disable a mailing list
hello all,
i want to temporary disable one of my mailing lists while keeping the archives available. i run mailman 2.1.12 with sendmail. i was thinking about doing the following:
. remove the appropriate aliases from /path/to/aliases (redirecting the <mailling-list>-owner of the affected list to some real address) . move the /path/to/mailman/lists/<disabled-list> directory to a temporary location
is this the proper way to disable a list? is there anything else that needs to be done?
greetings,
Stoyan
Stoyan Angelov wrote:
i want to temporary disable one of my mailing lists while keeping the archives available. i run mailman 2.1.12 with sendmail. i was thinking about doing the following:
. remove the appropriate aliases from /path/to/aliases (redirecting the <mailling-list>-owner of the affected list to some real address) . move the /path/to/mailman/lists/<disabled-list> directory to a temporary location
is this the proper way to disable a list? is there anything else that needs to be done?
Yes, that is a good way to temporarily disable a list. I think you could actually leave the aliases in place (except for maybe changing the -owner alias), and the pipe to the mail/mailman wrapper will fail resulting in a reject to the sender. You should test to see if you think the reject is appropriate. You can do this by creating an alias like
bogus: "|/path/to/mail/mailman post bogus"
and sending a message to that address.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 08/24/10 18:28, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Stoyan Angelov wrote:
i want to temporary disable one of my mailing lists while keeping the archives available. i run mailman 2.1.12 with sendmail. i was thinking about doing the following:
. remove the appropriate aliases from /path/to/aliases (redirecting the <mailling-list>-owner of the affected list to some real address) . move the /path/to/mailman/lists/<disabled-list> directory to a temporary location
is this the proper way to disable a list? is there anything else that needs to be done?
Yes, that is a good way to temporarily disable a list. I think you could actually leave the aliases in place (except for maybe changing the -owner alias), and the pipe to the mail/mailman wrapper will fail resulting in a reject to the sender. You should test to see if you think the reject is appropriate. You can do this by creating an alias like
bogus: "|/path/to/mail/mailman post bogus"
and sending a message to that address.
hello Mark,
thank you for your answer! very helpful as always; please excuse my very late reply...
i did the test with sending a test message to a bogus alias - the good thing is that in the returned message there is some info:
----- Transcript of session follows -----post script, list not found: bogus 554 5.3.0 unknown mailer error 1
this is nice since it says... "no such list here" and i am also able to see all failed posts in mailman's error log. the negative thing is that the returned mail exposes my mailman installation path:
The original message was received at Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:35:10 +0300 (EEST) from myhost.mydomain.dom [192.192.192.192]
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----"|/my/real/path/to/mailman/mail/mailman post bogus" <snip> Final-Recipient: RFC822; mybogus-alias@mydomain.dom X-Actual-Recipient: X-Unix; |/my/real/path/to/mailman/mail/mailman post bogus <snip>
greetings,
Stoyan
On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 6:10 PM, Stoyan Angelov <s_angelov@filibeto.org>wrote:
On 08/24/10 18:28, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Stoyan Angelov wrote:
i want to temporary disable one of my mailing lists while keeping the archives available. i run mailman 2.1.12 with sendmail. i was thinking about doing the following:
. remove the appropriate aliases from /path/to/aliases (redirecting the <mailling-list>-owner of the affected list to some real address) . move the /path/to/mailman/lists/<disabled-list> directory to a temporary location
is this the proper way to disable a list? is there anything else that needs to be done?
Yes, that is a good way to temporarily disable a list. I think you could actually leave the aliases in place (except for maybe changing the -owner alias), and the pipe to the mail/mailman wrapper will fail resulting in a reject to the sender. You should test to see if you think the reject is appropriate. You can do this by creating an alias like
bogus: "|/path/to/mail/mailman post bogus"
and sending a message to that address.
hello Mark,
thank you for your answer! very helpful as always; please excuse my very late reply...
i did the test with sending a test message to a bogus alias - the good thing is that in the returned message there is some info:
----- Transcript of session follows ----- post script, list not found: bogus 554 5.3.0 unknown mailer error 1
this is nice since it says... "no such list here" and i am also able to see all failed posts in mailman's error log. the negative thing is that the returned mail exposes my mailman installation path:
The original message was received at Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:35:10 +0300 (EEST) from myhost.mydomain.dom [192.192.192.192]
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- "|/my/real/path/to/mailman/mail/mailman post bogus" <snip> Final-Recipient: RFC822; mybogus-alias@mydomain.dom X-Actual-Recipient: X-Unix; |/my/real/path/to/mailman/mail/mailman post bogus
<snip><http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/odhiambo%40gmail.com>
That, I see no problem with! It's a good "diagnostic" message. I know you don't see it as such, but if your server isn't secured is what you need to worry about. Nobody will access that path if server is secured properly.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254733744121/+254722743223
"If you have nothing good to say about someone, just shut up!." -- Lucky Dube
On 09/18/10 15:49, Odhiambo Washington wrote: <snip>
hello Mark, thank you for your answer! very helpful as always; please excuse my very late reply... i did the test with sending a test message to a bogus alias - the good thing is that in the returned message there is some info: ----- Transcript of session follows ----- post script, list not found: bogus 554 5.3.0 unknown mailer error 1 this is nice since it says... "no such list here" and i am also able to see all failed posts in mailman's error log. the negative thing is that the returned mail exposes my mailman installation path: The original message was received at Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:35:10 +0300 (EEST) from myhost.mydomain.dom [192.192.192.192] ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- "|/my/real/path/to/mailman/mail/mailman post bogus" <snip> Final-Recipient: RFC822; mybogus-alias@mydomain.dom X-Actual-Recipient: X-Unix; |/my/real/path/to/mailman/mail/mailman post bogus <snip> <http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/odhiambo%40gmail.com>That, I see no problem with! It's a good "diagnostic" message. I know you don't see it as such, but if your server isn't secured is what you need to worry about. Nobody will access that path if server is secured properly.
hello Odhiambo,
thanks for your comment. the machine is fairly secured, however i do prefer not to expose any such information in "returned mail" messages.
greetings,
Stoyan
Stoyan Angelov wrote:
thanks for your comment. the machine is fairly secured, however i do prefer not to expose any such information in "returned mail" messages.
The alternative is to remove the aliases for the list. The downside of that is you won't get any Mailman logging and the DSN will say someting to the effect of 'no such user' instead of 'no such list'.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
participants (3)
-
Mark Sapiro -
Odhiambo Washington -
Stoyan Angelov