."
Thanks, Cyndi
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I was talking about moving just your mailing lists, not all your ISP
services. Of course you could link those two if you want, but there
are plenty of mailing list only providers that you could at least
check out.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-Internet.org>
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 8, 2007, at 1:04 AM, Cyndi Norwitz <cyndi@tikvah.com> wrote:
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From: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 01:53:21 -0600
I was talking about moving just your mailing lists, not all your ISP
services. Of course you could link those two if you want, but there
are plenty of mailing list only providers that you could at least
check out.
As I said, I am happy with my ISP and have no plans to move my lists again.
If there is no way for me to filter spam, then I will live with it until my ISP is able to fix the problem. Every provider has strengths and weaknesses and I believe it is a poor choice to suddenly switch around simply because there is one feature missing. Another provider will have a different weakness. And most of them will cost money. My lists are free with my account services.
Cyndi
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Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
SpamAssassin is much better integrated in the MTA ahead of Mailman, but if they want to integrate SpamAssassin with Mailman at some point, refer them to <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=103&atid=300103> and <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=103&atid=300103>.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Hi Cyndi:
I have been monitoring your situation. We offer a mailman hosting service that does not require the client to move their entire hosting to us. Our mailman clients have access to our mailscanner/spamassassin anti-spam system for just $2 a month with great success. We have been offering mailman services now for years and unlike many web hosts out there, we are committed to supporting our mailman clients and not to ignoring them. Mailman is a great software and we have enjoyed using and supporting it through the years.
If you want more information, our mailman page is at http://www.emwd.com/mailman.html.
Regards, Brian
EMWD.com - 'Powered by Techies'
-----Original Message----- From: mailman-users-bounces+brian=emwd.com@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+brian=emwd.com@python.org] On Behalf Of Mark Sapiro Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2007 11:50 AM To: cyndi@tikvah.com; brad@shub-internet.org Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] How to stop spam emails
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
SpamAssassin is much better integrated in the MTA ahead of Mailman, but if they want to integrate SpamAssassin with Mailman at some point, refer them to <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=10 3&atid=300103> and <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>.
-- 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 http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/brian%40emwd.com
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Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 08:49:30 -0800 From: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
SpamAssassin is much better integrated in the MTA ahead of Mailman, but if they want to integrate SpamAssassin with Mailman at some point, refer them to <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=103&atid=300103> and <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=103&atid=300103>.
Many thanks. I have passed this along to my ISP.
Cyndi
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Cyndi Norwitz writes:
I thought you earlier wrote that SpamAssassin *is* being run by the ISP, but "can't be used" with Mailman. If SpamAssassin is installed, I don't understand why you can't use it with Mailman.
Lack of spam filtering is not just another feature that might not be provided in today's mail environment; it's a complete loss of service waiting to happen. IMHO YMMV etc, but I strongly advise you be proactive on this.
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Hi
When I run command-> service mailman restart, it gives following error. Please help in sorting this error
[root@server ~]# service mailman restart /etc/init.d/mailman: line 90: 1911 Segmentation fault rm -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog /etc/init.d/mailman: line 59: 1913 Segmentation fault cat
/etc/init.d/mailman: line 76: 1926 Segmentation fault touch /var/lock/subsys/$prog
-----Original Message----- From: mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org] On Behalf Of Stephen J. Turnbull Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:28 PM To: cyndi@tikvah.com Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] How to stop spam emails
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>
and
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>.
Many thanks. I have passed this along to my ISP.
I thought you earlier wrote that SpamAssassin *is* being run by the ISP, but "can't be used" with Mailman. If SpamAssassin is installed, I don't understand why you can't use it with Mailman.
Lack of spam filtering is not just another feature that might not be provided in today's mail environment; it's a complete loss of service waiting to happen. IMHO YMMV etc, but I strongly advise you be proactive on this.
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/vinita.aggarwal%40un.or g.in
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Vinita Aggarwal wrote:
I tried to tell you a couple of days ago <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2007-December/059421.html> that you should start new topics by composing a new message to mailman-users@python.org, not by replying to an unrelated post. I suggest you go to <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2007-December/> and look for your posts if you don't understand what I'm saying.
As far as the above error is concerned, and the related 'service httpd' error in your other post is concerned, these are not things that this list can help you with. These errors occur in the running of shell scripts installed with the respective rpm packages. These are scripts in /etc/init.d (or /etc/rc.d/init.d) named mailman, httpd, etc.
The problem above seems to occur before the script even tries to issue a mailmanctl command.
If you can't figure out what the problem with this is, you can always run "~mailman/bin/mailmanctl restart" directly.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Hi,
When I restart httpd , it gives following error. Please help in solving this error.
[root@server ~]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd: /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions: line 156: 1099 Segmentation fault usleep 100000
/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions: line 156: 1101 Segmentation fault sleep 1
/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions: line 156: 1105 Segmentation fault rm -f /var/run/$base.pid
Starting httpd: /etc/init.d/httpd: line 40: 1107 Segmentation fault LANG=C grep -Eiq "^[[:space:]]*($GONE)" $CONFFILE
/etc/init.d/httpd: line 59: 1109 Segmentation fault touch ${lockfile} -----Original Message----- From: mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org] On Behalf Of Stephen J. Turnbull Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:28 PM To: cyndi@tikvah.com Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] How to stop spam emails
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>
and
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>.
Many thanks. I have passed this along to my ISP.
I thought you earlier wrote that SpamAssassin *is* being run by the ISP, but "can't be used" with Mailman. If SpamAssassin is installed, I don't understand why you can't use it with Mailman.
Lack of spam filtering is not just another feature that might not be provided in today's mail environment; it's a complete loss of service waiting to happen. IMHO YMMV etc, but I strongly advise you be proactive on this.
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/vinita.aggarwal%40un.or g.in
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From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:57:57 +0900
I thought you earlier wrote that SpamAssassin *is* being run by the ISP,
Correct.
but "can't be used" with Mailman.
No, that they haven't taken the steps to integrate it with MM yet and have no immediate plans to do so.
If SpamAssassin is installed, I don't understand why you can't use it with Mailman.
Is there a way *I* can without the ISP doing anything?
Lack of spam filtering is not just another feature that might not be provided in today's mail environment; it's a complete loss of service waiting to happen. IMHO YMMV etc, but I strongly advise you be proactive on this.
I'm working on it. They do have SA for email.
This is a great small local ISP. They are very responsive to problems and go out of their way for their customers. I suspect no one has asked them yet for this feature. I expect they'll deal with it soon.
Thanks, Cyndi
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On 12/9/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
They don't need to. So long as they're running SpamAssassin on their machines and using the standard SpamAssassin tagging feature, you can take advantage of that. You don't need any further help from them on that subject.
Yes. Set up your spam filters under "Privacy options..." then "Spam filters".
So long as the e-mail for your mailing lists are passing through the same servers, then it doesn't matter. At that point, e-mail is e-mail and it doesn't really matter who the sender is or who the recipient(s) is/are.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
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Brad Knowles writes:
And don't want to (I'm surprised Brad didn't reemphasize this). If they are running SpamAssassin, you want them to run it in such a way that your MTA can refuse to accept the mail at all. This has the advantages that (1) you (and your Mailman) never see it, which (2) saves your ISP the cost of running Mailman, and (3) in case of a "false positive", a real user will see that their mail was bounced and complain to you, and have some useful information for diagnosing why.
It's (2) and to some extent (3) that makes this method significantly better than filtering on SpamAssassin headers at the Mailman stage.
Almost. If you worry about false positives, you can ask them to make sure that the "spam level header" which gives a "spamminess rating" according to the number of stars (eg, X-Spam-Level: ********** is a 10) is enabled. Then you can add a discard filter for "^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*" to your Mailman configuration which nukes all posts with level 10 spamminess or more, and a hold filter to "^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*" which holds posts with level 5 or more for moderation. Tune the number of stars to fit your experience.
This header is on by default, and you can easily check the headers of list mail to see if it's there.
