[Mailman-Users] listowners.org

[Brad Knowles]

At 8:05 AM -0600 2005-03-04, Willie McKemie wrote:

>  Alright, some movement here.  I found the scripts on my local mailman
>  install and seem to be able to execute them.  Now, how do I get the
>  list_members script to operate on data in a config.pck file?
>  "<path>/mailman/bin/list_members <path>/config.pck"
>  doesn't do it.

	Those scripts expect to find the pickle files in their standard 
locations, according to the list name.  So, one way to do that would 
be to create a local version of the list which is empty, and then 
stuff in the config.pck file that you downloaded in place of the 
empty config.pck that was created for that local version of the list.

	Then all the command-line tools should "just work".

>  The above route to lists of members is not all that attractive to me
>  since I have to download a file of about 200mb to get to those
>  relatively small config.pck files.

	There are a lot of things that can be done without too much 
hassle if you've got privileged access to the mail server where 
Mailman is installed, and you can log into the machine directly and 
get a shell prompt.

	Many of those things might be desirable to do from the web for 
site administrators or list managers, but that is not currently 
possible.


	Part of the problem is that Mailman was designed to be used in an 
environment where you install it yourself on your own machine(s), and 
not in a service provider environment.  Some groups like cPanel and 
Plesk recognize that issue and apply a great deal of customization to 
try to hide some of these problems, or to hide those features of 
Mailman which would otherwise be desirable but would not be 
accessible via the web.

	Some will install Mailman in a central location, but then they 
find that supporting all their users becomes very expensive.  They 
either have to charge amounts like $75-100/hour for any kind of 
change that would require involvement by one of their Site 
Administrators, or they stop providing those services altogether.


	These are known issues, and I believe that many of them are 
targeted for being addressed in the upcoming Mailman versions (mm3) 
development branch, but that doesn't help you today.

	The current version of Mailman just wasn't designed to be 
used/abused the way that many sites are installing it.  There's a 
limit to how much we can do to support customers of such sites.

>  Mailman wishlist feature: Enable some sort of "get membership list" via
>  an email command.  Even if member's addresses are "hidden".
>  Alternately, some way to, at least temporarily, "un-hide" all members.
>  Alternately, some way to list all members on a single web page.

	Please file this on the Mailman RFE page at SourceForge.

>  Maybe I should be thinking about "maximum number of members per page"?

	Could do, sure.

>  Is that parameter likely to be available to me as a hosting service
>  customer?

	Unfortunately not.  ;(

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.