[Mailman-Developers] Mass subscription failed / R-sig-QA mailing list

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Garrett <Jim_Garrett at bd.com>
>>>>>     on Fri, 16 May 2003 16:34:00 -0400 writes:

    Jim> Hi Martin, Seeing the message below, I had the
    Jim> impression that I was subscribed to the mailing list,
    Jim> when perhaps I wasn't.  At least, I sent a message to
    Jim> the list and didn't receive it, so I thought I wasn't
    Jim> signed up (maybe the list is intelligent enough not to
    Jim> send me my own messages...).  So I subscribed, and all
    Jim> seems well.

no, not from here.
If I look at the members list, I only see the 6 people that have
been subscribed for many many months, but not all the new ones I
subscribed on May 7 -- nor your new subscription as of May 15.
I'm very much startled and even shocked about such a problem --
that I haven't seen in the past for the many other mailman lists
we manage here successfully.

If I read the "subscribe" log file (of mailman) which
tells me about the subscription it `did' :

    May 07 09:16:30 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "Jim_Garrett at bd.com" <>
    May 07 09:16:30 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "Rob.Balshaw at syreon.com" <>
    May 07 09:16:30 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "barker at medtap.com" <>
    May 07 09:16:30 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "fharrell at virginia.edu" <>
    May 07 09:16:31 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "gregory_r_warnes at groton.pfizer.com" <>
    May 07 09:16:31 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "luke at inpharmatica.co.uk" <>
    May 07 09:16:31 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch" <>
    May 07 09:16:31 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "p.murrell at auckland.ac.nz" <>
    May 07 09:16:31 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "partha_bagchi at hgsi.com" <>
    May 07 09:16:32 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "rossini at blindglobe.net" <>
    May 07 09:16:32 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "rreeve at liposcience.com" <>
    May 07 09:16:32 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "tura at centroin.com.br" <>
    May 07 09:16:32 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "v_bill_pikounis at merck.com" <>
    May 07 09:16:32 2003 (23390) r-sig-qa: new "werner_engl at baxter.com" <>
    May 15 22:05:38 2003 (20223) r-sig-qa: pending Jim Garrett <jim_garrett at bd.com>  198.232.248.8
    May 15 22:13:52 2003 (20630) r-sig-qa: new "jim_garrett at bd.com" <Jim Garrett>

everything looks fine,  but when I then look at the members
lists, nobody new one is there.... 

    Jim> I wonder if it's possible that some people think they
    Jim> are subscribed when in fact they are not.  Could you
    Jim> please verify how many are subscribed?  I tried to
    Jim> check the subscriber list but wasn't allowed (even
    Jim> after giving my password).

as you see, I did subscribe you and all these by a so-called
"mass subscription" and you did get the corresponding welcome
e-mail (that you had appended here).

I just tried again (needs a tiny bit longer when working from
home), and it didn't work again -- when I tried to "upload a
file" of new member addresses.

However when I tried (the old way of) pasting the new members
e-mails in to the web-interface form -- it did work.
This is clearly a bug with mailman (2.1.2) or our setup of
mailman (the web server doesn't have the same files mounted, the
	 file I used is only available on the client and the
	 machine where mailman runs, but not on the machine
	 where httpd runs).
For this reason, I forward this answer to quite a few other
people.

Anyway, the new subscription are now up.
Probably you should send a new short mail mentioning that
everyone can use the list archives to read your last posting and
Kurt Hornik's reply to it, via the usual web interface, or very 
directly going to

  https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-qa/2003-May/thread.html

Please apologize the problem!

Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>	http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum  LEO C16	Leonhardstr. 27
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology)	8092 Zurich	SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408		fax: ...-1228			<><