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From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:24:32 +0900
Almost. If you worry about false positives, you can ask them to make sure that the "spam level header" which gives a "spamminess rating" according to the number of stars (eg, X-Spam-Level: ********** is a 10) is enabled. Then you can add a discard filter for "^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*" to your Mailman configuration which nukes all posts with level 10 spamminess or more, and a hold filter to "^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*" which holds posts with level 5 or more for moderation. Tune the number of stars to fit your experience.
But this isn't useful to me. Oh, I'm sure some of the really bad spam would go away, but this is a health list and so there are *a lot* of false positives because we mention a lot of spam-like keywords. So I'd have to set the spam level pretty high.
A couple of months post-migration, I expect that the majority of my list members will be off moderation. Their posts will go through in what amounts to a whitelist. The rest will be moderated.
The spam sent to the posting address will be in my moderation window. Mixed with the legit posts. That is the problem. Saying "this is spam so I'm sending it to you for moderation" is not helpful. The stuff is already in moderation.
I also don't want any member's mail that is not moderated to be marked spam and held for moderation. Given the nature of the list, this could easily be 5-10% of all legit posts. I do want the administriva filter on, but that's already working okay.
Here's what I want:
Subscribers who are unmoderated to be whitelisted. Non-subscribers who I have set to auto-accept to be whitelisted. Potential spam from the moderated box to be sent to my graymail (my ISP's name (or maybe a common name, I don't know) for suspected spam--they send an email each night with the from and subject headers).
So, yes, I do want the spam filter to run through Mailman. But I will accept a spam filter from an earlier server if I can whitelist easily, though it won't be very helpful to me.
Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
How about rejecting or discarding non-member posts instead of holding them. does that help? Note that there are problems with rejecting spam although Mailman has limits on the number of autoresponses per day to a given user to prevent joe-jobbing. There are also problems with discarding non-member posts if you ever expect to get legitimate messages from non-members, but these are options to consider (generic_nonmember_action = reject or discard).
So you are basically saying that you don't trust any spam filter other than a human, so all this discussion is moot.
You already have these.
Mailman sends a summary every morning with the From: and Subject: of the held posts waiting moderator action.
Here you have a problem because detecting a flagged post based on header_filter_rules is not sensitive to whether or not the poster is "whitelisted" (you could make rules for this, but it would be too cumbersome; you'd basically need to list everyone's address in a rule).
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:34:45 -0800 From: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
How about rejecting or discarding non-member posts instead of holding them. does that help?
If the spam problem is too great, I may have to disallow non-member posts except for people who write me asking to be put on an approved list. I have several regular posters who are not subscribers by their own choice (their posts are generally newsletters). My preference is to allow non-member posts but moderate them (except for the few I put an auto-allow on).
So you are basically saying that you don't trust any spam filter other than a human, so all this discussion is moot.
No. I said I don't want my unmoderated members to get their posts held due to having keywords that match spam. Spam filters always have false positives. In my experience, SA has a ton of false positives on my list posts. Spam filters are very useful but I don't want to rely on them 100%.
You already have these.
If the spam filter works on the mail server, then it will screen all the posts, not just the ones held for moderation.
Mailman sends a summary every morning with the From: and Subject: of the held posts waiting moderator action.
Yes, that is acceptable, if I can access them. But I don't want spam to be left in my moderation box.
Here you have a problem because detecting a flagged post based on header_filter_rules is not sensitive to whether or not the poster is "whitelisted" (you could make rules for this, but it would be too cumbersome; you'd basically need to list everyone's address in a rule).
I agree. There is no easy way I see of doing what I want. I guess I need to see what all the options are and play with it for a while and see what my ISP does.
Thanks, Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
So if I understand, you want spam filtering to apply only to non-members who aren't in accept_these_nonmembers.
You aren't going to be able to do that unless sonic installs the SpamAssassin patch referred to earlier in this thread or something similar.
What that patch allows is setting a SpamAssassin 'hold' score and a SpamAssassin 'discard' score and a member bonus for being a member or in accept_these_nonmembers. If you set the member bonus high enough, no member post would ever be held or discarded.
The problem with that is those settings are global, not per-list. The patch could always be modified to make the settings per-list, but that makes it less likely you'd ever see it installed.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 22:19:50 -0800 From: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
So if I understand, you want spam filtering to apply only to non-members who aren't in accept_these_nonmembers.
That would be my preference. But I would accept any form of spam filtering and then simply work with it to reduce my workload as much as possible.
You aren't going to be able to do that unless sonic installs the SpamAssassin patch referred to earlier in this thread or something similar.
What that patch allows is setting a SpamAssassin 'hold' score and a SpamAssassin 'discard' score and a member bonus for being a member or in accept_these_nonmembers. If you set the member bonus high enough, no member post would ever be held or discarded.
This would work.
The problem with that is those settings are global, not per-list. The patch could always be modified to make the settings per-list, but that makes it less likely you'd ever see it installed.
Nodding. There are pros and cons to not running your own server.
As for whether or not I actually see false positives...yes, I got several a week from my list posts alone. On lists that totalled a couple hundred legit posts a week. The spam filter would catch them not just for medical words but for being from the wrong ISP or setting up their email program not quite right, using the wrong phrase, and so forth.
Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
This kind of poster might best be served by having them subscribe and set their subscription to no-mail. This also is a useful strategy for members with multiple addresses.
My preference is to allow non-member posts but moderate them (except for the few I put an auto-allow on).
Auto-allow non-members are a good candidate for subscribe-and-no-mail. It could work for the "other" non-members, depending on how they find out about your list(s). If people's posts are urgent (at least to them), subscribe-and-no-mail is not a great strategy, of course. My lists are like that (bug reports on software), but I've found it to be a tolerable compromise nevertheless. Even people who very rarely post are often happy to to have an easy way to get that "free pass" (as long as it doesn't mean they get unwanted mail from my lists).
Please be more specific about "false positive". If you mean according to the default setting of "5.0 is spam", you might still get rid of a *lot* of spam by raising that to 10.0 without false positives.
Yes, that is acceptable, if I can access them. But I don't want spam to be left in my moderation box.
How does your graymail work? It sounded to me like it was just another moderation box. Now you have two, as I understand it. This may be a win for you, but I don't see why it would be offhand.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:44:29 +0900
> If the spam problem is too great, I may have to disallow non-member posts
> except for people who write me asking to be put on an approved list. I
> have several regular posters who are not subscribers by their own choice
> (their posts are generally newsletters).
This kind of poster might best be served by having them subscribe and set their subscription to no-mail. This also is a useful strategy for members with multiple addresses.
This will not work in my situation for more than a certain percentage of my non-member posts. The details aren't important (to this list anyway).
> No. I said I don't want my unmoderated members to get their posts
> held due to having keywords that match spam. Spam filters always
> have false positives. In my experience, SA has a ton of false
> positives on my list posts.
Please be more specific about "false positive". If you mean according to the default setting of "5.0 is spam", you might still get rid of a *lot* of spam by raising that to 10.0 without false positives.
False positive means it's legit mail that is in my spam folder. Using my ISP's defaults.
> Yes, that is acceptable, if I can access them. But I don't want spam to be
> left in my moderation box.
How does your graymail work? It sounded to me like it was just another moderation box. Now you have two, as I understand it. This may be a win for you, but I don't see why it would be offhand.
Graymail is a list of from addresses and subject headers of every email there. If it's all spam, I scan and ignore. It goes away forever after 7 days (my setting).
Anything in moderation for MM must be clicked on. One at a time. 3 clicks per sender (which means per spam most of the time) if I want to set the address to auto-discard and ban the spammer from joining the list, in addition to simply discarding the email.
False positives are far easier to deal with in MM moderation than in graymail, but my ISP is about to come out with a better version of graymail that may reduce the workload.
Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
This will not work in my situation for more than a certain percentage of my non-member posts. The details aren't important (to this list anyway).
Sure, but you're being nibbled to death by mice. Everything that you can offload onto other people is more time for you to spend on the service you want to provide. In my personal experience that "works" in the sense that a number of people do go to the trouble to save me time, and some even express gratitude for the chance to help. YMMV, of course.
