[Mailman-Users] a few questions about the NNTP gateway

[Manlio Perillo]

Brad Knowles ha scritto:
> On 8/7/07, Manlio Perillo wrote:
> 
>>  Mailman runs on a Debian Sarge server, so this can be a problem without
>>  an upgrade to Etch (but security problems are not a problem, with 
>> Debian).
> 
> You could always install Mailman from source on that system, or you may 
> be able to find a pre-built package that is based on the latest source.
> 
> This is one of the typical problems when using programs from pre-built 
> packages, because you're totally dependant on the person/group/entity 
> that creates the packages.
> 

Well, having a pre-built packages systems has also some benefits.

> 
> And I'm not at all convinced that "security problems are not a problem, 
> with Debian" or any other OS, for that matter.  Especially not with an 
> old binary package that is based on old code that is known to have 
> security flaws.
> 

The Debian Secutiry team still supports Debian Sarge.
And in theory, if a security problem is found in an upstream package, 
the fix should be back ported on the Debian package.

> I help run the Mailman server and the mail servers for python.org, and 
> we use Debian Linux for the OS.  But we don't use any binary 
> pre-packaged software, at least not for the critical bits like Mailman.
> 

Ok, thanks.
I will try to install the new version.

> [...] 
> And certainly, addresses that come in from USENET in an obscured fashion 
> will most likely have their messages thrown away by most modern mail 
> servers, even if the Mailman server accepts them and processes them as 
> normal.
> 
> 
> So, when you run that gateway, you pretty much always want to use real 
> addresses and not make any attempt to obfuscate addresses crossing one 
> way or the other.
> 

Well, the question of email in clear was raised by an 
it.comp.lang.python newsgroup user.
And on this newsgroup, many of us do not use their real email address.

>>>  I think what happens is that the subject header will get treated as a
>>>  normal subject, and may have additional things tacked onto the front of
>>>  the subject line, whereas normally Mailman would have recognized the
>>>  "Re:" portion and potentially tacked those things on between the "Re:"
>>>  string(s) and the rest of the subject.
>>
>>  It would be nice if mailman can apply a filter to the subject, and to
>>  fix it.
> 
> There's a limit to what Mailman can do to fix the subject line, at least 
> in terms of out-of-the-box code.
> 
> If you're a Python programmer, it shouldn't be hard for you to add your 
> own module to the system to handle these things, and to hook that into 
> the appropriate place in the flow of messages through the system.  In 
> that case, we'd ask you to contribute your changes back to the project 
> via the Mailman patch page on SourceForge, so that others may benefit 
> from your experience.
> 

Ok.



Thanks and regards  Manlio Perillo