[Mailman-Users] mbox files with leading blank line
My usual mode of interaction with Mailman is via the command-line -- this web stuff is just too newfangled. Thus, whenever I want to look in a list's archive, I generally run mutt -f on the archive mbox file. I have noticed that many Mailman mbox archives are just a tad bogus: ie. they start with a blank line rather than a From line, eg. $ head -2 archives/private/microscope-list.mbox/microscope-list.mbox From microscope-list-admin Thu Jan 28 10:11:07 1999 Naturally, mutt complains that this is not a valid mbox file. Is this an old bug that was fixed long ago, and does not affect new lists? Or can this still happen with the current Mailman? (I'm in the process of switching from 2.0.12 to 2.1b3+.) My usual workaround is to look over both shoulders to make sure no one's watching, cross my fingers and hope that no posts come in in the next few seconds, and manually remove the offending blank line with a text editor. Is there a better way? Thanks -- Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/
Re: [Mailman-Users] Cron Jobs
On 14 December 2001, Ron Parker said: Just installed mailman. Working. Followed instructions for installing cron. Noticed all these cron jobs running when I do ps aux. Is this normal? If not, how can I reduce the number of these things running (taking a lot of processor resources). Thanks. [...snipped ps output with lots of gate_news and qrunner jobs running after consuming many tens of minutes of CPU time...] No, that most certainly is *not* normal Mailman behaviour. Which OS, Python version, and MTA are you using? AFAIK, it should be safe to kill all those gate_news and qrunner processes. Also, if you're not using Mailman's mail-to-news gateway feature, you don't need to run the gate_news cron job at all -- you can just comment it out of your crontab. However, as anyone who has read this list for more than 3 days knows, Mailman fails completely if you don't run qrunner frequently (like every minute). So you can't disable that cron job. What I would do is this: * disable the qrunner job temporarily * send a message to your test list * as the mailman user, run qrunner manually -- eg. just copy and paste the commented-out command line from your crontab. See what happens. * re-enable the cron job, send another message to test, and wait for the next minute to roll around and qrunner to run -- see what happens. (Does it empty the queue and move on, or sit there sucking up CPU?) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Header ??????
On 14 December 2001, Xavier NOEL-LARDIN said: I have installed mailman few weeks ago, and it's a great product. I have a question about smtp header. ^^^ There's no such thing as an SMTP header. There is an SMTP conversation and an RFC 2822 header. When I receive a message and i look the header, i don't appear in recipient ! How it's possible ? You need to learn how Internet email works. Hint: there's more to it than the RFC 2822 header, which is what you see in your MUA. There have been several books published on this in the last year or so; look for titles like Programming Internet Email for starters. Or you could go read RFCs 2821 and 2822, but RFCs are not tutorials. Is there a hidden header. or a smtp solution which doesn't appear in the hearder? You're on the right track: SMTP is most certainly involved. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Failure to exec script
On 13 December 2001, Ron Parker said: I finally got mailman working, somewhat. I can get to admin and listinfo pages with no problem. listinfo page sends subscription confirmation e-mail. However, when user replies to confirmation e-mail, I get this error in maillog: Dec 13 17:53:52 host4 Mailman mail-wrapper: Failure to exec script. WANTED gid 12, GOT gid 508. (Reconfigure to take 508?) Before installing, I created the user mailman. I ran config with mail-gid=mail and cgi-bid=apache. My gid 12 is games. What should I do now to get past this error? Read the FAQ, specifically questions 1.4 and 6.1 (both of which address this problem -- possibly redundantly, hmmm): http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq01.004.htp http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq06.001.htp Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
[Mailman-Users] Bounce-handling question
Hi all -- I'm trying to figure out why a particularly unreliable address has not been disabled by Mailman yet. As near as I can tell (mostly by looking at Exim's retry database), the mail server for this user's domain has not been working since late October: either it answers and fails with 452 4.4.5 Insufficient disk space; try again later, or it simply refuses the SMTP connection request. In either case, mail to this user sits in our local Exim queue for four days until our Exim times it out and sends the bounce message to Mailman. Mailman has certainly been getting these bounce messages; here's an excerpt from ~mailman/logs/bounce: Nov 07 18:17:02 2001 (24867) mems-talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - first Nov 08 02:24:01 2001 (27027) mems-talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - 3 more allowed over 402780 secs Dec 09 10:55:01 2001 (29717) mems-talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - first Dec 09 10:55:01 2001 (29717) mems-talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - 2 more allowed over 345599 secs The weird thing is that around 11am on Dec 9, there were a *lot* of these bounces -- presumably all the list traffic for the last four days. Mailman logged them all: bounce:Dec 09 10:55:02 2001 (29717) mems-talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - 2 more allowed over 345599 secs bounce:Dec 09 10:55:02 2001 (29717) mems-talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - 2 more allowed over 345599 secs bounce:Dec 09 10:55:02 2001 (29717) mems-talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - 2 more allowed over 345599 secs bounce:Dec 09 10:55:02 2001 (29717) mems-talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - 2 more allowed over 345599 secs [...dozens more skipped...] However, it never disabled the subscription. In fact, Mailman hasn't disabled *anything* since Nov 20, despite plenty of bounces. Hmmm. Ideas? Clues? Advice? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Pipermail/Mhonarc, archives...
