Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
Hello Stephen, On Friday 22 May 2009 16:30:03 Stephen Gran wrote: [...] If this is actually the case, I'd like to close the domain down to only accept mail from other debian.org machines. If it's not, I'd like to work with people who do use it to either make it possible to send their mail from debian.org machines or from a short whitelist of machines elsewhere. @packages.d.o is known to be the easiest way to get in touch with a maintainer, and is often used when CC'ing maintainers of multiple packages. Cheers, -- Raphael Geissert - Debian Maintainer www.debian.org - get.debian.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
* Stephen Gran sg...@debian.org [2009-05-22 23:30:03 CEST]: If this is actually the case, I'd like to close the domain down to only accept mail from other debian.org machines. If it's not, I'd like to work with people who do use it to either make it possible to send their mail from debian.org machines or from a short whitelist of machines elsewhere. Not everyone has access to an debian.org machine, and @packages.debian.org is the address used in debconf po files for reporting messageID bugs to. A canonical easy way to reach the maintainer(s) of a package without digging around in various fields though is appreciated, and this is the one. So long, Rhonda -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
On Fri, 22 May 2009 22:30:03 +0100 Stephen Gran sg...@debian.org wrote: Hello all, So I've looked through a few weeks of mail logs to packages.debian.org, and it looks like it collects some useful mail from automated scripts on various debian.org machines (primarily ries), and about 1000 spams a day from elsewhere. I haven't done an exhaustive survey, but it seems pretty clear so far that the domain does not get any significant amount of legitimate mail from machines other than the debian.org hosts. It does save creating a specific alioth mailing list for a group of maintainers and uploaders. It's started being used for svn-buildpack...@p.d.o It's only a convenience thing for discussions that aren't actually related to existing bug reports. If this is actually the case, I'd like to close the domain down to only accept mail from other debian.org machines. If it's not, I'd like to work with people who do use it to either make it possible to send their mail from debian.org machines or from a short whitelist of machines elsewhere. If this isn't possible, we'll of course continue to offer it as a public service if it's needed. It's just that if it doesn't need to be a public facing mail domain, we all get a little less spam in our inbox, and the service becomes easier to administer. Maybe a list of packages that do use it and an address to email for those who want to start using it at a later date? -- Neil Williams = http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/ pgpMaxU1zsvSo.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:30:03PM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote: If this is actually the case, I'd like to close the domain down to only accept mail from other debian.org machines. If it's not, I'd like to work with people who do use it to either make it possible to send their mail from debian.org machines or from a short whitelist of machines elsewhere. The debian-l10n-english team, and perhaps others, use this domain to keep the maintainer in the loop during Smith English-language reviews and the subsequent translations. These mails almost certainly won't come from debian.org hosts (and not being a DD, mine couldn't do anyway). -- Jonathan Wiltshire PGP/GPG: 0xDB800B52 / 4216 F01F DCA9 21AC F3D3 A903 CA6B EA3E DB80 0B52 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
I haven't done an exhaustive survey, but it seems pretty clear so far that the domain does not get any significant amount of legitimate mail from machines other than the debian.org hosts. As I understand it, pkg@packages.d.o is the standard way of contacting the maintainers of a package in an easy and efficient way. I use it all the time when eg. reassigning a bug (reassign mails are supposed to be CC'ed to the destination maintainers), rather than go up and look who's listed as maintainer and uploader and CC them all. Plus, fortunately, packages.d.o has been sending a copy to the PTS for some time now, so even interested people who are not listed as maintainer/uploader will be able to read them. Personally, I think we should keep it open. If it becomes unsustainable, we could require a whitelist header for mail sent from non debian.org machines, like the PTS does. But if we do that, we could ditch it altogether and just use the PTS (for me, one of the main advantages of packages.d.o is not having to include the whitelist header). Does somebody know if the PTS is mailing the maintainers already? Cheers, -- - Are you sure we're good? - Always. -- Rory and Lorelai -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
On Friday 22 May 2009, Stephen Gran wrote: So I've looked through a few weeks of mail logs to packages.debian.org, I always use it to CC the maintainer(s) of a package I reassign a bug to, or if I want to CC a package maintainer on some discussion. For me it's the most natural address to use, much more natural than package@p.qa.d.o. Cheers, FJP signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
