[Mailman-Developers] Creation/deletion of lists through-the-web

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "JRA" == Jay R Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> writes:

    >>  I'm really trying to avoid having to write the sendmail code
    >> myself.  I just have too many scary flashbacks when I even
    >> think about mucking with sendmail. ;}

    JRA> It seems pretty plain to me.  Just expand the "list of lists"
    JRA> though a text filter that explodes the list names into what
    JRA> the doco says the alias entry needs to look like.

That's not the difficult part.  What I'm purposefully avoiding is
having to install sendmail, and /test/ the interoperability.  There
are all kinds of dark corners lurking there that only someone who uses
and knows sendmail well enough will be able to solve.  As I've done
for Postfix.

    >> JRA> You're working at the 'compiled' level there, right?
    >>  If I understand what you're asking, yes.  IOW, I don't muck
    >> about in the plain text aliases file, but I write directly to
    >> the file that newaliases would produce.

    JRA> Thought so.  Forgive me, my revered senior hat, but that's a
    JRA> bad design.  You've put yourself at their mercy by going
    JRA> behind their API...

I disagree.  Postfix documents all this, so I consider it part of
their API.  And the fact that they have alias_maps /and/
alias_databases shows that they intend for external applications to
create and manage maps that Postfix will consult.

    >> cgi doesn't have that problem.  E.g. if I want to create a new
    >> list on python.org, I'd visit
    >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/create but if I wanted to create
    >> a new list on zope.org (a virtual host of a shared Mailman
    >> installation), I'd visit http://mail.zope.org/mailman/create.

    JRA> Oh... mailman *does* get that right?  Cool; missed that.

    JRA> If it knows that, though, how come my mails go out with the
    JRA> wrong From line?  Doesn't it set the from line to the proper
    JRA> virtual domain?  Or is my configuration wrong?

That's almost invariably a sending-MTA configuration issue.  I know
for a fact that Sendmail used to munge From: headers according to its
own whims.  You could set all the headers properly to your hearts
content, and if Sendmail was misconfigured, they'd be broken when the
end user gets them.

I'll note that python.org and zope.org are a shared Mailman, virtual
host arrangement, and it's all worked perfectly with both Postfix, and
now Exim.

-Barry