[Mailman-Users] sender/envelope addresses esp with mailed commands

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "TA" == Tony Abbott <tabbott at intekom.com> writes:

    TA> Nigel is having the same problem I had - the Sender: header
    TA> exists, but is unqualified. This is the way that Netscape
    TA> Communicator (at least the Unix version) generates the header
    TA> and as such is something we have to deal with. I worked around
    TA> this by modifying GetSender to use Reply-to: if available or
    TA> else From:

M.A. Lemburg was having the same problem, and actually found a
workaround for the Netscape bug.  This, or something very similar,
will be included in a README.NETSCAPE file for the next release.

-Barry

-------------------- snip snip --------------------
Mailman - The GNU Mailing List Management System
Copyright (C) 1998, 1999 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA

Some of your users may experience problems sending mail to a
members-only list, if they are using Netscape Communicator as their
MUA.  Communicator 4.6 on Linux has been observed to insert bogus
unqualified Sender: headers -- i.e. Sender: headers with only the
username part of the email address.  Other version of Netscape may
also have the same bug.

Members-only lists use Sender: as the first field to authenticate
against, so if Sender: exists in the email message, but it is
unqualified, it will never match a mailing list member's address, and
their post will always be held for approval.

In the future, Mailman will improve its algorithm for finding a
matching address, but in the meantime, M. A. Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> 
provides the following advice.  You can send this snippet to any user
whose posts are being held for seemingly no reason.

    Edit the two .js files in your .netscape directory (liprefs.js and
    preferences.js) to include the function call:

    user_pref("mail.suppress_sender_header", true);

    BTW, the binary includes a comment which says that this is only
    necessary on Unix.

    Since Communicator regenerates this file upon exit, the change
    must be done when Communicator is not currently running.  With the
    next start, it will stop adding the Sender: header and things
    start to work like a charm again.

The reason things start to work again, is that Mailman falls back to
authenticating the From: header if the Sender: header is missing.