[Mailman-Users] Restricting numbers of emails per thread

[Spyro Polymiadis]

Hi all,

Does anyone know if there is a way to limit the number of posts in any 
given thread in a mail list?

We've got some ppl here that just post for the hell of it and just waste 
time in general, So we're looking at clamping down on some things..

Any ideas?

Cheers
Spyro



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Re: [Mailman-Users] external web interface

[BRAVAL François]

I don't get it !
Permissions seems to be right on aliases* files. Owner is mailman:mailman perms 
is 777 for now.

2 questions:
With my config, postfix+mailman on machine1, apache on machine2
- /usr/sbin/postalias (and portmap) is on machine1, not needed on machine 2, 
right ?
- which user (or group) runs the /usr/sbin/postalias command when creating a 
list on machine2 with the web interface
 do I need to add this user to the postfix group or something ?
 
When I was using postfix+mailman+apache on the same machine, everything was 
working fine
So I also think it is a perms problem, but can't fix it...


> -Message d'origine-
> De : Mark Sapiro [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Envoyé : jeudi 19 octobre 2006 17:56
> À : BRAVAL François; mailman-users@python.org
> Objet : RE: [Mailman-Users] external web interface
> 
> BRAVAL François wrote:
> >
> >If I remove the VIRTUAL_HOST_OVERVIEW = Off and set the
> >DEFAULT_URL_HOST to machine2.domain.com. I get a 'bug' error.
> >
> >See my error log.
> >
> >Oct 19 13:32:48 2006 (10276) command failed: 
> /usr/sbin/postalias /usr/local/mailman/data/aliases (status: 
> 127, Unknown error 127)
> >Oct 19 13:32:48 2006 admin(10276): 
> 
> >admin(10276): [- Mailman Version: 2.1.9 -]
> >admin(10276): [- Traceback --]
> >admin(10276): Traceback (most recent call last):
> >admin(10276):   File "/usr/local/mailman/scripts/driver", 
> line 101, in run_main
> >admin(10276): main()
> >admin(10276):   File 
> "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/create.py", line 56, in main
> >admin(10276): process_request(doc, cgidata)
> >admin(10276):   File 
> "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/create.py", line 238, in 
> process_request
> >admin(10276): sys.modules[modname].create(mlist, cgi=1)
> >admin(10276):   File 
> "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MTA/Postfix.py", line 232, in create
> >admin(10276): _update_maps()
> >admin(10276):   File 
> "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MTA/Postfix.py", line 53, in _update_maps
> >admin(10276): raise RuntimeError, msg % (acmd, status, errstr)
> >admin(10276): RuntimeError: command failed: /usr/sbin/postalias =
> >/usr/local/mailman/data/aliases (status: 127, Unknown error 127)
> 
> This issue should have nothing to do with the settings of
> VIRTUAL_HOST_OVERVIEW and DEFAULT_URL_HOST in mm_cfg.py.
> 
> The list has been created and the data/aliases and, if the host is in
> POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS, the data/virtual-mailman files have
> been updated, and now the Postfix MTA module is calling
> /usr/sbin/postalias to update the data/aliases.db file, and the
> postalias command fails.
> 
> Assuming /usr/sbin/postalias is the correct path (if not, set it in
> mm_cfg.py with POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD), this is almost certainly an
> ownership/permissions issue.
> 
> Permissions should be at least 0660 on both the aliases and aliases.db
> files and the owner:group should be the mailman user:group. In older
> versions, bin/check_perms doesn't check all this.
> 
> -- 
> Mark Sapiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   The highway is for gamblers,
> San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan
> 
> 
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[Mailman-Users] Are messages queues in the face of SMTP failures

[Robert Bannocks]

I have just mass subscribed 300 people to a list, unfortunatly I
selected wrongly the "Send welcome messages to new subscribees?" and
"Send welcome messages to new subscribees?" options
resulting in 600 notices being prepared.  Fortunatly I had shut downt
the SMTP listner. 
 