On 14 December 2001, Michelle Murrain said: I'm wondering about whether folks know about the state of development of pipermail, particularly whether the issue of attachments in the archives are on track to be dealt with. See http://amk.ca/python/unmaintained/pipermail.html for the author's definitive statement (as if the URL doesn't tell you enough). I'm trying to build a good, feature-rich mailing-list/archive combination, and I'm looking at the various options, including using Mhonarc for the archiving. Suggestions? I don't have any, but you should post to this list with what you find out about external archivers that work well with Mailman. I'm sure lots of people would be interested. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] HTML in digests?
On 13 December 2001, marina said: As a result, this list digests include huge portions of HTML coding - which is perceived as extremely annoying by several users (including some who choose to use HTML mail, of course). That's a FAQ: see http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq01.008.htp Please consider we have no access to the source code. Yes you do! Mailman is open source; everyone has access to the source code. You may not have the expertise or resources to hack on it, but that's *not* the same thing. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] two instances of mailman
On 13 December 2001, Rick Francis said: i'm running 2.0.5...i want to install 2.0.8 in a seperate directory... how to i get the lists/databases into 2.0.8 while preserving 2.0.5?? Did you try copying the files in ~mailman/lists? That should work. Or if this is just for a just-in-case backup, why not make a copy of your 2.0.5 installation and then upgrade in the usual way? Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] maximun size...
On 12 December 2001, Alex Sammons said: What?s the maximum size of the attachments in a mailing list or what are the issues it depends You can configure the maximum size of a message for each list. I believe it defaults to 40 kB. I don't think there's a hard-coded maximum to this configurable maximum. AFAIK there's no way to set the maximum size of individual attachments; Mailman 2.0 knows nothing about MIME. Be nice: don't setup a public mailing list that allows large messages or attachments. Keep these sort of things where they belong, in private. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Dear Python
On 11 December 2001, adam cole said: I am a Hostway user trying to set up a newsletter for my site, www.feldenkraisinfo.com. I've followed all of hostway's directions for setting up Mailman as a newsletter. Have you tried asking Hostway's support staff for help? Presumably you're paying them, so they should be your first line of support. My problem is I've never done this before, and I really have no idea how to get started. I don't understand the basics. I want to create a newsletter and send it to my subscriber list automatically. So, first, where do I create the newsletter? That's specific to Hostway's way of doing things. You'll have to ask them. What are my options? Once you have created the list, you need to find your way to its administrative interface. That's where you find out what all your options are. There are a lot of them, and most of them won't make sense if you don't have a solid understanding of Internet email and mailing list management. You'll learn. Second, how do I get the ball rolling and have Mailman send it out? Once the list is setup, you send mail to the list address. It's pretty simple. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] capacity
On 11 December 2001, paul said: How many members can a mailman list hold? There's no builtin limit. Lists up to a few thousand don't present any serious problems. Any bigger than that, and you have to carefully tune your MTA and Mailman in concert. See the FAQ at http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=index for tuning information (section 6 -- currently only Exim and Sendmail are described). Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
[Mailman-Users] New FAQ entry for maximum list size
New FAQ candidate: How big can a Mailman list be?. The answer should be pretty simple, but the biggest list I have direct experience managing is only 1600 subscribers. My impression from reading the list is that things start to get interesting somewhere in the thousands. Can those of you with experience clue me in on: * how big a list can get before you have to worry about tuning at all (probably 1600, since we had to worry about it a bit for our list) * how big a list can get before you *must* worry about tuning * the biggest list anyone has ever managed with Mailman Please reply directly to me; I'll post a summary (and write it up as a FAQ). Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] deleting mails from the archive
On 07 December 2001, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: i'm the administrator on a mailing list ( http://lists.duth.gr ) using the mailman version 2.0 beta 5. don't I have the possibility to delete some old mails from the archive? FAQ: see http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq03.003.htp -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Virus Filtering
On 07 December 2001, Brandon Slaten said: Just getting started useing Mailman to replace our Majordomo lists, was wondering if Mailman had any facility to filter viruses. I have found the information about SPAM filtering, but wondered if it went further. No. There's lots of other software out there for filtering viral email -- the one I keep hearing about is amavis. After all, viruses are a problem for regular email accounts, not just mailing lists. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailpasswords
On 07 December 2001, David Pierron said: I tried running the mailpasswords cron job manually, Good! At least you're familar with the concept of cron job, which a lot of the people on this list don't seem to be. ;-( and it runs with no ouput, and I don't receive passwords ... You wouldn't want any output from it, since that output would wind up in somebody's inbox every month. Did you try tailing Mailman's or your MTA's logs while running it? That should reveal something. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Editing Posts
On 09 December 2001, Michael H Moran said: Ok, I see the references to editing posts in the archives, but I don't see any pathes, etc for actually implementing it. Am I misreading the archives ? If not, where do I find what I'm looking for ? See the FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq03.003.htp and read between the lines. Should be even easier to edit a message than to remove it. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
[Mailman-Users] Attachments in archive (was Re: What did I do wrong?)
On 07 December 2001, J. Barnes said: Second (different) question. My list has lots of attachments, which the archive stores, but in an odd format. How can I teach people how to pull the attachment out of the archive? Is there pre-written instructions on this somewhere? There's nothing odd about how Mailman stores attachments: that's what MIME messages look like. Any modern MUA will interpret the MIME gobbledygook and show you a nice collection of attachments, but Pipermail -- Mailman's default archiver -- knows nothing about MIME. The usual solution is to use a different archiver, such as MHonArc or Hypermail. This is covered in the FAQ; see http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq04.004.htp Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Error log ...
