[Mailman-Users] How to change the creation of a new list emailfrom the through-the-web interface?

[Mark Sapiro]

Brad Knowles wrote:

>If you're going to implement any kind of anti-spam system, make sure  
>to implement that only within your MTA (sendmail, postfix, Exim,  
>whatever). Make sure that you don't ever accept a message and then try  
>to bounce it --that's called "backscatter" and makes you as bad as the  
>spammer, and will probably result in your legitimate system being put  
>on one or more blacklists.


Brad's point is right on, however, in some cases it is OK to implement
an anti-spam solution in procmail or something similar as long as you
don't reject the mail, but just silently discard it or flag it for the
recipient.

It is always best to detect the spam in the incoming MTA and issue a
failure response in the incoming SMTP dialog. This is the only way the
failure wil be seen by the actual sender.

See below for the original question.


>On Nov 1, 2007, at 10:51 AM, "Williams, Paul" <paul.williams at uwex.edu>  
>wrote:
>
>> We are planning to implement spam blocking as I found in some
>> postings on the net.
>>
>> Presenty, when we create a new list it sends an email of the form
>>
>> The mailing list `xyz' has been created via the through-the-web
>> interface.  In order to complete the activation of this mailing list,
>> the
>> proper /etc/aliases (or equivalent) file must be updated.  The program
>> `newaliases' may also have to be run.
>>
>> Here are the entries for the /etc/aliases file:
>>
>> xyz:              "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman post xyz"
>> xyz-admin:        "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman admin xyz"
>> xyz-bounces:      "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman bounces xyz"
>> xyz-confirm:      "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman confirm xyz"
>> xyz-join:         "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman join xyz"
>> xyz-leave:        "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman leave xyz"
>> xyz-owner:        "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman owner xyz"
>> xyz-request:      "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman request xyz"
>> xyz-subscribe:    "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe xyz"
>> xyz-unsubscribe:  "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe xyz"
>>
>>
>> However, if we are implementing spam processing (I I understand things
>> properly) then we really need the above lines created to be
>>
>> xyz:              "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> post xyz"
>> xyz-admin:        "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> admin xyz"
>> xyz-bounces:      "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> bounces xyz"
>> xyz-confirm:      "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> confirm xyz"
>> xyz-join:         "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> join xyz"
>> xyz-leave:        "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> leave xyz"
>> xyz-owner:        "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> owner xyz"
>> xyz-request:      "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> request xyz"
>> xyz-subscribe:    "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> subscribe xyz"
>> xyz-unsubscribe:  "|/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/mailman.rc
>> unsubscribe xyz"
>>
>> Otherwise it will be necessary to process the aliases entries in some
>> way,
>> which I would like to avoid. Can that be automated so it generates the
>> proper lines in the email output?


This can be done by editing the code in the _makealiases_mailprog
function in Mailman/MTA/Utils.py.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan