Brad,

I was very happy running qmail on my own Linux server until my dear sweet cable 
provider declared that it didn't like me doing that so I had to move to a 
commercial webhost.  I run several lists, most are a public service (not 
related to my business) as I'm a volunteer planning commissioner for my town. 
The State of NH (where I live) was censoring their Mailman planning list so a 
bunch of us bolted and started our own planning list.

Mailman is, as you know, very popular.  The fact is that many lists are run by 
people such as myself who don't know much about software.  We appreciate what 
others do and we use the software for the good of others.  Is that so bad?  If 
the intent was to make a useful product for people to use for the fun and 
education of doing it as a collaborative effort (that is what GNU is all about 
isn't it?), then I'd expect the writers of such code to cut those of us who use 
the program just a bit of slack when we offer honest suggestions as to what we 
would like to see in the product.  Please note we are not saying it's easy or 
hard, just that it's desireable. I understand the advice of running scripts 
here and we'll try that.

Mark,

As to what happened when I sent in the request, here's what I know...

The host is running version 2.1.7.cp2

I sent mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" with who password in the body of the mail 
(my password that I retrieved via the usual way) after I had set the list to 
allow all list members to get the subscriber list.  This is what came back (I 
replaced my password with the word "password"):

The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your original 
message.

- Results:
    Usage:
    
    who password [address=<address>]
        See everyone who is on this mailing list.  The roster is limited to
        list members only, and you must supply your membership password to
        retrieve it.  If you're posting from an address other than your
        membership address, specify your membership address with
        `address=<address>' (no brackets around the email address, and no
        quotes!)


- Unprocessed:
    who password 

- Done.

Attached was my original mail to the list.

I'm stumped. I wrote the list from my subscribed address and it replied to me 
via the bounces address and that's all it said.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: Brad Knowles [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 1:07 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED];mailman-users@python.org
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Stupid newbie request

At 11:42 AM -0400 2006-08-27, Bob Landman wrote:

>  I think this is "the" problem.  The writers must have assumed that  
> everyone has access to command line.  I don't as I use a commercial  
> website which hosts Mailman as a service.

Mailman was never intended to be run as a commercial service, or underneath a 
virtual hosting system, etc....  It was always intended to be a program that 
you ran for yourself on your own mailing list management server(s), and where 
you would have full privileged command-line access to the machine in question.

We know that this is not how Mailman is being used today, but you're talking 
about making fundamental changes at the core of the system, and it's going to 
take a while to get all these kinds of things updated.

We know that the solutions outlined in the FAQ are not as good as they should 
be, but they're the best we can do at the moment.

>  Groan - they aren't kidding.  I think that's very telling.  And a 
> very  ugly solution when you have hundreds of subscribers as I do AND 
> when the  list crashes at the website provider (and of course their 
> backup was  corrupted as the script wasn't backing up the Mailman subscriber 
> list).
>  Murphy's Law you know.

Well, Mailman was not intended to be used as a hosted service.  And you should 
have good backups for everything you do.  If you were using Mailman at a 
hosting provider that was responsive and doing their job correctly, then even 
these issues should not have impacted you and your list members.


So, you're paying someone else to use a rented hammer to drive in screws, and 
they apparently don't know how to properly use a hammer. 
Something has gone wrong, and now you're blaming the hammer manufacturer for 
your problems.

Do you see something wrong with this picture?

>  Please, won't someone provide this feature?  It's basic to list  
> administration.

We're working on it, but there's a lot more stuff that has to be changed behind 
the scenes than you realize.  There's some stuff that is higher priority.  And 
since this is an open-source project, people work on the stuff they 
like/want/need, and not necessarily what other people like/want/need.

You could help fix that problem by developing and contributing Python code to 
resolve this matter, or by getting someone else to develop and contribute that 
for you.  Otherwise, it's an open-source project, and you have to wait for the 
developers to decide that this is now at the top of their heap.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.



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