[Mailman-Developers] Unknown virtual host

Robby Griffin rmg at terc.edu
Mon Feb 2 10:14:22 EST 2004


On Sunday, Feb 1, 2004, at 15:58 US/Eastern, Mark Edwards wrote:

> This is incorrect, secure.antsclimbtree.com most certainly is a known 
> vitual host, both to apache and to exim.  Obviously whatever method 
> Mailman is using to check virtual host validity is consulting 
> something other than apache or exim.

Right, mailman has to consult its own list of virtual hosts in order to 
be sure it uses the correct, canonical mapping of webserver hosts to 
mail domains for thru-the-web list creation. See bug #835870, fixed in 
2.1.4 -- just because your 'create' CGI is reachable at some URL 
doesn't necessarily mean you want people to be able to create lists 
that refer to that hostname, especially for email. In your mm_cfg.py, I 
believe you'd need to add this:

add_virtualhost('secure.antsclimbtree.com', 'secure.antsclimbtree.com')

since you apparently intend both URLs and email addresses to contain 
the full hostname. If you omit the second argument, mailman assumes the 
corresponding emailhost is the same as the webserver minus the first 
domain component, i.e. 'antsclimbtree.com'.

Or, you could set VIRTUAL_HOST_OVERVIEW = Off if you don't want to be 
bothered with as many distinctions between virtual hosts. This sounds 
useful if what you're really doing is running lists under some primary 
domain with other possible domains acting like aliases for the primary.

> As I don't know python whatsoever, I can't figure out what test is 
> being used here.

References to mm_cfg should be a big clue. Typically each python file 
is a module with its own namespace, so mm_cfg.FOO is the FOO variable 
set in (or imported by) mm_cfg.py. It's worthwhile when you're 
upgrading Mailman to take a careful look at NEWS and Defaults.py to 
check for new settings that you'll need to customize, things in your 
mm_cfg.py that may have been changed or deprecated, etc. The virtual 
host settings have been there for several releases.

That said, it might have been possible to resolve bug #835870 without 
getting in your way, I just have no idea how. I would think list 
creation would be ok if the domain were defined in mm_cfg.py, _or_ used 
in any existing list, but that is probably too annoying to implement 
and still confusing if you add a virtual host later. Certainly 
consulting the apache or exim config is out of the question.

	--Robby




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