[Mailman-Users] Mailman and Gmane ?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

John Fitzsimons writes:
 > On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:38:23 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 >  
 > >John Fitzsimons writes:
 > 
 > Hi Stephen,
 > 
 > < snip >
 > 
 > >Gmane runs a news server, but that is not how it gateways mailing
 > >lists.  Mailman's Mail<->News gateway is irrelevant unless you or your
 > >ISP has configured it; Gmane can't do that for you.
 > 
 > Well, I configured it. Thinking that it needed to be set. Doesn't that
 > setting do anything ? Or does it only work with some news servers and
 > not others ? How does one know which news server that works with and
 > which news server it doesn't work with ?

I don't know about cPanel, but this is what a vanilla Mailman provides
as options for the news<->mail gateway:

1. The hostname of the machine your news server is running on.     [       ]
2. The name of the Usenet group to gateway to and/or from.         [       ]
3. Should new posts to the mailing list be sent to the newsgroup?  No    Yes
4. Should new posts to the newsgroup be sent to the mailing list?  No    Yes
5. Forwarding options                                              [       ]
6. The moderation policy of the newsgroup.                         [       ]

AFAIK the gateway service of Gmane is *not* accessible from most
Usenet hosts; you need to go directly to Gmane for that.  So unless
the you configured Gmane as the news server (question 1) and a
specific newsgroup to gateway your list to (question 2), nothing will
happen.  Since you don't have a newsgroup as far as I know, there's
nowhere for mailman to gateway to.

Note that question 6 is the policy of the newsgroup, *not* your list.
No help there.

 > >The gateway Mailman -> Gmane is the Gmane subscription.  If you remove
 > >that Gmane users cannot read posts to your mailing list.  The gateway
 > >Gmane -> Mailman is plain old email same as for any member or spammer.
 > 
 > >The only control you have is to use Mailman filters on incoming posts.
 > 
 > Could you please explain that a little ? In principle how would
 > filters help ? Wouldn't all posts from Gmane have the same added
 > headers ? Those that are from legitimate posters and those that 
 > aren't ?

Yes.  What you're missing is that Gmane won't spoof other members, so
if another member is there in From, Sender or envelope sender, you
pass it.  (In practice, the only one that your users are likely to be
able to set, or have set appropriately by their ISP, is From.)  If
it's just Gmane, you don't.  *If* Gmane is in the Sender header, then
you don't need to do anything special, because From is checked first.
Just moderate Gmane, and warn your members that they need to post
"From:" their subscribed addresses from Gmane as well as by mail.

 > Well, looking for "gmane" headers on a post gives me something like...
 > 
 > Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail
 > Approved: news at gmane.org
 > 	by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50)
 > 	by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian))
 > X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/
 > X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: ........
 > Xref: news.gmane.org .......
 > Archived-At: <http://permalink.gmane.org/listname>
 > 
 > I have no idea how any of that could help filter out posts that aren't
 > from legitimate subscribers.  :-(

(Is that a post received via news?  If so, it's little help, because
the headers should be quite different from a mailed post.)

We really need to see the From, Sender, and Resent-Sender headers, and
the envelope sender on the mail received by mailman.  Sender really
SHOULD be there in mail received by Mailman from Gmane.  From RFC 5322
(the current Proposed Standard from email):

   For example, if a secretary were to send a message for another
   person, the mailbox of the secretary would appear in the "Sender:"
   field and the mailbox of the actual author would appear in the
   "From:" field.  If the originator of the message can be indicated
   by a single mailbox and the author and transmitter are identical,
   the "Sender:" field SHOULD NOT be used.  Otherwise, both fields
   SHOULD appear.

Here Gmane is functioning as a "secretary", and IMO should appear in
"Sender", while your list member is the author, and should appear in
"From".

If not, and Gmane *isn't* in one of From, Sender, or envelope sender,
then I don't understand how posts from unsubscribed addresses via
Gmane are getting through, since IIRC you said earlier you have
'generic_nonmember_action' set to 'Hold'.  Right?