False positive means it's legit mail that is in my spam folder. Using my ISP's defaults.
Well, those defaults are not well-tuned to your list. (You obviously know they're not working; my point is that there's a very good chance that they can be tuned a *lot* better.) Timing is up to you, but my advice is to get in touch with your ISP early and often and see if they'll give you some access to tuning SA (SpamAssassin) scores for rules that give you a lot of false positives, and to training SA's adaptive filters against a pile of your list mail.
BTW, I see that you have checked for SA headers in your list mail and not found them. If they're using something else, a lot of what has been said about SA applies to most filter software to some degree. And if they're not using anything, the sooner they start, the better for everybody.
Regards,
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/9/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
False positive means it's legit mail that is in my spam folder. Using my ISP's defaults.
Sounds like you need to talk to your ISP about how those defaults can be changed to be something more suitable for you.
Anything in moderation for MM must be clicked on.
Not true. At least, not entirely true.
If there's anything you want to allow through, then yes -- those have to be clicked on.
Everything else could be left in the default "Defer" mode, and then you simply click the check box at the top or bottom of the page which says "Discard all mail marked 'Defer'", then hit the "Submit Your Changes" button.
See above. All the stuff you want thrown away should be able to be thrown away with just one and only one click.
You should only have to click on anything else if you want to reject it, allow it through, or take some other less typical action.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/374ba076bead84905266162abc728fb8.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/10/2007, Mark Sapiro (mark@msapiro.net) wrote:
Mailman sends a summary every morning with the From: and Subject: of the held posts waiting moderator action.
Where is this option? I don't currently get these, but I'd like to...
--
Best regards,
Charles
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Charles Marcus wrote:
There is no option for this per se. The option (admin_immed_notify) is to get or not get the per message notices. The daily summary is produced by cron/checkdbs which should run daily at 8:00 a.m. if you have the default Mailman crontab installed.
If you aren't getting the summary, either cron isn't running checkdbs or you are so diligent at dealing with held messages that there never are any outstanding when checkdbs runs.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/374ba076bead84905266162abc728fb8.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/10/2007, Mark Sapiro (mark@msapiro.net) wrote:
Duh... ok, there is no daily cron job for it (I had someone help me get this server set up a long time ago before I was comfortable doing stuff like this myself, and guess he forgot to do this)...
Mailman is in the cron group, so according to the Gentoo docs (thats what I'm using), a simple:
cd /usr/local/mailman/cron && crontab -u mailman crontab.in
should do it?
Thanks again!
--
Best regards,
Charles
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/10/07, Charles Marcus wrote:
That's a standard Mailman cron job. You can also turn on immediate notices, if you want. However, there should not be any way you can turn off the standard daily notices, short of disabling that cron job.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
Heh. You're asking a lot of the current technology; if I were you, I'd take up a collection and hire a consultant. That said ...
Are you sure you get a lot of false positives? Spam filtering is more than just looking for "Viagra" or "Tylenol". You really ought to look at a sample of say 100 posts or maybe 1000, and see just how bad it gets. You might be pleasantly surprised at how few posts fall into the only-a-human-can-tell range.
It's also possible to tune SpamAssassin by deemphasizing rules that give false positives, as well as by using the sa-learn tool to train its adaptive filters. (If that's not your cup of tea, take up a collection and hire a consultant.)
There are alternatives such as SpamBayes which may be easier to integrate.
members will be off moderation. Their posts will go through in what amounts to a whitelist. The rest will be moderated.
I assume your list archives are non-public? Otherwise whitelisting is dangerous (I've gotten spam claiming to be from Barry Warsaw, for example).
Yes, we understand that. What I'm saying that saying "this is definitely spam so it goes in the trash" *is* helpful, and I get a heck of a lot of spam that doesn't anything to do with health: stock scams, counterfeit watches, and pirated software, for example. If you can get rid of all of that, wouldn't it be a big win?
Reasonable.
So, yes, I do want the spam filter to run through Mailman.
Well, maybe you do. Then again, maybe life would be better if you handled all whitelisting and spam moderation through SpamAssassin. SpamAssassin *can* do all of the above without being integrated into Mailman.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/10/07, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
There are alternatives such as SpamBayes which may be easier to integrate.
Everything is being done by her ISP, so I don't know that it's useful to discuss alternative solutions. Either way, she's got to live with whatever they give her, at least up until the point she reconsiders whether or not she's going to move at least her mailing list services to a different provider that might be more responsive.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/9/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
It depends on how your ISP runs SpamAssassin. It is possible to run it in a manner where the user has full control over what rules and what scores will be applied to their mail, and when you train SpamAssassin by feeding it examples of spam that has gotten through or ham that has accidentally been mis-identified, these rules and scores will be updated as necessary.
I've been seriously fighting spam for about twelve years (as the Sr. Internet Mail Administrator for AOL, I wrote some of the earliest comprehensive anti-spam measures for sendmail, which I then re-published to the community), and I've spoken on this subject at conferences, I've been a member of the IETF/IRTF Anti-Spam Research Group, and was the head of the Best Current Practices sub-group.
I can tell you, with some authority, that the only effective way to run SpamAssassin is to do so using these per-user methods. And that if you (the ISP) do actually run it in this way, you really can quite effectively catch or identify most spam, even in environments where you would otherwise tend to generate excessive false positive matches.
Of course, that doesn't mean that your ISP is actually going to do any of these things.
That doesn't work, either. Spammers troll the archives of mailing lists to find addresses they can use -- to spam those mailing lists, among others. You can't just auto-whitelist all addresses in certain classes.
No, that's not a common name. I've been in this business for nearly twenty years, and in all that time, I have never heard this particular term used in this manner. More common terms are folders with names like "quarantine" or "probable spam".
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 14:11:00 -0600 From: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org>
No, that they haven't taken the steps to integrate it with MM yet and have no immediate plans to do so.
They don't need to. So long as they're running SpamAssassin on their machines and using the standard SpamAssassin tagging feature, you can take advantage of that. You don't need any further help from them on that subject.
That would rock.
Is there a way *I* can without the ISP doing anything?
Yes. Set up your spam filters under "Privacy options..." then "Spam filters".
There is nothing called spam filters in privacy options.
I also checked content filtering and there is nothing relevant.
So long as the e-mail for your mailing lists are passing through the same servers, then it doesn't matter. At that point, e-mail is e-mail and it doesn't really matter who the sender is or who the recipient(s) is/are.
My guess is they are different servers, though the posts may pass through the email server at some point. List mail goes to lists.sonic.net, email to sonic.net.
Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
Yes. Set up your spam filters under "Privacy options..." then "Spam filters".
There is nothing called spam filters in privacy options.
In the admin interface, there should be four sub-pages under Privacy options...
* Subscription rules
* Sender filters
* Recipient filters
* Spam filters
If they aren't all there, then this is something sonic.net has done to their installation.
Does list mail (received posts) have any SpamAssassin headers, e.g. X-Spam-Status:, X-Spam-Flag:, X-Spam-Level:.
If so, you can filter on those with header_filter_rules which is under Spam filters if you have it, but see my reply (to come) to your subsequent post.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:21:01 -0800 From: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
There is nothing called spam filters in privacy options.
In the admin interface, there should be four sub-pages under Privacy options...
Yeah, duh, somehow I missed that :)
Does list mail (received posts) have any SpamAssassin headers, e.g. X-Spam-Status:, X-Spam-Flag:, X-Spam-Level:.