My question.  Will mailman queue or re-create these messages, if so how
can I stop them being sent out as they are not required.
 
TIA and regards.
 
RB
 
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[Mailman-Users] mail list script sending out spam and crashing server big style

[Heal Secretary]

My web host suspended my account because -

"mail list script sending out spam and crashing server big style"

They tell me that this was some kind of highjacking of my Mailman 
script to send out spam.

Can anyone explain what actually happened, please, and what I can do 
to stop it happening again?

I am using Mailman 2.1.9.cp 1. I am locked in to CPanel and not at 
liberty, myself to do an upgrade from this version.

The host has now unblocked my account after some pleading on my part, 
that I had nothing to do with it.

The web host's error message is too short to be much help to me. They 
say I can get more information from the logs in CPanel. I have tried 
this, but the logs all seem to talk of traffic on my web site, not my 
mailing lists. Does anyone know what to look for, and where, in CPanel?

I run 3 mailing lists on Mailman. All of them are members only. New 
members can only be signed up by me. Non members are not allowed to 
post to the lists.

I can't figure what I could do to make Mailman more secure.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Nigel


Secretary of Heal Headingley
Campaigning for a Sustainable Balanced Community
www.healheadingley.org.uk  

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[Mailman-Users] [EMAIL PROTECTED] doesn't work

[E. Conte Fraternity]

I am the administrator of [EMAIL PROTECTED] .  At the moment I have problems to 
send messages to the users of my mailinglist. I receive an error message: 
"IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device"
Please could someone help me to solv the matter?
Thanks in advance

Edoardo Conte



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Re: [Mailman-Users] mail list script sending out spam and crashingserver big style

[[EMAIL PROTECTED]]

Nigel:

Does your host with cPanel offer SpamAssassin ??

I had exact same prob early on.  My Host ( with shameless plug -:) = 
Bluehost.com) suggested I turn it on so I did and for 18-20 months NO more 
problems!!

Regards.

Ed
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[Mailman-Users] where to customize other MM pages?

[Zbigniew Szalbot]

Hello,

Can anyone help me find pages which I need to cusomize, in particular I 
want to customize the page on which when you have given your email address 
you can:

unsubscribe
have your password sent to you
change subscription options (you need to specify a pass to be able to do 
that)

This page is usually under domain.tld/mailman/options/LIST_NAME

Many thanks in advance for pointing me in the right direction.


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Re: [Mailman-Users] [EMAIL PROTECTED] doesn't work

[Jeff Donsbach]

On 10/20/06, E. Conte Fraternity <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I am the administrator of [EMAIL PROTECTED] .  At the moment I have
> problems to send messages to the users of my mailinglist. I receive an error
> message: "IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device"
> Please could someone help me to solv the matter?
> Thanks in advance



You've got a full disk on your system. Clean it up.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] mail list script sending out spam and crashing server big style

[Patrick Bogen]

On 10/19/06, Heal Secretary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I am using Mailman 2.1.9.cp 1. I am locked in to CPanel and not at
> liberty, myself to do an upgrade from this version.

If you or someone in your organization has the expertise, you might
consider switching to an alternate host that gives you full control.
E.g., a company that offers VPSs; you can usually get cPanel, but also
have full shell access to the 'server' to be able to update any
software you want (e.g., to non-cPanel versions).

I, personally, use www.vpsland.com, and derive no economic or social
benefit from recommending them (however, they're quite inexpensive and
have never given me problems.)

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Are messages queues in the face of SMTP failures

[Patrick Bogen]

On 10/20/06, Robert Bannocks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My question.  Will mailman queue or re-create these messages, if so how
> can I stop them being sent out as they are not required.

I believe they'll be placed in the 'retry' queue after they fail the
first time. You should be able to just remove them from there.

