[Mailman-Users] Mailman and Gmane ?

[John Fitzsimons]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:42:43 -0800, Mark Sapiro wrote:
 
>John Fitzsimons wrote:

>>Does anyone here know what actually goes to Mailman from Gmane ?

>I think you are in the best position to answer that.

Er. No. I don't. I don't have root access to my hosted server, and
have no idea where my Mailman logs, or archives, are kept.

Your reply to Young, Darren suggests....

/usr/local/mailman/archives/private/list/index.html file 
/usr/local/mailman/archives/private/list.mbox/  

When I FTP to my site I see...

No "usr" directory.

No "local" directory.

No "mailman" directory.

No "archives" directory.

No "private" directory etc.

>>(1) Is it simply an email, with Gmane as the sender ? With no mention
>>of the newsgroup poster in any of the headers ?

>I assume it is an email unless you have set up a Mail<>News Gateway to
>poll Gmane.

I have that setup. I don't however know that it is needed. From what I
can see Gmane gets it's input as a result of..

(1) It's subscription to my mailing list

(2) The gateway setup.

I don't understand why both are needed. IMO one, OR the other, should
cover things. 

Assuming that NNTP posting does NOT result in a post to their server
but instead results in an email to the mailing list first.

>>(2) Is there anything contained in any of the headers from Gmane that
>>refers to the newsgroup poster ?

>Is not the poster's address in the From: header?

Well, I didn't know the answer to that question. Fortunately however
someone here was good enough to send me a header example and 
it appears that the poster of a newsgroup post appears at least twice.
In the newsgroup post header as..

From: Fred Smith fs at myisp.com

and in the header sent by Gmane.

From: Fred Smith fs at myisp.com

< snip >

>What follows refers to a default installation of GNU Mailman except for
>one guess at a cPanel URL. It may or may not apply to cPanel. Also,
>some of these thing are site configuration settings that can be
>overridden by a packager (cPanel) or an installation (your ISP).

>Mailman has two concepts of the sender of a post. One is used to
>determine whether or not the sender is a list member and the other is
>used after it is determined that the post is not from a member to
>determine if the sender is in *_these_nonmembers.

>The first test is to inspect all addresses from the following in order
>(determined by the setting of SENDER_HEADERS)
>1) the From: header
>2) the 'unix from' or envelope sender
>3) the Reply-To: header
>4) the Sender: header

>If any of these addresses matches a list member, the post is determined
>to be a member post from the first found member address and handled
>accordingly.

>If the post is not from a member as above it is from the address in the
>From: header. If there is no From:, it is the address in the Sender:
>header and if there is neither, it is the envelope sender (unix from)
>(the from/sender order is reversed if USE_ENVELOPE_SENDER = Yes).

>Is some Gmane address a member of your list? If so, and that address is
>in one of 2 - 4 above, that's why non-member posts get to your list
>from Gmane.

Yes, Gmane is subscribed as a Gmane Administrator.

>I think you can see a full, raw message from Gmane if your list has
>archives. For a cPanel list xyz at example.com, you would go to
>http://example.com/mailman/private/xyz_example.com.mbox/xyz_example.com.mbox

>This requires authentication for the private archive (even if the
>list's archive is public), but at least in standard Mailman the
>equivalent URL will return the entire raw archive mailbox.

>There, you should be able to find posts from Gmane and see all the
>headers.

When I look at the archives I don't see the header info. Which,
normally I would be quite happy about. Anything that helps keep things
more "private" the better.

So now, here is my next question. 

If I setup the Gmane address for "moderation" and then put the
subscriber's address in under....

"List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically
accepted."

Would that help to plug the Gmane "hole" ? In other words restrict
posting from Gmane to only those who are listed as subscribers ?

Can anyone here answer that question and/or express a view on the
possibility of this approach working please ?


Regards, John.