Not taht I can see. Here's a sample header from a spam attempted post:
Received: from b.mx.sonic.net (b.mx.sonic.net [209.204.159.4]) by listman.sonic.net (8.13.8.Beta0-Sonic/8.13.7) with ESMTP id lB56QfhY031208 for <immune@listman.sonic.net>; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 22:26:41 -0800 Received: from fedmail.FEDMAIL (70.43.123.148.nw.nuvox.net [70.43.123.148]) by b.mx.sonic.net (8.13.8.Beta0-Sonic/8.13.7) with ESMTP id lB56Qchx002626 for <immune@sonic.net>; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 22:26:41 -0800 Message-Id: <200712050626.lB56Qchx002626@b.mx.sonic.net> Received: from fedmail (70.43.123.67.nw.nuvox.net [70.43.123.67]) by fedmail.FEDMAIL with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13) id YFVARF1L; Wed, 5 Dec 2007 01:10:37 -0500 Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:10:36 -0500 From: Prime Vendor<fedmail@fedmail.prime-vendor.com> Sender: fedmail@fedmail.prime-vendor.com Reply-to: fedmail@fedmail.prime-vendor.com Subject: Hello JAMES FELDMAN To: immune@sonic.net X-Sonic-SB-IP-RBLs: IP RBLs .
Thanks, Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/11198d9ad6446473d0bc64f98895bb71.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Ive got it working with spamassassin just fine,
It gets spam checked as soon as its received by postfix, then it passes on to the mailman software - where non dropped spam gets checked again
I just have X-Spam-Flag: YES = discard (or hold for moderation in some more important lists) in my spam settings and for it not to accept mail from non list members (unless it's a public list) - ontop of that postfix does rbl checks etc and drops most spam now before it even hits spamassassin for checking..
Its worked a treat thus far..
Cheers Spyro
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Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
Well, that last one seems to say that something at sonic thinks the sending IP is in a blacklist, or maybe that blacklists were checked and the IP wasn't found.
You'd probably have to ask sonic what the possible headers are and what they mean.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/9/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
Then your ISP has installed a pretty non-standard version of Mailman. The standard version has this feature. Again, you need to talk to your ISP.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mohamed CHAARI wrote:
You subscribe a user in your local domain to the list. This is a real user account, but not one normally used for mail. This user has a .forward file which pipes incoming mail to the external archiver or to a script which filters out non-list spam and sends the rest to the external archiver. Or the mail is just delivered to a local mailbox and some cron runs frequently to remove the mail from the local mailbox, filter it and send the good list mail to the external archiver.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/54ee0f72cffcd9395e63845fde113114.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mark Sapiro wrote:
Hello, I come back to this topic ... As I really need to keep possibility to have both MM archiving and external one, I've made a small patch on Mailman, so that it accepts both internal archiving (pipermail) and external archiving (if enabled). In this way, there is no longer need to call 'arch' in 'external_arch.pl' script, and thus, this script doesn't need to be run in background. But I would like to have your opinion (Mark and others), about this patch: - is there any side effect ? - can there be problems (or conflicts) when receiving and archiving many mails ? here's the patch (on 'Archiver.py'): --- /home/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.orig.py 2008-01-11 19:40:44.000000000 +0100 +++ /home/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.py 2008-01-11 19:44:54.000000000 +0100 @@ -201,20 +201,22 @@ # Archive to mbox only. return txt = str(msg) - # should we use the internal or external archiver? + + # keep using the internal archiver + f = StringIO(txt) + import HyperArch + h = HyperArch.HyperArchive(self) + h.processUnixMailbox(f) + h.close() + f.close() + + # now, use the external archiver (if enabled) private_p = self.archive_private if mm_cfg.PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER and not private_p: self.ExternalArchive(mm_cfg.PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER, txt) elif mm_cfg.PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER and private_p: self.ExternalArchive(mm_cfg.PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER, txt) - else: - # use the internal archiver - f = StringIO(txt) - import HyperArch - h = HyperArch.HyperArchive(self) - h.processUnixMailbox(f) - h.close() - f.close() + # # called from MailList.MailList.Save() Thanks & best regards -- --- --Mohamed CHAARI (mailto:mohamed.chaari@st.com)
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/54ee0f72cffcd9395e63845fde113114.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mark Sapiro wrote:
what about the Archiver.pyc file ? do you think it is necessary to re-compile and re-install the whole soft ? or simply apply the patch on Archiver.py to make it working ? thank you -- --- --Mohamed CHAARI (mailto:mohamed.chaari@st.com)
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/358f04f5f993066da926a0892f774c83.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mohamed CHAARI wrote:
Python is (usually) smart enough to figure out if the source file has been updated and the .pyc file is stale. In most cases you don't have to do anything to make it work after editing the .py file. If you are really concerned about it, just delete the .pyc file and it will be generated anew when Python next executes the .py file.
Dragon
Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
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Mohamed CHAARI wrote:
The size of the archive is only going to influence /usr/local/bin/external_arch whatever that is. Its performance/run time may or may not depend on the size of the archive.
There are potential issues either way (forground or background). The external archiver command is run with the list locked. This is both good and bad. It eliminates any potential race condition which might overwrite /var/run/mailman/mail_tmp with a second message before the first message is processed, at least if only one list is involved, but it may keep the list locked for a long time if the external_arch process is slow. In addition, if the external_arch shoud do something that locks the list, a deadlock results.
See <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2005-August/045994.html>.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/54ee0f72cffcd9395e63845fde113114.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mark Sapiro wrote:
you mentioned, in the thread above (Aug 2005), that it would be better to have a unique temporary file, to avoid conflict problems ... I've tried this, in mm_cfg.py, using unix timestamp
PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER = 'cat > /var/run/mailman/mail_tmp.$(date +%s); /usr/local/bin/external_arch.pl %(listname)s &'
but without success. is there a way to do it ? should I use Python functions to get unix timestamp for current date ?
thanks
--
--Mohamed CHAARI (mailto : mohamed.chaari@st.com)
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Mohamed CHAARI wrote:
It looks to me as if you have inherited something from Jean-Philippe GIOLA and it is now way more complicated than it needs to be.
Here are my observations on the above:
- The name "mail_tmp.$(date +%s)" may still not be unique. What if two messages arrive to be archived within the same second?
2)How does /usr/local/bin/external_arch.pl determine what file to read? And, if it just picks one, it could be for the wrong list.
3)The reason the above doesn't work at all is mailman interpolates into the PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER string from a dictionary in order to replace %(listname)s with the actual listname, but this interpolation sees the %s date format and replaces it with the entire dictionary. You have to double the % to avoid this. E.g.
'cat > /var/run/mailman/mail_tmp.$(date +%%s); /usr/local/bin/external_arch.pl %(listname)s &'
- The normal way to do this is to not bother with the tempfile stuff at all, but rather to just pipe the message to the external archiver as in
PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER = '/usr/local/bin/external_arch.pl %(listname)s'
Then external_arch.pl can just read it's standard input for the message. If you do it this way, you can't run it in the background because it won't get standard input from the pipe, but the only reason it might need to run in the background is if it does something which locks the list.
I think Jean-Philippe GIOLA was doing these wierd contortions because he wanted both the normal pipermail archive and an external archive, but the normal way to do this is to just do normal archiving in Mailman and subscribe an address to the list to do the external archiving.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/54ee0f72cffcd9395e63845fde113114.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mark Sapiro wrote:
yes
ok
which is our case, because of the call to 'arch'
I think Jean-Philippe GIOLA was doing these wierd contortions because he wanted both the normal pipermail archive and an external archive,
yes this is exactly our requirement
I didn't understand well this solution. can you please explain it, how can a subscriber/address do the external archiving ?
Thank you in advance
--
--Mohamed CHAARI (mailto : mohamed.chaari@st.com)
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Hi
I am not very sound in mailman configuration.
I have a list in which anyone can post. "Hold the positing from non members".
Now, I am getting everyday about 100s of spam emails in that list. Please advise how to deal with this?
Regards, Vinita Aggarwal
-----Original Message----- From: mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org] On Behalf Of Mohamed CHAARI Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 1:12 PM To: Mark Sapiro Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] running External Archiver on background/foreground
Mark Sapiro wrote:
yes
it just picks one, it could be for the wrong list.