Mailman won't actually 're-create' the messages, as far as I know.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Restricting numbers of emails per thread

[Patrick Bogen]

On 10/20/06, Spyro Polymiadis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Does anyone know if there is a way to limit the number of posts in any
> given thread in a mail list?
>
> We've got some ppl here that just post for the hell of it and just waste
> time in general, So we're looking at clamping down on some things..

This sort of content management seems (a) out of the scope of mailman,
and (b) an unrealistic expectation.

Primarily, there's nothing stopping a user from just starting a new
thread; email doesn't actually have any concept of 'threads'. The only
thing you might conceivably be able to do is limit the rate of posting
from a given user.

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[Mailman-Users] slow processing

[Dr. Scott S. Jones]

What might cause really slow processing of email sent to a list? I set up a
new list yesterday around 4:00 pmdidn't receive any response, until this
morning, I noticed that around 7:00 pm, the mail finally arrived. 

??

Scott



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Re: [Mailman-Users] [EMAIL PROTECTED] doesn't work

[Thomas Hochstein]

"E. Conte Fraternity" schrieb:

> I receive an error message: "IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device"

Then there is no more free space on your - presumably - harddisk.

> Please could someone help me to solv the matter?

Free some space.

-thh
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Re: [Mailman-Users] slow processing

[Patrick Bogen]

On 10/20/06, Dr. Scott S. Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What might cause really slow processing of email sent to a list? I set up a
> new list yesterday around 4:00 pmdidn't receive any response, until this
> morning, I noticed that around 7:00 pm, the mail finally arrived.

This is most likely caused by MTA issues. Search the FAQ for 'performance'.

Is this the only list on that machine? Are you sure it wasn't a
one-time delay? (E.g., a nameserver that was temporarily inaccessible)


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[Mailman-Users] Spam - How is this happening?

[Jewel]

I run a Mailman server and have noticed more recently that it seems spam 
is being posted to some lists but when I look at the headers the message 
was only posted to the mailman-owner or the owner of the list.  How is 
this happening?  Here is an example of a header.  From just looking at 
the message it looks like it was posted to the entire list but in 
reality it looks like the address was spoofed?  Please help.

Subject:
Every day you loose the sensations of seex!
From:
Meadows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date:
Fri, 20 Oct 2006 23:53:27 +0900

To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Return-path:
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Thanks!

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Spam - How is this happening?

[Jim Popovitch]

On Fri, 2006-10-20 at 13:43 -0500, Jewel wrote:
> I run a Mailman server and have noticed more recently that it seems spam 
> is being posted to some lists but when I look at the headers the message 
> was only posted to the mailman-owner or the owner of the list.  How is 
> this happening?  

The spammer is sending to both  and .  I see these all
the time, but the copy sent to  gets held back for admin approval
because the poster isn't a list subscriber.  The copy sent to
 does get though to us, assuming it isn't caught by normal
spam measures.

-Jim P.



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Re: [Mailman-Users] slow processing

[Patrick Bogen]

On 10/20/06, Dr. Scott S. Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Patrick Bogen [20/10/06 13:37 -0500]:
>
> > This is most likely caused by MTA issues. Search the FAQ for 'performance'.
> >
> > Is this the only list on that machine? Are you sure it wasn't a
> > one-time delay? (E.g., a nameserver that was temporarily inaccessible)
>
> Sorry to ask, but which FAQ am I to check for 'performance'?
>
>
That would be the Mailman FAQ that's linked at the bottom of every
mailing list mail. Also, please keep all replies on-list; it's likely
that there are people who know more or have better insight than I, so
they deserve the chance show me I'm wrong.


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Re: [Mailman-Users] external web interface

[stephen]

BRAVAL François writes:

 > I don't get it !
 > Permissions seems to be right on aliases* files. Owner is
 > mailman:mailman perms is 777 for now.

It's probably not the aliases* *files* that are the issue.  Permission
to create in the mailman/data directory itself is also needed.

Note that the wrapper in mailman/mail/mailman (or
mailman/mail/wrapper) needs to be sgid (02755, IIRC).

