[Mailman-Users] Test messages

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Steff Watkins writes:

 > One thought/idea I've had is to have a "test" list which has only my
 > work email address, an offsite email address and maybe one or two of my
 > colleagues (for verification purposes), lock it right down so that only
 > the members can use it, add the "Me too" tag so that we'd receive any
 > emails we sent to the list and use that to check that the mailman
 > service is functional. Does that sound a valid way of doing it, too much
 > effort FWIW or missing the point as it wouldn't test a particular list
 > just the mailman service?

This is precisely what I do.

It is possible, but unlikely, that a particular list would have a
problem.  For example, it could have something to do with the size of
the list, such as recipient MTAs not liking too many RCPT TOs on a
single message, or a fascist (message-dropping) throttle at your ISP.

But the outgoing runner doesn't care what the list is, and neither
does the MTA, so the test list *is* a valid test, especially for the
(fairly common, as Mailman failures go) failure case of a runner going
down.  At least you can rule that out.