On 06 December 2001, Alessandro Luiz Petrocino said: My error log, in mailman 2.0.7, is freight with this lines : Dec 06 11:29:05 2001 (15688) Delivery exception: EOF read where object expected Dec 06 11:29:05 2001 (15688) Traceback (most recent call last): File /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/HandlerAPI.py, line 82, in do_pipeline func(mlist, msg, msgdata) File /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/Hold.py, line 199, in process MessageTooBig(bodylen, mlist.max_message_size)) File /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/Hold.py, line 218, in hold_for_approval mlist.HoldMessage(msg, reason, msgdata) File /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/ListAdmin.py, line 145, in HoldMessage self.__opendb() File /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/ListAdmin.py, line 69, in __opendb self.__db = marshal.load(fp) EOFError: EOF read where object expected It sounds like one the config.db file for one of your lists is corrupted. Did you, perchance, try to edit a config.db file with a text editor? Anyways, the usual answer here is to restore the corrupted file from your most recent backup. (You *do* run nightly backups, don't you?) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Large Lists manipulations
On 04 December 2001, Tass Chapman said: Is there a quicker way to remove members than the UI or the remove_members tool? I can quickly use emacs to load and find the email in the config.db, but I am not sure of the syntax and am rather loathe to just delete at will. Aieee!! Don't do this -- you will completely hose Mailman's configuration for that list. config.db is a binary file, you can't edit it with a text editor. Hmmm... I wonder if a lot of the problems with people who have corrupted config.db files arises from them editing it with Emacs, and then wondering why Mailman crashes whenever it tries to load it. Should remember to ask Did you edit this file with a text editor? next time someone complains of tracebacks in marshal.load(). Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] List Sync Problem
On 04 December 2001, Jon Carnes said: 2) The following line (added to the script) may not work as you desire: cat /tmp/ise-all_list | grep -vi archive /tmp/ise-all_list You are outputing from the same file that you are inputing to... If it can't do this in one read, then you may end up with a blank file. That's almost certainly a problem. I'm surprised the script works at all. Back when I was a Unix neophyte, I naively played around with that sort of thing, and it always failed. I'm pretty sure the shell does fopen(/tmp/ise-all_list, w) before cat even gets a chance to open it for reading. (Possibly even before it forks and execs cat.) Hmmm: perhaps the shell forks and execs cat, and *then* opens /tmp/ise-all_list for writing: bang, you've got a race condition, which explains why the script sometimes works and sometimes fails. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
[Mailman-Users] General questions (was Re: Mailman refusing to send remote emails)
On 03 December 2001, Finn Schj?tt said: I'm in the process of installing Mailman on a RH7. and although grandfather*4, would like to call me a novice in Linux/x environments. I try to follow the Installmanual, which is written as to recompile/make, whereas I've used the .rpm- packagemethod to install. First off, when starting a new thread, send a new message to the list. Don't reply to an unrelated message -- your message's subject had nothing to do with your post, and it will be associated in the threaded archive with irrelevant messages. In the manual are stated some points which are to be done as 'non-root'. I can see the installed modules are all 'root-owned'. Is this to be concerned? Not really, no. The thing that should scare you is executables that are setuid (set-user-id) root. For example, here's an executable that is setuid root by design: $ ls -lF /usr/sbin/exim -rwsr-xr-x1 root root 430740 Jun 8 17:21 /usr/sbin/exim* ^ Mailman's only compiled executable does have that scary letter s in its permission bits: $ ls -lF ~mailman/mail total 28 -rwxr-sr-x1 root mailman 24714 Jul 11 11:07 wrapper* ^ ^^^ ...but it's not so scary, because it's a setgid (set-group-id) bit, and the group in question is mailman. That means that running the wrapper program -- which your mail server does whenever it receives mail for a Mailman list -- will magically give a process the powers of being in the mailman group, which is a *lot* less scary than being the root user. Anyways, all that has very little to do with Mailman. It's just general Unix stuff. So far, the Mailman-server is running, although some misconfiguration occours. With Mailman 2.0, there is no such thing as a Mailman server. You use a web server and a mail server (MTA) as front-ends to various Mailman programs. I found that it insisted on fromadress as 'localhost' and found changing Domain in cured this. But the file states in the header NOT to be manually changed! You must be referring to Mailman/Defaults.py: # NEVER make site configuration changes to this file. But you didn't read the rest of that comment: ALWAYS make them in # mm_cfg.py instead, in the designated area. See the comments in that file # for details. Clear enough? I've made some lists, which send confirmation to members, but they can't reply, as reciever dont exist. I found that I had to manually put output from newlist into the aliasses file. Is there any place I can find that output again, or do I have to delete/ remake the list to get that output? Good question! I don't know, though. Note that if you're using a modern MTA such as Exim, you don't have to worry about editing /etc/aliases. Just follow the instructions in README.EXIM and new lists work automatically. Very cool. My first goal is to maintain a couple of manually organised lists, where I want a special header or footer, and I think Mailman is fine for this. Is there any way to maintain such a list including real name and comments (phone/addr) That's a FAQ: see http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq03.002.htp Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] bizzare non-reporting error
On 03 December 2001, Jacob Singh said: So I finally got wrapper to work properly, by setting the gid to mail (the user and group of sendmail) and by placing a symlink to wrapper in etc/smrsh/. And looking at the mail log, nothing seems to be wrong. The program can send mail fine (i.e. creating a new list, subscribing members, etc.) but it cannot receiving incoming posts. I checked the post and error logs and see that all the emails I send to wrapper are being ignored. But they are getting there or so says the system maillog. Thank you for your help oh nameless unix geek who cares. Have you checked Mailman's logs? Did you setup Mailman's cron jobs, as described in INSTALL? Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] List Managers Guide
On 04 December 2001, Adam Hodgson said: the links to the users guides don't work for me. Is there another source for this information? Always check the new Mailman FAQ wizard before posting: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Specifically we seek help on how to delete a thread or individual mkessages from the archive. This is indeed an FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq03.003.htp Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Bad dating of cron mailings?