3)The reason the above doesn't work at all is mailman interpolates into
And, if the
ok
all, the
background is if it does something which locks the list.
which is our case, because of the call to 'arch'
I think Jean-Philippe GIOLA was doing these wierd contortions because he
wanted
both the normal pipermail archive and an external archive,
yes this is exactly our requirement
I didn't understand well this solution. can you please explain it, how can a subscriber/address do the external archiving ?
Thank you in advance
--
--Mohamed CHAARI (mailto : mohamed.chaari@st.com)
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/vinita.aggarwal%40un.or g.in
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Vinita Aggarwal wrote:
It is best to start a new topic on a list by creating a new message, not by replying to someone else's post. When you reply to an unrelated post, your post gets threaded in the other topic in the archive and it makes the archive hard to read.
Anyway, the answer to your question is install better spam filtering in your MTA. The best thing is to identify spam at incoming SMTP time and don't accept it in the first place. Next best is to accept it but silently discard it in the MTA - do not bounce it to the claimed sender as this is almost certainly forged.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On 12/7/07, Vinita Aggarwal wrote:
Now, I am getting everyday about 100s of spam emails in that list. Please advise how to deal with this?
Mailman doesn't have great tools for this. Instead, you should configure your mail server to reject or discard the spam messages before they ever get to Mailman.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
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Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2007 13:35:56 -0600 From: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org>
On 12/7/07, Vinita Aggarwal wrote:
Now, I am getting everyday about 100s of spam emails in that list. Please advise how to deal with this?
Mailman doesn't have great tools for this. Instead, you should configure your mail server to reject or discard the spam messages before they ever get to Mailman.
Any ideas how to do this when your ISP is hosting Mailman?
As soon as they finish mass subscribing my address list, my domain name list address will be active with MM and it gets HUNDREDS of spams a day. Since I can't run them through SpamAssasin (that my ISP runs) (with majordomo, msgs sent for moderation have MD headers so you can't check for false positives without opening each msg), I use procmail to get rid of the worst of the spam.
With the migration, I won't be able to use procmail anymore. And SA won't be an option either. I'll be slowly unmoderating most of my list members but many will have to be on moderation for life. And their posts will be mixed in with all the spam on the web interface.
I can ban the spammer's addresses through the interface, and even put some key spam phrases into the interface, but it won't help much.
I've asked in my ISP's usenet group for Mailman and got no answers.
Cyndi
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On 12/7/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
That would be the responsibility of your ISP. If they're not doing their job, then maybe you might want to find a different provider of this particular service.
There are multiple different providers of service for Mailman and Mailman-hosted mailing lists linked from FAQ 1.17 at <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.017.htp>. I believe that at least one of those is actually fairly active on the mailman-users mailing list, although I don't have any personal experience with their particular service.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
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Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 00:27:11 -0600 From: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org>
That would be the responsibility of your ISP. If they're not doing their job, then maybe you might want to find a different provider of this particular service.
Well, I'm happy with my ISP and have no plans to move *again*. But I will ask them again if they can do it. The reply I got from them was: "In the future Sonic.net could integrate SpamAssassin into Mailman but that's not currently on anyones plate."
Thanks, Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I was talking about moving just your mailing lists, not all your ISP
services. Of course you could link those two if you want, but there
are plenty of mailing list only providers that you could at least
check out.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-Internet.org>
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 8, 2007, at 1:04 AM, Cyndi Norwitz <cyndi@tikvah.com> wrote:
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From: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 01:53:21 -0600
I was talking about moving just your mailing lists, not all your ISP
services. Of course you could link those two if you want, but there
are plenty of mailing list only providers that you could at least
check out.
As I said, I am happy with my ISP and have no plans to move my lists again.
If there is no way for me to filter spam, then I will live with it until my ISP is able to fix the problem. Every provider has strengths and weaknesses and I believe it is a poor choice to suddenly switch around simply because there is one feature missing. Another provider will have a different weakness. And most of them will cost money. My lists are free with my account services.
Cyndi
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Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
SpamAssassin is much better integrated in the MTA ahead of Mailman, but if they want to integrate SpamAssassin with Mailman at some point, refer them to <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=103&atid=300103> and <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=103&atid=300103>.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/af5f3a2ac097765617a652c2d0d3407d.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hi Cyndi:
I have been monitoring your situation. We offer a mailman hosting service that does not require the client to move their entire hosting to us. Our mailman clients have access to our mailscanner/spamassassin anti-spam system for just $2 a month with great success. We have been offering mailman services now for years and unlike many web hosts out there, we are committed to supporting our mailman clients and not to ignoring them. Mailman is a great software and we have enjoyed using and supporting it through the years.
If you want more information, our mailman page is at http://www.emwd.com/mailman.html.
Regards, Brian
EMWD.com - 'Powered by Techies'
-----Original Message----- From: mailman-users-bounces+brian=emwd.com@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+brian=emwd.com@python.org] On Behalf Of Mark Sapiro Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2007 11:50 AM To: cyndi@tikvah.com; brad@shub-internet.org Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] How to stop spam emails
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
SpamAssassin is much better integrated in the MTA ahead of Mailman, but if they want to integrate SpamAssassin with Mailman at some point, refer them to <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=10 3&atid=300103> and <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>.
-- 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 http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/brian%40emwd.com
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Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 08:49:30 -0800 From: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
SpamAssassin is much better integrated in the MTA ahead of Mailman, but if they want to integrate SpamAssassin with Mailman at some point, refer them to <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=103&atid=300103> and <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=103&atid=300103>.
Many thanks. I have passed this along to my ISP.
Cyndi
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Cyndi Norwitz writes:
I thought you earlier wrote that SpamAssassin *is* being run by the ISP, but "can't be used" with Mailman. If SpamAssassin is installed, I don't understand why you can't use it with Mailman.
Lack of spam filtering is not just another feature that might not be provided in today's mail environment; it's a complete loss of service waiting to happen. IMHO YMMV etc, but I strongly advise you be proactive on this.
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Hi
When I run command-> service mailman restart, it gives following error. Please help in sorting this error
[root@server ~]# service mailman restart /etc/init.d/mailman: line 90: 1911 Segmentation fault rm -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog /etc/init.d/mailman: line 59: 1913 Segmentation fault cat
/etc/init.d/mailman: line 76: 1926 Segmentation fault touch /var/lock/subsys/$prog
-----Original Message----- From: mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org] On Behalf Of Stephen J. Turnbull Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:28 PM To: cyndi@tikvah.com Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] How to stop spam emails
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>
and
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>.
Many thanks. I have passed this along to my ISP.
I thought you earlier wrote that SpamAssassin *is* being run by the ISP, but "can't be used" with Mailman. If SpamAssassin is installed, I don't understand why you can't use it with Mailman.
Lack of spam filtering is not just another feature that might not be provided in today's mail environment; it's a complete loss of service waiting to happen. IMHO YMMV etc, but I strongly advise you be proactive on this.
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/vinita.aggarwal%40un.or g.in
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Vinita Aggarwal wrote:
I tried to tell you a couple of days ago <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2007-December/059421.html> that you should start new topics by composing a new message to mailman-users@python.org, not by replying to an unrelated post. I suggest you go to <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2007-December/> and look for your posts if you don't understand what I'm saying.
As far as the above error is concerned, and the related 'service httpd' error in your other post is concerned, these are not things that this list can help you with. These errors occur in the running of shell scripts installed with the respective rpm packages. These are scripts in /etc/init.d (or /etc/rc.d/init.d) named mailman, httpd, etc.
The problem above seems to occur before the script even tries to issue a mailmanctl command.
If you can't figure out what the problem with this is, you can always run "~mailman/bin/mailmanctl restart" directly.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Hi,
When I restart httpd , it gives following error. Please help in solving this error.
