[Mailman-Users] Way to suspend e-mail deliver for 24 hours?

[Jim Tittsler]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2004 at 10:55:26AM -0400, Mark Epstein wrote:
> There are times where I would like to suspend e-mail delivery.  I would 
> like posters to post, and get an auto-reply that their mail is being held 
> for 24 hours to be delivered.  I have some basic understanding of Linux,and 
> don't mind setting up a cron job that activates the suspension/auto reply 
> mechanishm,  and then restores operation to normal 24 hours later 
> (releasing any mail in the queue).  But I don't know how to change list 
> settings from a shell script, or how to queue mail up similar to the 

I can think of a couple of ways to do this.

To stop all mail to a mailing list for 24 hours, I'd be
inclined to do it in the mail server.  With an Exim filter for
example, it would be easy to freeze all messages matching a
particular list destination... and then thaw them with a script
at the desired time.  A message to the poster could be sent,
complete with protection against mail loops and rate limiting,
using the Exim filter 'mail' command.

You could do it on the Mailman side by setting/clearing
emergency moderation for a list.  Look at the documentation
provided by 'bin/withlist --help'.  It shows how you can write
a small function or two that will be invoked with withlist's -r
switch.  (There have been many examples on the mailing list.)
You could toggle the m.emergency variable (use the admin pages
for hints about variable names/purposes). A script to "approve"
the messages after 24 hours could take different forms: (1) you
could collect the mailed notifications of moderated messages
and have your script "reply" to each with an Approved: header,
(2) you could script the web interface using a Python (or
other) program, (3) you could load the mailing list object
itself and process the pending actions.  Each has advantages
and disadvantages.

-- 
Jim Tittsler             http://www.OnJapan.net/      GPG: 0x01159DB6
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