On 01 December 2001, J B Bell said: Mailman is suffering some brain damage all of a sudden. I've not changed my version of Python nor anything like that, though I have fiddled with my kernel in ways that presumably should not affect this. Other cron-inspired mailings are getting through with a normal date. What MTA are you using? All my Mailman automated mailings are coming up with the date 12/31/69. By automated mailings, I presume you mean things like password reminders, and *not* regular list posts. Correct? And by date, I presume you mean the Date: header, *not* the other dates in an RFC822 header (eg. in Received headers or the From line). Correct? If so, one idea that occurs to me: perhaps Mailman doesn't add its own Date headers, and relies on the MTA to do so. (This would be kind of sloppy on Mailman's part, though.) What happens if you do something like this: $ telnet localhost 25 EHLO localhost MAIL FROM:[EMAIL PROTECTED] RCTP TO:[EMAIL PROTECTED] DATA Subject: test (no date header) hello . QUIT Your MTA should add a Date header (I don't know if this is mandated by any RFC, but most MTAs seem to do it to workaround stupid SMTP clients). What's in that header? And, of course, what does the date command show? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Every time certain microsoft programs find a virus
On 03 December 2001, Laura Creighton said: they feel morally obligated to communicate the fact to everybody on your mailing list. Pretty soon you have more mail about the virus than whatever your list is for. Does anybody have a way to prevent these messages from poluting your list? Sounds like some list members have broken autoresponders (or their sites have broken autoresponders). (The fact that they are virus-detecting autoresponders is not really relevant.) The usual answer to What can I do about broken autoresponders is Not much. Well, you can disable the subscription of users with broken autoresponders. For politeness, you should probably send them a note that you are doing so, cc'd to the postmaster of their domain. Hmmm, I think I'll add a FAQ entry for this... Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] ImportError: ld.so.1: /usr/local/bin/python: fatal: libssl.so.0.9.6: open failed: No such file or directory
On 03 December 2001, Jerome Warnier said: The subject is the error I get every single time a script has to be executed from Mailman. Your Python installation is broken. On the other side, I don't understand why it needs so much OpenSSL, as I'm not willing to use it (I'm willing to run Mailman on a private network). It doesn't need OpenSSL, but recent versions of Python will use OpenSSL if they find it *at build-time*. If things change -- eg. libssl.so.0.9.6 was on the system where you built Python, but not on the system where you're running it -- then Python will be unable to load the socket module, which Mailman is heavily dependent on. I'm in trouble because I cannot get to recompile nor Python2.1.1 nor OpenSSL on my Sun Entreprise 1 running Solaris 8. It seems as, packaged with Solaris, doesn't understand some instructions. Sun has a long and glorious history of shipping broken software. (Come to think of it, so does every other computer manufacturer and software company on the planet.) Try gcc -- I've never had a problem building Python with gcc on Solaris. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] private script behaveing oddly
On 03 December 2001, Steve Traylen said: If I make one of my archives private then quite correctly I am asked to authenticate myself. After successful authentication I am offered View By date, author, subject, etc. Clicking any of these returns me to the authentication page again and so in an endless loop. I never get to see the actuall archives. Sounds like you're not accepting the Mailman authentication cookie. You need to enable cookies in your browser. (Modern browsers let you do so selectively by site.) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
[Mailman-Users] New FAQ entry: broken autoresponders
3.6. What can I do about users with broken autoresponders? http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq03.006.htp -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] help
On 28 November 2001, Matt Garman said: Currently, the way the list is configured for us, we only have email addresses listed. I would like to have a field for names to be included as well, in tandem with the addresses; this way we can easily determine by member's names whether someone is subscribed to the list or not. That question was covered just a day or two ago. Please, with any new mailing list, check the archives and follow the list for a few days before posting. It's also in the new Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq03.002.htp Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Problem with Postfix
On 29 November 2001, Geoffrey King said: This has probably been answered a thousand times before but I have a problem with postfix+mailman on Suse 7.2 Linux. At *least* a thousand times. ;-) [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Command died with status 2: /home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd hlmods. Command output: Failure to exec script. WANTED gid 51, GOT gid 65534. (Reconfigure to take 65534?) --- I did use the --mail-gid=postfix (51) when executing the configure script, but it doesn't seem to help? Read the error message again. Then read this entry in the new Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq06.001.htp Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Backing up Mailman list installations
On 29 November 2001, Thomas T. Veldhouse said: My only problem with this is that it still leaves config.db for each list in a binary format. So, I can not simply place it on a Linux platform and move the list from a FreeBSD platform which was running a different version of Python and a different version of Berkley DB. Mailman .db files, despite the name, are *not* Berkeley DB files. They are Python marshall files. (In Mailman 2.1, they will be called .pck and become Python pickle files.) In any event, I'm pretty sure they are platform independent. Also, since when are Berkeley DB files platform-dependent? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Backing up Mailman list installations