Much appreciated. Thanks. On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:30:03PM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote: Hello all, So I've looked through a few weeks of mail logs to packages.debian.org, and it looks like it collects some useful mail from automated scripts on various debian.org machines (primarily ries), and about 1000 spams a day from elsewhere. I haven't done an exhaustive survey, but it seems pretty clear so far that the domain does not get any significant amount of legitimate mail from machines other than the debian.org hosts. If this is actually the case, I'd like to close the domain down to only accept mail from other debian.org machines. If it's not, I'd like to work with people who do use it to either make it possible to send their mail from debian.org machines or from a short whitelist of machines elsewhere. If this isn't possible, we'll of course continue to offer it as a public service if it's needed. It's just that if it doesn't need to be a public facing mail domain, we all get a little less spam in our inbox, and the service becomes easier to administer. In the large scheme of things, of course, 1000 spams a day is pretty minimal. The amount of processing power that goes into turning away the other 6 mails/day and then resending the 1000 spams that do get through, though, does approach significance, and I'd like to make it simple to admin and more friendly to the final recipients. Cheers, -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :sg...@debian.org | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
On Friday 22 May 2009, Neil Williams wrote: Maybe a list of packages that do use it and an address to email for those who want to start using it at a later date? That would defeat its purpose. It is not about which maintainers use it, but about who uses it to contact maintainers. Cheers, FJP signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
On May 22, Raphael Geissert atom...@gmail.com wrote: @packages.d.o is known to be the easiest way to get in touch with a maintainer, and is often used when CC'ing maintainers of multiple packages. Then it needs to be fixed, soon, because it the last few weeks I started receiving a huge quantity of trivially rejectable pills spam from it. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
This one time, at band camp, Jonathan Wiltshire said: The debian-l10n-english team, and perhaps others, use this domain to keep the maintainer in the loop during Smith English-language reviews and the subsequent translations. This one time, at band camp, Adeodato Simó said: I use it all the time when eg. reassigning a bug (reassign mails are supposed to be CC'ed to the destination maintainers), rather than go up and look who's listed as maintainer and uploader and CC them all. These are the sort of helpful answers that make it clear that people do at least sporadically use the service. I didn't see anything useful in the week of logs I reviewed, but activity like that described above is probably reasonably 'spiky' and I'm not surprised I missed it. It sounds like the service should probably stay open. I would have been happy to restrict something that is only a spam attractor, but if it's more than that, than I'm happy people find it a useful service. If the teams who do use it think it can still be useful and be restricted, that's a discussion I still think is worth having, but I don't think we need to rush towards it. Cheers, -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :sg...@debian.org | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
Stephen Gran wrote:
So I've looked through a few weeks of mail logs to packages.debian.org,
and it looks like it collects some useful mail from automated scripts
on various debian.org machines (primarily ries), and about 1000 spams a
day from elsewhere. I haven't done an exhaustive survey, but it seems
pretty clear so far that the domain does not get any significant amount
of legitimate mail from machines other than the debian.org hosts.
It's not uncommon for package's to have documentation that says to mail
to p.d.o. See for example aptitude, base-passwd, debian-faq,
developers-reference.
Some packages even emit it at runtime:
c...@packages.debian.org fscked up. Send him a nasty note [1]
How odd.. The sizes didn't match, email a...@packages.debian.org
print_fill('Printer on %s was detected by Debian using the ad-hoc
method. Please submit the following information to
foomatic...@packages.debian.org:', device)
Other packages, including reportbug --kudos, BUGBASH, and debconf-updatepo
directly send mail there.
Personally, I generally use it as per its original intended use; for contacting
a package's maintainer w/o looking up their actual email address; generally
when CCing them about a related bug report. More often, someone will CC a bug
report to me via p.d.o, or contact me directly via those addresses.
This gives a pretty good idea of my volume, though it won't list all mails.