[root@server ~]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd: /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions: line 156: 1099 Segmentation fault usleep 100000
/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions: line 156: 1101 Segmentation fault sleep 1
/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions: line 156: 1105 Segmentation fault rm -f /var/run/$base.pid
Starting httpd: /etc/init.d/httpd: line 40: 1107 Segmentation fault LANG=C grep -Eiq "^[[:space:]]*($GONE)" $CONFFILE
/etc/init.d/httpd: line 59: 1109 Segmentation fault touch ${lockfile} -----Original Message----- From: mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+vinita.aggarwal=un.org.in@python.org] On Behalf Of Stephen J. Turnbull Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:28 PM To: cyndi@tikvah.com Cc: mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] How to stop spam emails
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=534577&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>
and
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=640518&group_id=10 3&atid=300103>.
Many thanks. I have passed this along to my ISP.
I thought you earlier wrote that SpamAssassin *is* being run by the ISP, but "can't be used" with Mailman. If SpamAssassin is installed, I don't understand why you can't use it with Mailman.
Lack of spam filtering is not just another feature that might not be provided in today's mail environment; it's a complete loss of service waiting to happen. IMHO YMMV etc, but I strongly advise you be proactive on this.
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/vinita.aggarwal%40un.or g.in
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From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:57:57 +0900
I thought you earlier wrote that SpamAssassin *is* being run by the ISP,
Correct.
but "can't be used" with Mailman.
No, that they haven't taken the steps to integrate it with MM yet and have no immediate plans to do so.
If SpamAssassin is installed, I don't understand why you can't use it with Mailman.
Is there a way *I* can without the ISP doing anything?
Lack of spam filtering is not just another feature that might not be provided in today's mail environment; it's a complete loss of service waiting to happen. IMHO YMMV etc, but I strongly advise you be proactive on this.
I'm working on it. They do have SA for email.
This is a great small local ISP. They are very responsive to problems and go out of their way for their customers. I suspect no one has asked them yet for this feature. I expect they'll deal with it soon.
Thanks, Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/9/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
They don't need to. So long as they're running SpamAssassin on their machines and using the standard SpamAssassin tagging feature, you can take advantage of that. You don't need any further help from them on that subject.
Yes. Set up your spam filters under "Privacy options..." then "Spam filters".
So long as the e-mail for your mailing lists are passing through the same servers, then it doesn't matter. At that point, e-mail is e-mail and it doesn't really matter who the sender is or who the recipient(s) is/are.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
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Brad Knowles writes:
And don't want to (I'm surprised Brad didn't reemphasize this). If they are running SpamAssassin, you want them to run it in such a way that your MTA can refuse to accept the mail at all. This has the advantages that (1) you (and your Mailman) never see it, which (2) saves your ISP the cost of running Mailman, and (3) in case of a "false positive", a real user will see that their mail was bounced and complain to you, and have some useful information for diagnosing why.
It's (2) and to some extent (3) that makes this method significantly better than filtering on SpamAssassin headers at the Mailman stage.
Almost. If you worry about false positives, you can ask them to make sure that the "spam level header" which gives a "spamminess rating" according to the number of stars (eg, X-Spam-Level: ********** is a 10) is enabled. Then you can add a discard filter for "^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*" to your Mailman configuration which nukes all posts with level 10 spamminess or more, and a hold filter to "^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*" which holds posts with level 5 or more for moderation. Tune the number of stars to fit your experience.
This header is on by default, and you can easily check the headers of list mail to see if it's there.
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From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:24:32 +0900
Almost. If you worry about false positives, you can ask them to make sure that the "spam level header" which gives a "spamminess rating" according to the number of stars (eg, X-Spam-Level: ********** is a 10) is enabled. Then you can add a discard filter for "^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*" to your Mailman configuration which nukes all posts with level 10 spamminess or more, and a hold filter to "^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*" which holds posts with level 5 or more for moderation. Tune the number of stars to fit your experience.
But this isn't useful to me. Oh, I'm sure some of the really bad spam would go away, but this is a health list and so there are *a lot* of false positives because we mention a lot of spam-like keywords. So I'd have to set the spam level pretty high.
A couple of months post-migration, I expect that the majority of my list members will be off moderation. Their posts will go through in what amounts to a whitelist. The rest will be moderated.
The spam sent to the posting address will be in my moderation window. Mixed with the legit posts. That is the problem. Saying "this is spam so I'm sending it to you for moderation" is not helpful. The stuff is already in moderation.
I also don't want any member's mail that is not moderated to be marked spam and held for moderation. Given the nature of the list, this could easily be 5-10% of all legit posts. I do want the administriva filter on, but that's already working okay.
Here's what I want:
Subscribers who are unmoderated to be whitelisted. Non-subscribers who I have set to auto-accept to be whitelisted. Potential spam from the moderated box to be sent to my graymail (my ISP's name (or maybe a common name, I don't know) for suspected spam--they send an email each night with the from and subject headers).
So, yes, I do want the spam filter to run through Mailman. But I will accept a spam filter from an earlier server if I can whitelist easily, though it won't be very helpful to me.
Cyndi
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Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
How about rejecting or discarding non-member posts instead of holding them. does that help? Note that there are problems with rejecting spam although Mailman has limits on the number of autoresponses per day to a given user to prevent joe-jobbing. There are also problems with discarding non-member posts if you ever expect to get legitimate messages from non-members, but these are options to consider (generic_nonmember_action = reject or discard).
So you are basically saying that you don't trust any spam filter other than a human, so all this discussion is moot.
You already have these.
Mailman sends a summary every morning with the From: and Subject: of the held posts waiting moderator action.
Here you have a problem because detecting a flagged post based on header_filter_rules is not sensitive to whether or not the poster is "whitelisted" (you could make rules for this, but it would be too cumbersome; you'd basically need to list everyone's address in a rule).
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:34:45 -0800 From: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
How about rejecting or discarding non-member posts instead of holding them. does that help?
If the spam problem is too great, I may have to disallow non-member posts except for people who write me asking to be put on an approved list. I have several regular posters who are not subscribers by their own choice (their posts are generally newsletters). My preference is to allow non-member posts but moderate them (except for the few I put an auto-allow on).
So you are basically saying that you don't trust any spam filter other than a human, so all this discussion is moot.
No. I said I don't want my unmoderated members to get their posts held due to having keywords that match spam. Spam filters always have false positives. In my experience, SA has a ton of false positives on my list posts. Spam filters are very useful but I don't want to rely on them 100%.
You already have these.
If the spam filter works on the mail server, then it will screen all the posts, not just the ones held for moderation.
Mailman sends a summary every morning with the From: and Subject: of the held posts waiting moderator action.
Yes, that is acceptable, if I can access them. But I don't want spam to be left in my moderation box.
Here you have a problem because detecting a flagged post based on header_filter_rules is not sensitive to whether or not the poster is "whitelisted" (you could make rules for this, but it would be too cumbersome; you'd basically need to list everyone's address in a rule).
I agree. There is no easy way I see of doing what I want. I guess I need to see what all the options are and play with it for a while and see what my ISP does.
Thanks, Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
So if I understand, you want spam filtering to apply only to non-members who aren't in accept_these_nonmembers.
You aren't going to be able to do that unless sonic installs the SpamAssassin patch referred to earlier in this thread or something similar.
What that patch allows is setting a SpamAssassin 'hold' score and a SpamAssassin 'discard' score and a member bonus for being a member or in accept_these_nonmembers. If you set the member bonus high enough, no member post would ever be held or discarded.
The problem with that is those settings are global, not per-list. The patch could always be modified to make the settings per-list, but that makes it less likely you'd ever see it installed.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 22:19:50 -0800 From: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
So if I understand, you want spam filtering to apply only to non-members who aren't in accept_these_nonmembers.
That would be my preference. But I would accept any form of spam filtering and then simply work with it to reduce my workload as much as possible.
You aren't going to be able to do that unless sonic installs the SpamAssassin patch referred to earlier in this thread or something similar.
What that patch allows is setting a SpamAssassin 'hold' score and a SpamAssassin 'discard' score and a member bonus for being a member or in accept_these_nonmembers. If you set the member bonus high enough, no member post would ever be held or discarded.
This would work.
The problem with that is those settings are global, not per-list. The patch could always be modified to make the settings per-list, but that makes it less likely you'd ever see it installed.
Nodding. There are pros and cons to not running your own server.
