[Mailman-Users] Introduction

[Barry A. Warsaw]

Gary, apologies for working through your messages in reverse order...

>>>>> "L" == Listwrangler  <listwrangler at iximd.com> writes:

    L> We're having problems with subscribes and unsubscribes,
    L> specifically, users' passwords don't work when they try to
    L> unsubscribe via the web interface. And when users do get
    L> acknowledgements saying the succesfully unsubscribed, they
    L> aren't. Also, the email interface doesn't work so that when
    L> they try to email in their /unsubscription that doesn't work
    L> either.

    L> I'd like to work on the web interface problems first. When I go
    L> to the info page, enter their address, enter the admin
    L> password, and it says, "You have been unsubscribed." But the
    L> user still gets email. I then went into the 'View Subscriber
    L> List' and found the unsubscribed email address on the
    L> subscriber list, and deleted it from there, and got a "You have
    L> been unsubscribed" message. I hope they really are
    L> unsubscribed.

This all sounds suspiciously like they aren't running 1.0 final.  Be
sure your ISP didn't half finish the upgrade, or perhaps didn't do an
upgrade properly (maybe they went from a really old version to 1.0
final but didn't run the "make upgrade")?  I haven't seen any of these 
problems with 1.0 final or later.  There were some earlier problems
with mixed-case addresses not getting handled properly everywhere, but 
I'm nearly certain all that's fixed with the latest release.

Look at the bottom of one of the Web pages.  Does it say Mailman 1.0
(with no b-somethings or rc-something)?

    L> My ISP has informed me that they've done all they intend to do,
    L> and that it's now up to me to do the maintenance on the
    L> list. Personally, I wonder how I'm supposed to do that when I
    L> don't have access to the machine running the list... but that's
    L> a separate issue.

Hmm, it's hard to look at the underlying data structures without a
shell account on the machine.

    L> Anyhow, I'm digging into the archives, but I'd greatly
    L> appreciate it if folks could point me to reference books or
    L> URLS regarding Mailman. Since the switch is recent, I haven't
    L> bought any books and am wondering which ones are good.

The best book on Mailman is the one that hasn't been written yet.
Remember Mailman itself is fairly new software, and it's maintenance
is all done by volunteers (with a vested interest -- I run all
python.org lists under Mailman and if something's broken there,
believe me, I hear about it!)

-Barry