Both postfix and mailman can be finicky about permissions being too
*loose*, because that is a security hole.  Use the check_perms script
to get the permissions *exactly* right.  (Since postaliases is
actually being run, it's probably not your current problem, but why
not just do things right?)
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[Mailman-Users] mail list script sending out spam and crashing server big style

[stephen]

Heal Secretary writes:

 > My web host suspended my account because -
 > 
 > "mail list script sending out spam and crashing server big style"

As far as I can see, you did everything right that you could do.  Do
check for the SpamAssassin feature mentioned by [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (This
should be on by default if available!)

Given the way you present the problem, my first question is, "did
addresses other than list subscribers receive the spam?"  If people
not on your list *did* get the spam, then your host and the mailman
developers may have a *big* problem, and it doesn't involve you that I
can see.  (Except that we owe you thanks for the report!)  Please give
us more details in that case---if it could happen to you, there's a
chance it could happen to everybody.

If list members did get it, then

1.  Check to make sure that none of your members sent it (even with a
personally approved list, this does happen, unfortunately).

2.  Recheck your configuration to make sure that it really is set so
that only members can post to the list, etc.  Everybody makes
mistakes; sometimes the instructions are hard to understand.  If
you're not sure, read the FAQ and anything you still don't
understand, ask here.

3.  You can check your archives, which will tell you the interesting
part (where the spam came from and how it got to Mailman) as well
as the logs can.  Get the "mbox" file containing all the messages,
and read it with a text editor (not a mail program!).  Find a spam
message, and look at the headers preceding it.  There will be a
series of "Received:" headers, tracing the history of the message
as it is processed by various parts of the Internet mail system.

You cannot completely trust these (professional spammers will
surely try to obscure the ultimate source), but if you don't
understand them, you can post *the whole block of headers* here.
NOTE: You should include *everything*, but omit any "Approved:"
header, that may contain your administrator password.  Do tell us
that you removed it, and whether the password was correct or not.
(It shouldn't be there, but if it is, it's a clue.)  There may
also be private information such as member addresses.  You should
obscure anything that you know is personal information.  (Eg, if
your address "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" were in the headers
you could change it to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]".)

4.  I don't know anything about cPanel logs, so I don't know what's
available, but Mailman provides a wide variety of separate logs.
The directly relevant ones are called "post" and "smtp".  Others
that might contain clues are "error" and "vette".  These logs are
not necessarily sufficient; you would also need access to the MTA
logs.  IIRC, cPanel did *not* give you access to *any* of the
above in the past, maybe they've changed in very recent versions.

If all you can find are web logs, then (as you suspected) they're
not related to the spam incident---they're kept separately by the
webserver.

Finally, please be reassured.  IMO, a system crash is not your
responsibility, except in a minor contributory way.  Most of the
difficulty in designing and administering multiuser hosts is in
ensuring that one user cannot crash the system, and enormous effort
has been devoted to creating robust systems for 40 years.  This is the
designers' and administrators' responsibility, not yours.  Of course,
even with modern systems, it's not easy to provide nearly 100%
reliability.  So you should cooperate with the administrators'
requests to improve stability and security of the system, but you need
not accept blame (unless you found errors in step 1 or 2 above, and
even then, that's "minor" as I wrote above).

Also IMO, any host that offers Mailman via cPanel service or similar
is implicitly taking responsibility for spam.  Spam is best handled by
the MTA that actually talks to other hosts on the Internet, not by
services that are "behind the MTA" as Mailman is.  As Brad Knowles
often says, if spam gets caught by Mailman's filters, you've already
lost the point.  Even the more effective tools that can be configured
for use with Mailman are not part of Mailman, and so difficult or
impossible to use correctly from cPanel.  Only if you have access to
the MTA (examples are Sendmail, Postfix, or Exim) and other programs
like SpamAssassin can you really take responsibility for
spam-fighting.  Under cPanel, that's the host administrators.