On 29 November 2001, Thomas T. Veldhouse said: If that is the case, then are these files portable between Python implementations and versions? Yes, with the proviso that the format for Python bytecode (which is also stored in marshal files -- you see them as .pyc files) usually changes with each new Python version. But Mailman doesn't marshal bytecode, just lists and dictionaries. Here's proof -- and, at the same time, a handy method for dumping Mailman config.db files to human-readable form. I wrote this little script, called pprint_marshal: import sys from marshal import load from pprint import pprint fn = sys.argv[1] f = open(fn) d = load(f) pprint(d) Then I transferred the ~mailman/lists tree from our mail server to my development machine. (Both are running Debian Linux on x86 processors, so that's not much of a portability challenge.) I ran the script on a particular config.db with Python 1.5.2, 2.0, 2.1.1, and 2.2b1; it worked just fine on all of them. Eg. $ python1.5 pprint_marshal mailman/lists/test/config.db $ python2.0 pprint_marshal mailman/lists/test/config.db $ python2.1 pprint_marshal mailman/lists/test/config.db $ python2.2 pprint_marshal mailman/lists/test/config.db Except for some minor changes in how Python formats strings, I got the same result each time. Then I copied everything to our old mail server, a Sun running Solaris 2.6. Only Python 1.5 and 1.6 were available there, and again I got the same results. Oh yeah, we moved all our Mailman lists from that Sun machine (big-endian, Solaris) to an x86 Linux machine (little-endian) a few months ago, and had no problems whatsoever. It never even occurred to me that Mailman might use a non-portable format for config.db! (C'mon, give the Mailman cabal a little more credit...) I had a horrible problem moving a mailman 2.0.2 using Python 1.52 on FreeBSD to Mailman 2.0.3 using Python 1.6 on Linux (2.2) about one year ago. The files could NOT be read by mailman. I was forced to add all the users to the new list by hand and thus reset all the passwords and settings for each user (most unhappy about that). It was also a bit of a pain to get the archives working again so that users could browse them on the web. That sounds awful -- my sympathies. I have no idea what could have gone wrong, but I'm quite confident that config.db files are portable across architectures and Python versions. I am not an expert with them -- I avoid them in favor of true RDBMS. I was under and assumption that they were in platform specific binary files (though the file layout maybe the same on each platform, byte ordering could make a difference). Not that this has *anything* to do with Mailman, but: Berkeley DB files have a byte-order, but are platform-independent. Using a little-endian file on a big-endian machine obviously incurs a runtime penalty, and vice-versa. See http://www.sleepycat.com/docs/ref/am_conf/byteorder.html Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] sudden mailman problem
On 29 November 2001, Kory Wheatley said: Mailman 2.0.7 has been working fine on a RED HAT 7.2 machine without a configuration change and all of a sudden it's not delivering messages, all of the messages have been just setting in the /home/mailman/qfiles directory. [...] SMTP file Nov 29 09:46:01 2001 (3452) smtp for 94 recips, completed in 0.006 seconds Nov 29 09:46:01 2001 (3452) All recipients refused: (111, 'Connection refused') SMTP-FAILURE file Nov 29 09:50:00 2001 (3470) -1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (ignore) Is someone listening to port 25? What happens if you telnet localhost 25 on the host in question? (I assume your Mailman host and mail server are the same host.) Try a simple SMTP session, emulating what Mailman does, eg. EHLO localhost MAIL FROM:[EMAIL PROTECTED] RCPT TO:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Any clue? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Problem with Postfix
[original problem] [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Command died with status 2: /home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd hlmods. Command output: Failure to exec script. WANTED gid 51, GOT gid 65534. (Reconfigure to take 65534?) [my suggestion] Read the error message again. Then read this entry in the new Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq06.001.htp [latest problem] Attempting to do that gives the following error. checking for mail wrapper GID... configure: error: * No existing group found for the mail_wrapper program. * This is the group that your mail delivery agent runs under, and * uses to run filter programs. You might want to specify an * existing group with the --with-mail-gid configure option. * Please see your mail agent's documentation, and the INSTALL file * for details command line was 'configure --with-cgi-gid=nogroup --with-mail-gid=-1 --with-cgi-ext=.cgi' You're taking the FAQ way too literally. Read YOUR error message and do what it says. The -1 in the FAQ is JUST AN EXAMPLE. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Subscriber names
On 28 November 2001, marina said: Now that we're certain this feature is not available in Mailman (and it's still needed), what we are doing is writing a CGI form that collects the information from the user when they subscribe, and that CGI will then email Mailman to start the subscription. The other information I guess we can store in MySQL or similar. Do you think anybody else would be interested in this? If you think they might be, we'd be happy to post this to the Mailman site. Considering that Mailman 2.1 has the ability to track real names, your hack probably won't be needed in the long term. Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Subscriber names
On 24 November 2001, marina said: Does anybody know whether there's a way for Mailman to ask (and remember) subscriber names, as well as their email addresses? With Mailman 2.0.x, this is not possible. Mailman only remembers subscriber's address, password, and options. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Need help
On 24 November 2001, Alex Franz said: Can you please tell me how to erase old posts? I've just added an entry to the Mailman FAQ wizard for this: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq03.003.htp This is lightly tested, and hasn't yet been vetted by the experts. Please let us know how it works for you! Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] How to change the mail format
On 27 November 2001, leanne lai said: Hi, is there way to change the mail format of the mailing list? eg if I want to change the List-Archive: to point to another web address or if I want to add List-Owner to the mail? Mailman is open source software -- you can do whatever you want with it. The only limitations are your imagination and your programming abilities. You could do worse than pick up a copy of *Learning Python* by David Ascher and Mark Lutz (pub. by O'Reilly). ;-) Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Subscriber names
On 24 November 2001, marina said: Does anybody know whether there's a way for Mailman to ask (and remember) subscriber names, as well as their email addresses? I've just added a new entry to the FAQ Wizard: 3.2. How can I track subscriber's real names? With Mailman 2.0.x, you can't: Mailman only remembers each subscriber's email address, password, and list options. (Or visit http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showfile=faq03.002.htp) If this is wrong or incomplete, please visit the FAQ Wizard and update it yourself. In particular, can Mailman 2.1 track real names? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] problem during compiling
On 20 November 2001, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I always get this error messages even though I've already created the username as 'mailman' and group as 'mailman'. I am running Solaris 8 with python version 2.1.1 on UltraSpac 10. [...] checking for mailman UID... Traceback (most recent call last): File conftest.py, line 1, in ? import pwd, string ImportError: ld.so.1: /usr/local/bin/python: fatal: libgcc_s.so.1: open failed: No such file or directory It looks like your Python installation is completely broken. Can you use Python at all? What do you get if you just run python from a shell? Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Multi-characters in subject
On 26 November 2001, Reed Lai said: I just found multi-characters in subject, for example, a big5 Chinese encording that came from Mutt mail client Re: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=C3=F6=A9=F3=BC=D0=C3D=AA=BA=A4=A4=A4=E5=BDs=BDX?= ^^ This means the subject line is encoded with ISO-8859-1, aka Latin-1. This encoding works great for English, French, German, Spanish, and the other major Western European languages. If you can use to encode Chinese, I'll eat my shorts. ;- Looks like a misconfigured email client to me. Not much Mailman can do about that. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Duplicate Mails
On 22 November 2001, Simon Faulkner said: Is there a common way that people get duplicate mails from the list. I have checked that they are not subscribed twice! The most obvious answer is that someone is sending the same message to the list multiple times. Check your MTA's logs to see if this is the case. Another thing to look at is the Received headers of the duplicate messages, as received by the list subscriber. Most MTAs generate a unique ID for each message as it passes through them, and put that ID into the corresponding Received header. If the duplicates have the *same* unique ID when received by the MTA (and passed to Mailman), but *different* unique IDs when passed back to the MTA by Mailman, the duplicates are Mailman's fault. If they have different IDs all the way through, it's the fault of some other agent, eg. the original poster or her MUA or MTA. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] not being told of pending administrative requests
On 21 November 2001, Peter Jay Salzman said: i have should admin get immediate notice of new requests set to yes. and the list admin's email address is correctly set to me. however: 1. user subscribes to list 2. user gets confirmation notice 3. user replies to confirmation notice 4. i get no email that there's a pending request waiting for me What version of Mailman? What version of Python? What OS? What MTA, and what version of the MTA? are there issues with getting immediate notices of pending administrative requests? any gotchas that i should be aware of? is there anything i can check which can be screwing this up? Hard to know without the above data. First thing to try is tail Mailman's logs and your MTAs log(s) as a subscribe request is made. Mailman's logs are in ~mailman/logs; I would just tail all of them. (GNU tail is your friend: tail -f * actually works!) Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Auto-Responses/Digest Delivery
On 16 November 2001, Camille K. Powell said: Thanks for responding. I am still having the same problem. I plan to contact the postmasters, as suggested. However, I hope that there is also something that I can do, in the meantime, on my end. I double-checked and replies to list messages are indeed directed to the poster, as recommended. You always have the option of disabling the subscriptions of users with broken autoresponders. Or of blacklisting their site entirely; a bit harsh, but not unheard of. The strange thing that I noticed is that auto-replies to the list are only from digest subscribers. I looked at a digest message to my list. The To field is the list address and the From field is the admin address, for example, listname-admin@... When I try replying to the digest message, I get the list address! I would think that a reply to the digest message would go to the admin address, since that's where the message originated. Why don't you post the *complete* headers for one of these digests? What MUA are you using? It may also be useful to know what the SMTP sender and recipient (aka envelope sender and recipient) are -- if your MTA adds Return-path and Envelope-to or Delivered-to headers, those should tell you. If not, watch your MTA's logs as it accepts the digest from Mailman and delivers it to you; most MTA log the envelope sender and recipient. If all else fails, time to learn about packet-tracing tools like Ethereal: attach one to your MTA while the digest is received and delivered, and look at the SMTP session. Loads of fun, that. When I reply to a regular posting, I get the poster address. Is there something wrong with the digest delivery? If this is purely in the MUA, then it's more likely something wrong with the digest's headers. MUAs don't generally have access to envelope sender/recipient, so they have to go by the headers: From, Sender, Reply-to, etc. Also, when I am the poster of a message (and I have delivery set to regular), I get the auto-replies (not the list). Is there a way to have all auto-replies to the list sent to the listname-admin@ address? No, because there is no limit to the stupidity of broken autoresponders. If I wanted to, I could go write an autoresponder that sends you email every time someone sends me email with the word foo in it. Broken? Stupid? You bet. But perfectly feasible. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Odd little Error message
On 16 November 2001, Jeffrey M. Kenton said: I just received this message. Can someone help me to know what I should do with it? Traceback (innermost last): [...] File /home/mailman/Mailman/Bouncers/DSN.py, line 46, in process if string.lower(msg.gettype()) 'multipart/report' or \ TypeError: read-only character buffer, None Without much knowledge of the guts of Python, I would say that the problem is with disposing a rejected message, but I want to get some ideas from you all first. I'm pretty sure that this very bug is one of the reasons Mailman 2.0.7 was released: it crashed when interpreting a certain type of bounce message. Your guess was spot-on. Mailman 2.0.6, Python 1.5, etc. ^ Bingo -- congratulations, you get to upgrade! Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] How do I demime
On 14 November 2001, Andres L. Figari said: I'm fairly new to mailman and have been trying to follow the list for a couple of weeks. Does anyone know how I could go about demiming e-mail before sending it out in my digest. It looks so ugly :( Any tips, clues, hints would be greatly appreciated. Do a Google search for demime. Download the script there and follow the instructions in the man page. (perldoc demime should work after you install it to somewhere in your $PATH.) Ignore the rest of the demime web page. It is a garbled mish-mash; the man page is much better. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Problems getting wrapper to work with sendmail
On 08 November 2001, Gary Molenkamp said: I've followed the instructions for setting up Mailman v 2.0.6 userid: mailman ./configure --with-mail-gid=mail --with-cgi-gid=apache mail handler: sendmail v8.11 system: Redhat Linux 7.1 for Alpha Don't you have to run newaliases after updating /etc/aliases with sendmail? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Changing subscription addresses
On 10 November 2001, Scott Brown said: Feel free to tell me that I'm just too stupid to see it, but I cant see (on MM 2.0.6) where to change a subscription address Is the only way to do this to unsub/resub?? Unfortunately, yes. Mailman uses the subscriber address as a database key of sorts, so you can't change it. (Lame excuse, I know.) Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] FAQ and help
On 09 November 2001, mailman said: Is there a real FAQ somewhere (not the one on the official site), it's almost useless? Just last week, Barry announced the start of a new FAQ wizard for Mailman. It already looks better than the FAQ on list.org. I can't remember the URL; check the archive for this list. Also, how one would get rid of the long list of url (List-Help etc.) ans addresses sent with all posts (you know : Definitely an FAQ, but not in the new FAQ wizard AFAIK. The usual answers are: 1) these are useful headers, trust us, you really don't want to remove them 2) hack the code 3) tweak your MTA config to remove these headers on the way out (if possible) Someone who understands #1 and the RFC behind should probably write an FAQ entry for this... ;-) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Bounce: 0 more allowed over 166798 secs
On 10 November 2001, Michael Deck said: Ok, I think I have it figured out. Not knowing Python was a hindrance but having the source sure helped. :) Turns out that SMTP was returning a 553. When I dug into it a bit on Google, I saw that 553 was a rcpt host problem. Then I tried sending myself some mail at another machine using my machine's SMTP and Lo! I was misusing rcpthosts. I had a rcpthosts file and it had only me in it. So only I was getting the mails from the list. Once again I will plug my favourite network debugging tool: Ethereal, a fantastic GUI packet-tracing tool. If you had been running Ethereal while submitting message to Mailman, you could watch the traffic between Mailman and qmail in real time, and you would have immediately seen the 553 response from sendmail. Who needs source code when you can just see the whole SMTP conversation right there? (www.ethereal.com, or apt-get install ethereal if you're running Debian.) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] FAQ and help
On 12 November 2001, Satya said: Definitely an FAQ, but not in the new FAQ wizard AFAIK. It is now. Great, thanks. I dug up the relevant RFC (2369) and am editing your entry to refer to it. Does anyone know which mail clients actually use the List-* headers? Might be nice to mention them in the FAQ entry. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] a ? from United Nations Cyberschoolbus
On 12 November 2001, Colleen Werthmann said: I have never used our Mailman before, and I'm the sort of asst. admin person for it. My question is this: The message I posted and want to send out is quite long (a newsletter for our users). When I went to approve my own message, I saw that the message Excerpt cut off at about a three-quarters of the real message. I suspect that's just Mailman's web interface trying to avoid generating a really huge web page in case someone mails a 5 MB file to the list. Should I be worried about this? I don't think so. Mailman should send the complete message to the list just fine. Thanks. I know this may be a dumb question. There are no stupid questions, only stupid ... oh wait, I'm supposed to be polite on this list, aren't I. smirk Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Gzipping archives
On 08 November 2001, Dan Mick said: Your Python has to have the 'gzip' module installed, which not all do. Don't you mean zlib? Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] List recieves, but doesn't send...
On 02 November 2001, Tim Stoop said: I just installed Mailman 2.0.6 on Linux Debian. No, not the .deb, I compiled the source myself. No trouble here. When I created a test-list, I got nice messages saying I was list owner and a welcome-message after I registered myself as user. But, when I send mail to the list, I just isn't send... Did you setup the Mailman cron jobs? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Vacation email loop
On 02 November 2001, Clark Cooper said: I had a situation where a user on one of my lists had the vacation utility turned on and a posting to the list resulted in a looped email because the vacation email response was then posted and on and on. The reply-to posts option has been set to the list and I would like to keep this setting. I believe that stupid autoresponders is one of the canonical reasons why reply-to the list is Considered Harmful. IOW, if you insist on having reply-to the list, you will probably have to live with this annoyance. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Removing Yahoo ads.
On 31 October 2001, Jon Carnes said: Use some pre-processor for your mail, like MIMEDefange, or Procmail. For the record, demime also claims the ability to strip out ads from the common free email providers. I wasn't able to convince myself that it works, but the man page says it does... ;-) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Crontab of Mailman user ...
