[Mailman-Users] Some mailto's point to wrong places

[Richard Barrett]

On 4 Jul 2004, at 22:54, Akop Pogosian wrote:

> I have compiled mailman 2.1.5 with the follwing options:
> --with-mailhost=host.domain.com --with-urlhost=www.host.domain.com
>
> Now, some users (including me) have "search domain.com" in our
> resolv.conf, so we can visit the web server by simply typing:
> http://www.host in the address bar in the web browser. When I go to
> http://www.host/mailman/listinfo this way, I see one strange thing.
> The web page says: "If you are having trouble using the lists, please
> contact mailman at www.host" instead of using mailman at host.domain.com.
> Is this a bug or a feature? Can I fix it somehow?
>

I think this problem is arising because MM is trying to figure out 
which virtual host the CGI script is being run by/on behalf of by 
examining in the Host: HTTP request header inserted by the browser. I 
would guess that your browser is putting in the abbreviated domain name 
you have entered, which the resolver configuration on your client 
enables to work, rather than the FQDN; indeed your browser is probably 
unaware of what the FQDN is and could not construct a correct Host: 
header if it wanted to.

I guess that whenever clients and servers have markedly different 
resolver configurations you may get a number of interesting side 
effects.

I suggest this is not just a Mailman problem; Apache's name based 
virtual hosts facility is entirely dependent on the Host: header 
inserted by clients and will fail to work as expected if client 
browsers insert abbreviated domain names.

As for fixing it; use FQDNs.

>
> -akop