[Mailman-Users] Address change failure

[Mark Sapiro]

G. Armour Van Horn wrote:
>
>I'm having problem with administratively changing addresses. When I get 
>a request to change addresses on this list I normally just go ahead and 
>change it figuring that it's easier than explaining the process to those 
>who didn't just go and change it themselves to start with. Several times 
>this year I've had Mailman report success but continue to show the 
>original address. Unfortunately I haven't kept a log of this to come up 
>with any patterns.


How are you changing the address? I'm assuming that as admin, you go to
the user's options page and change it there. This results in a change
request that requires user confirmation. A confirmation email is sent
to the new address (the web response says this), and the user must
receive this mail and reply or follow a link within
PENDING_REQUEST_LIFE (default 3 days) for the change to actually take
effect.

Mailman will continue to show the old address until the user confirms
the change, and if it isn't confirmed before it expires, the address
isn't changed at all.


>In the most recent case, the username did not change while the domain 
>did.


This one I don't understand, since if the new address was invalid, the
user wouldn't receive the confirmation and the address wouldn't change
at all.


>I opened a ticket on the problem and the system admin suggested it 
>was a Mailman bug when only the domain changed. (I am moderator on this 
>list, I haven't had the same problem on my own server but also haven't 
>had a need to make many changes on the small lists there.) The list in 
>question is on Mailman 2.1.9, and I've been very impressed with the 
>skill of the administrator so I don't think they've messed anything up - 
>they run quite a few large high-volume lists.
>
>Is this a known bug? Is there anything we should be looking at? As of 
>now I am logging changes and may see a pattern over time, but it could 
>be a long time depending on activity.


The only thing that seems to be a possible bug is the address change of
domain only. Unfortunately, Mailman 2.1.9 doesn't log address changes,
so there's not much that can be done to trace this.

Note that the only way to change a user's address without user
confirmation and without removing the old address and adding the new,
which is not satisfactory because it loses all the user's non-default
options, is the command line bin/clone_member tool.

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