As for whether or not I actually see false positives...yes, I got several a week from my list posts alone. On lists that totalled a couple hundred legit posts a week. The spam filter would catch them not just for medical words but for being from the wrong ISP or setting up their email program not quite right, using the wrong phrase, and so forth.
Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
This kind of poster might best be served by having them subscribe and set their subscription to no-mail. This also is a useful strategy for members with multiple addresses.
My preference is to allow non-member posts but moderate them (except for the few I put an auto-allow on).
Auto-allow non-members are a good candidate for subscribe-and-no-mail. It could work for the "other" non-members, depending on how they find out about your list(s). If people's posts are urgent (at least to them), subscribe-and-no-mail is not a great strategy, of course. My lists are like that (bug reports on software), but I've found it to be a tolerable compromise nevertheless. Even people who very rarely post are often happy to to have an easy way to get that "free pass" (as long as it doesn't mean they get unwanted mail from my lists).
Please be more specific about "false positive". If you mean according to the default setting of "5.0 is spam", you might still get rid of a *lot* of spam by raising that to 10.0 without false positives.
Yes, that is acceptable, if I can access them. But I don't want spam to be left in my moderation box.
How does your graymail work? It sounded to me like it was just another moderation box. Now you have two, as I understand it. This may be a win for you, but I don't see why it would be offhand.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:44:29 +0900
> If the spam problem is too great, I may have to disallow non-member posts
> except for people who write me asking to be put on an approved list. I
> have several regular posters who are not subscribers by their own choice
> (their posts are generally newsletters).
This kind of poster might best be served by having them subscribe and set their subscription to no-mail. This also is a useful strategy for members with multiple addresses.
This will not work in my situation for more than a certain percentage of my non-member posts. The details aren't important (to this list anyway).
> No. I said I don't want my unmoderated members to get their posts
> held due to having keywords that match spam. Spam filters always
> have false positives. In my experience, SA has a ton of false
> positives on my list posts.
Please be more specific about "false positive". If you mean according to the default setting of "5.0 is spam", you might still get rid of a *lot* of spam by raising that to 10.0 without false positives.
False positive means it's legit mail that is in my spam folder. Using my ISP's defaults.
> Yes, that is acceptable, if I can access them. But I don't want spam to be
> left in my moderation box.
How does your graymail work? It sounded to me like it was just another moderation box. Now you have two, as I understand it. This may be a win for you, but I don't see why it would be offhand.
Graymail is a list of from addresses and subject headers of every email there. If it's all spam, I scan and ignore. It goes away forever after 7 days (my setting).
Anything in moderation for MM must be clicked on. One at a time. 3 clicks per sender (which means per spam most of the time) if I want to set the address to auto-discard and ban the spammer from joining the list, in addition to simply discarding the email.
False positives are far easier to deal with in MM moderation than in graymail, but my ISP is about to come out with a better version of graymail that may reduce the workload.
Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
This will not work in my situation for more than a certain percentage of my non-member posts. The details aren't important (to this list anyway).
Sure, but you're being nibbled to death by mice. Everything that you can offload onto other people is more time for you to spend on the service you want to provide. In my personal experience that "works" in the sense that a number of people do go to the trouble to save me time, and some even express gratitude for the chance to help. YMMV, of course.
False positive means it's legit mail that is in my spam folder. Using my ISP's defaults.
Well, those defaults are not well-tuned to your list. (You obviously know they're not working; my point is that there's a very good chance that they can be tuned a *lot* better.) Timing is up to you, but my advice is to get in touch with your ISP early and often and see if they'll give you some access to tuning SA (SpamAssassin) scores for rules that give you a lot of false positives, and to training SA's adaptive filters against a pile of your list mail.
BTW, I see that you have checked for SA headers in your list mail and not found them. If they're using something else, a lot of what has been said about SA applies to most filter software to some degree. And if they're not using anything, the sooner they start, the better for everybody.
Regards,
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/9/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
False positive means it's legit mail that is in my spam folder. Using my ISP's defaults.
Sounds like you need to talk to your ISP about how those defaults can be changed to be something more suitable for you.
Anything in moderation for MM must be clicked on.
Not true. At least, not entirely true.
If there's anything you want to allow through, then yes -- those have to be clicked on.
Everything else could be left in the default "Defer" mode, and then you simply click the check box at the top or bottom of the page which says "Discard all mail marked 'Defer'", then hit the "Submit Your Changes" button.
See above. All the stuff you want thrown away should be able to be thrown away with just one and only one click.
You should only have to click on anything else if you want to reject it, allow it through, or take some other less typical action.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/374ba076bead84905266162abc728fb8.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/10/2007, Mark Sapiro (mark@msapiro.net) wrote:
Mailman sends a summary every morning with the From: and Subject: of the held posts waiting moderator action.
Where is this option? I don't currently get these, but I'd like to...
--
Best regards,
Charles
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Charles Marcus wrote:
There is no option for this per se. The option (admin_immed_notify) is to get or not get the per message notices. The daily summary is produced by cron/checkdbs which should run daily at 8:00 a.m. if you have the default Mailman crontab installed.
If you aren't getting the summary, either cron isn't running checkdbs or you are so diligent at dealing with held messages that there never are any outstanding when checkdbs runs.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/374ba076bead84905266162abc728fb8.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/10/2007, Mark Sapiro (mark@msapiro.net) wrote:
Duh... ok, there is no daily cron job for it (I had someone help me get this server set up a long time ago before I was comfortable doing stuff like this myself, and guess he forgot to do this)...
Mailman is in the cron group, so according to the Gentoo docs (thats what I'm using), a simple:
cd /usr/local/mailman/cron && crontab -u mailman crontab.in
should do it?
Thanks again!
--
Best regards,
Charles
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/10/07, Charles Marcus wrote:
That's a standard Mailman cron job. You can also turn on immediate notices, if you want. However, there should not be any way you can turn off the standard daily notices, short of disabling that cron job.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz writes:
Heh. You're asking a lot of the current technology; if I were you, I'd take up a collection and hire a consultant. That said ...
Are you sure you get a lot of false positives? Spam filtering is more than just looking for "Viagra" or "Tylenol". You really ought to look at a sample of say 100 posts or maybe 1000, and see just how bad it gets. You might be pleasantly surprised at how few posts fall into the only-a-human-can-tell range.
It's also possible to tune SpamAssassin by deemphasizing rules that give false positives, as well as by using the sa-learn tool to train its adaptive filters. (If that's not your cup of tea, take up a collection and hire a consultant.)
There are alternatives such as SpamBayes which may be easier to integrate.
members will be off moderation. Their posts will go through in what amounts to a whitelist. The rest will be moderated.
I assume your list archives are non-public? Otherwise whitelisting is dangerous (I've gotten spam claiming to be from Barry Warsaw, for example).
Yes, we understand that. What I'm saying that saying "this is definitely spam so it goes in the trash" *is* helpful, and I get a heck of a lot of spam that doesn't anything to do with health: stock scams, counterfeit watches, and pirated software, for example. If you can get rid of all of that, wouldn't it be a big win?
Reasonable.
So, yes, I do want the spam filter to run through Mailman.
Well, maybe you do. Then again, maybe life would be better if you handled all whitelisting and spam moderation through SpamAssassin. SpamAssassin *can* do all of the above without being integrated into Mailman.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/10/07, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
There are alternatives such as SpamBayes which may be easier to integrate.
Everything is being done by her ISP, so I don't know that it's useful to discuss alternative solutions. Either way, she's got to live with whatever they give her, at least up until the point she reconsiders whether or not she's going to move at least her mailing list services to a different provider that might be more responsive.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/9/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
It depends on how your ISP runs SpamAssassin. It is possible to run it in a manner where the user has full control over what rules and what scores will be applied to their mail, and when you train SpamAssassin by feeding it examples of spam that has gotten through or ham that has accidentally been mis-identified, these rules and scores will be updated as necessary.
I've been seriously fighting spam for about twelve years (as the Sr. Internet Mail Administrator for AOL, I wrote some of the earliest comprehensive anti-spam measures for sendmail, which I then re-published to the community), and I've spoken on this subject at conferences, I've been a member of the IETF/IRTF Anti-Spam Research Group, and was the head of the Best Current Practices sub-group.
I can tell you, with some authority, that the only effective way to run SpamAssassin is to do so using these per-user methods. And that if you (the ISP) do actually run it in this way, you really can quite effectively catch or identify most spam, even in environments where you would otherwise tend to generate excessive false positive matches.
Of course, that doesn't mean that your ISP is actually going to do any of these things.
That doesn't work, either. Spammers troll the archives of mailing lists to find addresses they can use -- to spam those mailing lists, among others. You can't just auto-whitelist all addresses in certain classes.
No, that's not a common name. I've been in this business for nearly twenty years, and in all that time, I have never heard this particular term used in this manner. More common terms are folders with names like "quarantine" or "probable spam".
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 14:11:00 -0600 From: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org>
No, that they haven't taken the steps to integrate it with MM yet and have no immediate plans to do so.
They don't need to. So long as they're running SpamAssassin on their machines and using the standard SpamAssassin tagging feature, you can take advantage of that. You don't need any further help from them on that subject.
That would rock.
Is there a way *I* can without the ISP doing anything?
Yes. Set up your spam filters under "Privacy options..." then "Spam filters".
There is nothing called spam filters in privacy options.
I also checked content filtering and there is nothing relevant.
So long as the e-mail for your mailing lists are passing through the same servers, then it doesn't matter. At that point, e-mail is e-mail and it doesn't really matter who the sender is or who the recipient(s) is/are.
My guess is they are different servers, though the posts may pass through the email server at some point. List mail goes to lists.sonic.net, email to sonic.net.
Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
Yes. Set up your spam filters under "Privacy options..." then "Spam filters".
There is nothing called spam filters in privacy options.
In the admin interface, there should be four sub-pages under Privacy options...
* Subscription rules
* Sender filters
* Recipient filters
* Spam filters
If they aren't all there, then this is something sonic.net has done to their installation.
Does list mail (received posts) have any SpamAssassin headers, e.g. X-Spam-Status:, X-Spam-Flag:, X-Spam-Level:.
If so, you can filter on those with header_filter_rules which is under Spam filters if you have it, but see my reply (to come) to your subsequent post.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e3418fb686114cc8d181aada05da4c2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:21:01 -0800 From: Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net>
Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
There is nothing called spam filters in privacy options.
In the admin interface, there should be four sub-pages under Privacy options...
Yeah, duh, somehow I missed that :)
Does list mail (received posts) have any SpamAssassin headers, e.g. X-Spam-Status:, X-Spam-Flag:, X-Spam-Level:.
Not taht I can see. Here's a sample header from a spam attempted post:
Received: from b.mx.sonic.net (b.mx.sonic.net [209.204.159.4]) by listman.sonic.net (8.13.8.Beta0-Sonic/8.13.7) with ESMTP id lB56QfhY031208 for <immune@listman.sonic.net>; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 22:26:41 -0800 Received: from fedmail.FEDMAIL (70.43.123.148.nw.nuvox.net [70.43.123.148]) by b.mx.sonic.net (8.13.8.Beta0-Sonic/8.13.7) with ESMTP id lB56Qchx002626 for <immune@sonic.net>; Tue, 4 Dec 2007 22:26:41 -0800 Message-Id: <200712050626.lB56Qchx002626@b.mx.sonic.net> Received: from fedmail (70.43.123.67.nw.nuvox.net [70.43.123.67]) by fedmail.FEDMAIL with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13) id YFVARF1L; Wed, 5 Dec 2007 01:10:37 -0500 Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:10:36 -0500 From: Prime Vendor<fedmail@fedmail.prime-vendor.com> Sender: fedmail@fedmail.prime-vendor.com Reply-to: fedmail@fedmail.prime-vendor.com Subject: Hello JAMES FELDMAN To: immune@sonic.net X-Sonic-SB-IP-RBLs: IP RBLs .
Thanks, Cyndi
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/11198d9ad6446473d0bc64f98895bb71.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Ive got it working with spamassassin just fine,
It gets spam checked as soon as its received by postfix, then it passes on to the mailman software - where non dropped spam gets checked again
I just have X-Spam-Flag: YES = discard (or hold for moderation in some more important lists) in my spam settings and for it not to accept mail from non list members (unless it's a public list) - ontop of that postfix does rbl checks etc and drops most spam now before it even hits spamassassin for checking..
Its worked a treat thus far..
Cheers Spyro
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Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
Well, that last one seems to say that something at sonic thinks the sending IP is in a blacklist, or maybe that blacklists were checked and the IP wasn't found.
You'd probably have to ask sonic what the possible headers are and what they mean.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bdecdef03708b218939094eb05e8b35.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 12/9/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
Then your ISP has installed a pretty non-standard version of Mailman. The standard version has this feature. Again, you need to talk to your ISP.
-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mohamed CHAARI wrote:
You subscribe a user in your local domain to the list. This is a real user account, but not one normally used for mail. This user has a .forward file which pipes incoming mail to the external archiver or to a script which filters out non-list spam and sends the rest to the external archiver. Or the mail is just delivered to a local mailbox and some cron runs frequently to remove the mail from the local mailbox, filter it and send the good list mail to the external archiver.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/54ee0f72cffcd9395e63845fde113114.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mark Sapiro wrote:
Hello, I come back to this topic ... As I really need to keep possibility to have both MM archiving and external one, I've made a small patch on Mailman, so that it accepts both internal archiving (pipermail) and external archiving (if enabled). In this way, there is no longer need to call 'arch' in 'external_arch.pl' script, and thus, this script doesn't need to be run in background. But I would like to have your opinion (Mark and others), about this patch: - is there any side effect ? - can there be problems (or conflicts) when receiving and archiving many mails ? here's the patch (on 'Archiver.py'): --- /home/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.orig.py 2008-01-11 19:40:44.000000000 +0100 +++ /home/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.py 2008-01-11 19:44:54.000000000 +0100 @@ -201,20 +201,22 @@ # Archive to mbox only. return txt = str(msg) - # should we use the internal or external archiver? + + # keep using the internal archiver + f = StringIO(txt) + import HyperArch + h = HyperArch.HyperArchive(self) + h.processUnixMailbox(f) + h.close() + f.close() + + # now, use the external archiver (if enabled) private_p = self.archive_private if mm_cfg.PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER and not private_p: self.ExternalArchive(mm_cfg.PUBLIC_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER, txt) elif mm_cfg.PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER and private_p: self.ExternalArchive(mm_cfg.PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER, txt) - else: - # use the internal archiver - f = StringIO(txt) - import HyperArch - h = HyperArch.HyperArchive(self) - h.processUnixMailbox(f) - h.close() - f.close() + # # called from MailList.MailList.Save() Thanks & best regards -- --- --Mohamed CHAARI (mailto:mohamed.chaari@st.com)
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/54ee0f72cffcd9395e63845fde113114.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mark Sapiro wrote:
what about the Archiver.pyc file ? do you think it is necessary to re-compile and re-install the whole soft ? or simply apply the patch on Archiver.py to make it working ? thank you -- --- --Mohamed CHAARI (mailto:mohamed.chaari@st.com)
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/358f04f5f993066da926a0892f774c83.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mohamed CHAARI wrote:
Python is (usually) smart enough to figure out if the source file has been updated and the .pyc file is stale. In most cases you don't have to do anything to make it work after editing the .py file. If you are really concerned about it, just delete the .pyc file and it will be generated anew when Python next executes the .py file.
Dragon
Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
participants (11)
-
Brad Knowles
-
Brian Carpenter
-
Charles Marcus
-
Cyndi Norwitz
-
David Gibbs
-
Dragon
-
Mark Sapiro
-
Mohamed CHAARI
-
Spyro Polymiadis
-
Stephen J. Turnbull
-
Vinita Aggarwal