[Mailman-Users] approving / editing messages in the administrative database queue

[Jon Carnes]

On Thu, 2003-05-29 at 03:17, Kenneth Bruyninckx wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 
> This one had got me baffled and after having checked both archives and
> available documentation I need your help on this.
> 
> I have, like anybody else I'm sure, from time to time some bounces on the
> list.
> These bounces are caused by the usual things like "admin requests",
> "non-member submission" and "message longer than x Kb".
> 
> Now my problem is with the last type. I have set a limit of 10 Kb for a
> single message as some people just hit reply on a digest and do not remove
> the previous discussions :-(
> So I get this message in the administrative database awaiting my action. Now
> the action needed is to "trim"/delete part of the mail.
> 
> 1) why is it not possible to "edit" the message from within the webpages,
> because that is where I "look" at them in the first place
> 
There is a patch that lets you edit the message from within the web
page. 

By default you cannot do this, because the whole message may not be
displayed.  Look in your mm_cfg.py file and you will see some settings
that put limits on the amount of a message that is stored for review
purposes.  You can set this so that it displays the whole message (which
you need to do if you apply the patch mentioned above).

  # how many bytes of a held message post should be
  # displayed in the admindb web page?  Use a negative
  # number to indicate the entire message, regardless
  # of size (though this will slow down rendering
  # those pages).
  ADMINDB_PAGE_TEXT_LIMIT = 4096


You can edit the held messages (without using a patch or messing with
the page text limit) if you have access to the command line on the
server.  Add the following section to your mm_cfg.py file:

  # Should held messages be saved on disk as Python
  # pickles or as plain text? The former is more
  # efficient since we don't need to go through the
  # parse/generate roundtrip each time, but the
  # latter might be preferred if you want to edit
  # the held message on disk.
  #HOLD_MESSAGES_AS_PICKLES = 1
  HOLD_MESSAGES_AS_PICKLES = 0
  

The held messages will now be saved in text files and can be found in:
  ~mailman/data/..

Pick your favorite command line editor, edit the held-msg-<listname>
file, then approve the message via the web (note the web admin will not
reflect the changes you have made in the held message).
 
HtH - Jon Carnes