If the administrators are trying to "blame" you (and a summary,
automatic suspension of service qualifies), then you should suspect
that they are not doing their jobs properly, and that you and their
other customers are at risk of similar incidents in the future.  I
don't recommend aggressively criticising your host---their customer
relations may not reflect their administrative competence---but
preparing to move to one with better customer relations and bet

[Mailman-Users] Restricting numbers of emails per thread

[stephen]

Spyro Polymiadis writes:

 > We've got some ppl here that just post for the hell of it and just waste 
 > time in general, So we're looking at clamping down on some things..

This is a political problem; there are no technical solutions

If you've got power or consensus that a limit is appropriate, moderate
the people who are abusing the consensus limits.  (I would guess
that's why this process got dubbed "moderation" in the first place.)
Go to the Membership Management pages, and click on the Moderate
Member button for members you don't trust to pace themselves.
Somebody will have to actually read and pass judgment on individual
posts, of course.

If you have a pretty substantial majority that will go along, but you
want things to look more "fair", you can moderate everybody (there's a
"moderate all" button at the bottom of the page).  This will require
substantially more effort from the moderator(s) to keep the desired
traffic flowing.

If you "can't just do things like that", you're probably going to need
to adjust the human relationships before anything effective can be
done.  Whatever you do will be called "censorship", no matter how fair
you think it is---the targets will know that you're aiming at them.
(At least they'll figure it out as soon as their post gets rejected!)

Anything automatic can be abused, too.  For example, a simple limit on
thread length could be imposed by counting the number of references in
the "References" header.  Then somebody who wants to have the last
word simply stuffs that header with bogus references to max out the
count.  Somebody willing to look like a jerk doesn't even have to know
how the References header works; they just do self-replies until
they've maxed out the thread.  Somebody who wants to reply to a
"closed" thread just truncates the References header to an acceptable
count.

If you keep state on the server, the "jerk" method (as well as more
subtle variants that would be harder to assign blame for) still
"works".

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Spam - How is this happening?

[stephen]

Jim Popovitch writes:

 > The copy sent to  does get though to us, assuming it
 > isn't caught by normal spam measures.

And of course it should.  If it gets past your normal spam measures
then the probability that it's a real problem with your lists is too
high to ignore; this exposure is what we list managers get paid for
(in whatever coin it is that caused us to take on the job).

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[Mailman-Users] Spam - How is this happening?

[stephen]

Jewel writes:

 > I run a Mailman server and have noticed more recently that it seems spam 
 > is being posted to some lists

Is it actually getting through to the lists?  The fact that the spam
score was zero suggests that it does, and that your "Barracuda" spam
filter has no teeth.  You should look into this.

 > but when I look at the headers the message was only posted to the
 > mailman-owner or the owner of the list.  How is this happening?

This really isn't a question for this list (it's a general mail
question), but as long as I'm here

First, you may have software that removes duplicates, and even if you
were addressed several times, you probably get the list-owner version
first due to list processing delays, and the list version gets
suppressed.  If you want to see what got to Mailman, you can look at
the "mbox" file in the list's archives.  (Presumably Mailman functions
normally on the outgoing side, so that's all you really need for this
purpose.)

Second, the headers that you post here do not tell the whole story.
Specifically, the addresses that your host actually delivers to are
not listed in the headers.  (Sometimes the particular mailbox you find
the message in is; in your case it's the "Delivered-To" header.
However, *other* deliveries are not mentioned in your message.)  The
addresses in the headers you see have nothing to do with where
delivery takes place[1], except by grace of the author.  Spammers are
nothing if not graceless!

To understand why this *must* be so, consider CCs to hosts on the
"other side" of the Internet; your host can't know if they were sent,
let alone delivered.  Or BCCs ("blind carbon copies") received by your
host---since they can't appear in the headers you receive by
definition, there must be another way to tell the system where to
deliver them.  This is what is called the "RFC 2821 Envelope Sender".

  http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

That's pretty rough stuff, though.  Maybe somebody else (the Mailman
FAQ?) has a good reference to a primer?


