I'm inclined to agree with tlhackque. I'd venture a guess that a large
percentage (perhaps even a majority) of Mailman users are provided with
Mailman from their hosting company as the only mailing list tool
available. The Mailman UI allows them to do the initial configuration
and management but they're not, in most cases, even aware of python or
shell script execution. It's completely foreign to them and most likely
completely beyond their skill sets. They then come to this list for help
and get told something in a language they don't understand and as this
thread reveals, many hosting companies are completely uncooperative with
respect to python and shell execution.
Of course, having monitored this list for several years, I'm totally
impressed with the skill and knowledge of Mark Sapiro and others, and I
do understand that Mailman is an open-source program for which (to the
best of my knowledge) nobody gets paid to maintain. But it would
certainly be nice is the Mailman UI could be improved to allow users to
accomplish many of the things they seek help for here without having to
spend weeks learning how to do python programming or shell script execution.
Best Regards,
Mike
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On 12/10/2017 11:42 AM, tlhackque via Mailman-Users wrote:
On 09-Dec-17 14:06, Mark Sapiro wrote:
On 12/09/2017 10:40 AM, Chip Davis wrote:
That's all well and good Mark, but surely you know that any fix that
involves issuing a shell command is useless for those of us responsible
for lists on a shared server running cPanel (or equivalent).
The OP indicated that he had changed DEFAULT_URL_PATTERN. If he can do
that, he can run fix_url.
That is not necessarily true.
On a cPanel-managed website that I support, the "File manager" provides
an editor, which allows any text file to be edited. And you can set 'x'
permission. But there is no shell access, and no straightforward way to
execute a file. (If you're clever and sufficiently motivated, you can
setup a temporary cron job or modify some source file.)
I've had similar issues with people using wiki software; in that case,
the solution was to add a carefully-protected admin option to allow a
very privileged admin to run a shell command (e.g. system(...)). As a
developer, I was not enthusiastic - but it seems that a significant
number of people are stuck with hosts that don't provide shell access.
Of course, my first reaction was "change hosting provider" - but there
were many "I can't" - though the reasons varied.
You might consider adding a super-user menu to allow users to run
withlist; fix_url; etc without shell access. Or an admin privilege that
can be granted to selected list managers. If not for MM2, for MM3.
If you don't want to support mailman in environments without shell
access, at a minimum, put a big warning in the install docs that
"administration and maintenance of a mailman site requires shell
access". It shouldn't be a requirement that's discovered later.
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