[Mailman-Users] Setting up redundant mailing lists in OS X SnowLeopard.

[JRC Groups]

Hello, Mark.


Thank you for your reply and answers.


On 12/30/09 6:47 AM, "Mark Sapiro" <mark at msapiro.net> wrote:

> List members are managed by Mailman as email addresses. They have
> nothing to do with users on your server.

Good to know. This makes setting up new members much easier and simpler.
  
> If you ignore Apple's GUI and just use Mailman's web admin interface,
> you can 'mass subscribe' members.
> 
> There are also command-line tools for adding members and syncing
> membership with a flat file.

When you mention flat file are you referring to a plain text file ? If so,
what specific format (or encoding) should be used for this file ? How
exactly should it be formatted ?
 
> There are others on this list who know more about Apple's OS-X server
> implementation of Mailman, but I'm not one of them.
>  
>> Q2. I am trying to set-up two versions of each mailing list so that one
>> version allows attachments to be forwarded to subscribers along with the
>> posts while the other version blocks the attachments and only forwards the
>> text portion of the post. How can this be set-up in Mailman ? How can I
>> manage attachment rules in Mailman and create this redundant mailing lists ?
>> Where are attachments sent along with posts to the lists saved in OS X
>> (folder address) ?
> 
> I'm not sure I understand the question. You can set up two lists with
> two different names. Use Mailman's Content Filtering to specify what
> will be accepted and what will be filtered out. If you mean you want
> posts to be sent to one address and some people to receive attachments
> and some not, you can use an umbrella list for this (search the FAQ at
> <http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3> for "umbrella")

The idea is to have a way to control or manage attachments on a per user
base. I've experienced this is the past with mailings lists I have
subscribed. Many subscribers are on fast broadband these days and like to
receive images and other attachments along with their messages. On the other
hand there are those who are on slow connections and even dial-up. These
don't like to receive attachments as they slow things down and take a while
to download specially when the list is a busy one with numerous posts per
day. My idea was to set-up two separate lists. Posts would be sent to one
single address and then forwarded to two lists - one with and one without
attachments. Subscribers would have the option to subscribe to one list or
the other depending on whether they chose to receive attachments.

According to what you stated above it seems there is a fairly simpler way to
accomplishing this task. I've looked at the pages describing the "umbrella"
list concept. It is certainly an option to keep in mind but I would prefer
another simpler solution as I noticed the notes about possible problems and
workarounds.

Is there a way to set-up user preferences so that every user can have its
subscription set to either receive or block attachments ? This would make
things a lot easier and allow me to address this issue very easily.

>> Where are attachments sent along with posts to the lists saved in OS X
>> (folder address) ?
> 
> Attachments not removed by content filtering are saved in the list's
> archives. in a default Mailman install, this would be in
> sub-directories of
> /usr/local/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME/attachments/. I think in
> OS-X server, this translates to
> /var/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME/attachments/ or
> /private/var/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME/attachments/. See the
> FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/QoA9>.

Can content filtering be set-up to block or allow certain specific types of
files ? Considering the answer to be yes, would it be possible to set
content filtering to allow images files but place a restriction on the size
and/or resolution of the files sent as attachments ?

Thank you again for your reply and helpful answers.


Joe