Footnotes: 
[1]  Strictly speaking, there are any number of cases where they are
the same, but that's because those authors are graceful, or use
graceful software. :-)

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Re: [Mailman-Users] external web interface

[Mark Sapiro]

BRAVAL François wrote:
>
>2 questions:
>With my config, postfix+mailman on machine1, apache on machine2
>- /usr/sbin/postalias (and portmap) is on machine1, not needed on 
>machine 2, right ?


Wrong. When you run the create script on the web interface on machine2,
it does the postalias and postmap commands to update aliases.db and
virtual-mailman.db. If those paths (as defined by POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD
and POSTFIX_MAP_CMD) don't exist, that's the reason for the error you
see.

Note that the lists have been created and aliases and virtual-mailman
have been updated, but the postalias and postmap commands will still
need to be run to update the .db files.


>- which user (or group) runs the /usr/sbin/postalias command when =
>creating a list on machine2 with the web interface


The user is the user under which the web server runs the CGI wrapper.
The group is the mailman group because the wrapper is SETGID.


> do I need to add this user to the postfix group or something ?


You shouldn't have to. My understanding is anyone can run postalias and
postmap as long as that user/group has permissions on the files being
processed. If things are correct, the commands will run as group
mailman which will have permission.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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Re: [Mailman-Users] can't get mailman and exim4 talking on my debian 3.1

[Mark Sapiro]

Dr. Scott S. Jones wrote:

>+++ Mark Sapiro [19/10/06 16:21 -0700]:
>> >> See
>> >> .
>> >
>> >I visited that page, followed all steps
>> 
>> 
>> Did you add the line
>> 
>> self.__conn.set_debuglevel(1)
>> 
>> to Mailman/Handlers/SMTPDirect.py and restart Mailman and then look in
>> Mailman's 'error' log?
>
>Most certainly, I did that.and in /var/log/mailman/error, the last
>several lines are: 
>
>Oct 18 21:55:35 2006 (2501) SHUNTING:
>1161203857.3452799+3ecbeaaf1a5fbda6bf0f479d323944f26e0cfde7
>Oct 19 00:40:45 2006 (18630) No such list "9october06":
>Oct 19 06:19:57 2006 (19471) No such list "2ls":
>Oct 19 14:46:12 2006 mailmanctl(9068): The master qrunner lock could not be
>acquired because it appears as if another
>master qrunner is already running.
>Oct 19 14:46:12 2006 mailmanctl(9068):
>Oct 19 14:56:19 2006 mailmanctl(9778): No child with pid: 8762
>Oct 19 14:56:19 2006 mailmanctl(9778): [Errno 3] No such process
>Oct 19 14:56:19 2006 mailmanctl(9778): Stale pid file removed.
>Oct 19 16:07:20 2006 (9786) Cannot connect to SMTP server localhost on port
>smtp
>Oct 19 16:46:35 2006 (2494) Cannot connect to SMTP server localhost on port
>smtp
>Oct 19 17:25:23 2006 (6185) admin.py access for non-existent list: test75
>
>I should note here that I have since cleaned out lists "test75",
>"9october06", "2ls", I don't think this file is indicative, since when
>viewed, those lists were already removed with 'rmlist'. 


That's why you see the "No such list" errors. Someone has tried to
access those lists - in the case of 'test75' via the admin interface,
in the case of the others, via perhaps listinfo, private or some other
script that doesn't log it's name.

Anyway, the only messages relevant to your issue are "Cannot connect to
SMTP server localhost on port smtp". I don't know why there aren't
also debug prints from the Python smtplib if the

self.__conn.set_debuglevel(1)

line was added to SMTPDirect.py per the FAQ. Basically however, this
says that in these instances at least, SMTPDirect was unable to
connect at all to 'localhost' port 25.

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San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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