No mails listed here are from automated scripts AFAIK.
j...@gnu:~/mail/archiveecho year\tin\tout; for y in $(seq 1997 2009); do
echo $y\t$(zegrep '^To:@packages.debian.org' inbox/$y-* |wc -l)\t$(zegrep
'^To:@packages.debian.org' Sent/$y-* |wc -l); done
yearin out
199714 4
199853 20
199937 26
200024 16
200151 20
200236 16
200317 14
200412 3
200515 1
2006151 4
2007151 6
2008134 1
200935 0
And here's the per-package breakdown:
j...@gnu:~/mail/archivezegrep '^To:@packages.debian.org' inbox/* Sent/* |
perl -ne 'while (/([-\w]+)\...@packages.debian.org/g) { print $1\n }'
|sort|uniq -c | sort -rn| head -n 20
91 debhelper
67 debconf
43 ikiwiki
37 alien
24 devscripts
21 debian-maintainers
16 etckeeper
15 nslu2-utils
14 sleepd
14 mr
13 lintian
12 pdmenu
11 archivemail
10 znc
10 xaw-wrappers
10 pristine-tar
10 jetring
10 dpkg-repack
# 195 more packages not listed
Anyway, this feels like it may be a false optimisation to me. You know
that p,d.o gets 1000 spams a day, but you don't know how many spams a
day are sent directly to each of the email addresses that p.d.o forwards
to. My suspicion is that each *individual* package maintainer email
address could easily be getting 1000 spams a day. If on average one or
two more spam come through p.d.o, that's very minor. Unless spam coming
through p.d.o is somehow harder to filter?
--
see shy jo
[1] Disappointingly, based on strings, this specific example is optimised
out of the actual crontab binary.
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Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:30:03PM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote: So I've looked through a few weeks of mail logs to packages.debian.org, and it looks like it collects some useful mail from automated scripts on various debian.org machines (primarily ries), and about 1000 spams a day from elsewhere. I haven't done an exhaustive survey, but it seems pretty clear so far that the domain does not get any significant amount of legitimate mail from machines other than the debian.org hosts. If this is actually the case, I'd like to close the domain down to only accept mail from other debian.org machines. If it's not, I'd like to work with people who do use it to either make it possible to send their mail from debian.org machines or from a short whitelist of machines elsewhere. If this isn't possible, we'll of course continue to offer it as a public service if it's needed. It's just that if it doesn't need to be a public facing mail domain, we all get a little less spam in our inbox, and the service becomes easier to administer. In the large scheme of things, of course, 1000 spams a day is pretty minimal. The amount of processing power that goes into turning away the other 6 mails/day and then resending the 1000 spams that do get through, though, does approach significance, and I'd like to make it simple to admin and more friendly to the final recipients. Whenever users contact me privately regarding a package, I encourage them to instead target the package email address, so that fellow maintainers of team-maintained packages receive them as well. I am not against dropping/limiting the package email addresses, just saying that in addition to the concrete amount of mail it might also be relevant to take into account the expectation of such account existing, even if used less frequently. And the convenience of telling users to simply _email_ the package, instead of explaining them how to _find_ the email address from packaging metadata. Kind regards, - Jonas P.S. I am subscribed to d-project but not d-devel, so please cc me if replying to d-devel but not to d-project. - -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEAREDAAYFAkoXMdYACgkQn7DbMsAkQLjR7ACeNUJjfnGjvGv3EeTPZT7ODCWN UXwAoJpOGv7d2+QDi9VZMyHrsQciWHnT =sjDR -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Who uses @packages.d.o mail?
This one time, at band camp, Joey Hess said: Some packages even emit it at runtime: Other packages, including reportbug --kudos, BUGBASH, and debconf-updatepo directly send mail there. Good to know. Anyway, this feels like it may be a false optimisation to me. You know that p,d.o gets 1000 spams a day, but you don't know how many spams a day are sent directly to each of the email addresses that p.d.o forwards to. My suspicion is that each *individual* package maintainer email address could easily be getting 1000 spams a day. If on average one or two more spam come through p.d.o, that's very minor. Unless spam coming through p.d.o is somehow harder to filter? Oh, no, it's nothing like that. It's just low hanging fruit while we think about how to make the rest of it better. Part of the reason people get 1000 spams a day is because we have so many routes to a maintainers inbox, and each of them add up. I know this one isn't the biggest target out there, but it looked, with admittedly only an hour or so's review, to be one of the easy ones. Anyway, I think it's clear the service is popular, so EOT from me. -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :sg...@debian.org | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - signature.asc Description: Digital signature