On 30 October 2001, Alessandro Luiz Petrocino said: Dear friends: Accidentally, I erased the crontab of mailman. How I make to restore it ?? Well, the best option is to use the backups that you regularly and religiously make of all your essential system files. Failing that, it looks like the Mailman build process leaves a file cron/crontab.in for you to use. From the INSTALL file: - IMPERATIVE! IMPORTANT! DO THIS! YOU'LL BE SORRY IF YOU DON'T! Set up the crontab entries. Mailman runs a number of cron jobs for its basic functionality. You need to be user `mailman' (or whatever you specified as --with-ownername) to perform this step. Add $prefix/cron/crontab.in as a crontab entry by executing these commands: % su - mailman % cd $prefix/cron % crontab crontab.in -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Sudden error
On 30 October 2001, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: My list server suddenly developed an error message that is all consuming. I now have an error message that is 2gig in size. This is only since the 18th of October, 01. I had found the error upon receiving the Cron Daemon message: ** ** Logging error: StampedLogger to '/home/mailman/logs/error' Traceback (innermost last): File /home/mailman/Mailman/Logging/Logger.py, line 74, in write f.write(msg) IOError: [Errno 27] File too large Original log message: [Errno 27] File too large ** Sounds like you have an out-of-control log file on a system with no large file support. (Or at least your Python doesn't have it; I think the kernel, filesystem, libc, and Python all need to cooperate for files 2 GB to work.) The problem is not that Mailman is crashing because of a humongous log file; the problem is that you have a humongous log file in the first place! Take a look in ~mailman/logs -- it should be pretty obvious which the 2 GB file is. Take a look in it and see if you can figure out why it got so big. Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Backing Up / Restoring / Recovery Questions
On 26 October 2001, Jeffrey M. Kenton said:
1. Is there a way to backup the list information, including addresses
and list configurations?
2. Is there a way to restore the configuration (list members, list
setups etc.)?
If it is as easy as tar'ing the /home/mailman directory and
extracting it onto another machine, that is the easiest.
Yes, it's that easy. Strictly speaking, all you *really* need to tar
and copy is ~mailman/archives and ~mailman/lists; everything else can be
reconstructed by reinstalling on the new host. (Reinstalling will be
necessary for a different platform, or if the mail UID/GIDs are
different. It would be a good idea if you're running an old Mailman on
the old server, or if you want to change Mailman's location. Otherwise,
it's probably not necessary.)
Everything about foo-list *except* for its archive is in
~mailman/lists/foo-list; the archive is in one of
~mailman/archives/{public,private}/foo-list.
Greg
--
Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED]
MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org
--
Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Old Question, New Twist
On 26 October 2001, Paul Cox said: On Thursday, Oct 25, 2001, Greg Ward wrote: Yes. It *sounds* like Mandrake's Mailman RPM is broken, so you'll have to build from source. Not broken, just built specifically for Postfix as that's the Mandrake default. OK, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for clarifying, and sorry for inadvertently castering aspersions on your efforts. Building a separate mailman-sendmail RPM sounds like the right solution to me, but probably more trouble than it's worth... Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] config.db being set to 'root'
On 26 October 2001, Rob Brandt said: 2) New problem - I've created a new list for the first time in a few months, and set the file permissions just like other lists I have that work fine. After getting everything set up and configured, I try and send messages through. The first message comes through OK, but subsequent submissions are rejected by Postfix because the config.db permissions are wrong. Sure enough, config.db group has been set to root. The web pages aren't accessible anymore either. I've tried this many times over and it is very repeatable. In fact, I've found that if I set ownership correctly, then send 2 or 3 messages to the list quickly they all come through. But if I wait a minute or so, invariably there is an error and the ownership is back at root. Hmmm: could it be that qrunner is changing the permissions? Whose crontab are you running qrunner from? Try commenting it out of your crontab, send a message, poke around ~mailman, run qrunner manually (just like would be done from cron), and then poke around ~mailman again. Any help? Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Changing config.db using cron
On 26 October 2001, Leo So said: Hi I want to (semi)randomly rotate the footer appended to the mailman mails using cron. I guess the footer info is stored as binary in config.db. What is the best way to do it? Thanks!! Use The Source, Luke. Read enough Mailman source to understand the right way to access and modify config.db. Probably the scripts in ~mailman/bin are a good place to start. Then Write a Python script that changes the footer to whatever you like. Run that script periodically. Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] missing footer for html mail?
On 24 October 2001, Leo So said: Hi I am using mailman 2.0.5 but noticed that footer is not appended to each mail if the mail is in HTML. Is it a known bug? I used to think this was a Mailman problem too. Read the HTML email as plain text (so you see all the tags), and I bet you'll see the footer. The problem is that Mailman just tacks the footer on after the /html that ends the message; presumably your HTML-rendering MUA stops as soon as it sees /html so never shows you the footer. Solution: don't allow HTML mail! That solves *so* many problems. Look for demime, stripmime, or similar tools. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Old Question, New Twist
On 25 October 2001, David Pierron said: I am new to Linux, Sendmail, and Mailman (uh-oh) I hope you haven't killed too many brain cells struggling with Sendmail. Switch to a modern, comprehensible, high-performance, well-documented MTA like Exim or Postfix before it's too late! (If performance is of paramount concern, it sounds like Postfix has the edge; I like Exim because of it's high configurability, excellent docs, and friendly community.) (qmail is also good, but a bit of an oddball.) My problem is the age old: Failure to exec script. WANTED gid 99, GOT gid 12. (Reconfigure to take 12?) 554 5.3.0 unknown mailer error 2 The usual answer to this problem is: reconfigure and rebuild Mailman. That means you need to build it from source, not install from an RPM. If all the RPMs are using are from Mandrake, then their Mailman RPM is broken. You should complain to Mandrake. In the meantime, build Mailman yourself and revel in the total control that process gives you. ;-) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Old Question, New Twist
On 25 October 2001, Timothy Brier said: Question of concern to me is: The RPM will verify that no dependencies will get broken. What method can I use to verify that, as an example, if I install Python 2, that no dependencies will be broken? That's where the fun comes in. Generally, you have to be vigilant, read the docs, know what's installed on your system, and keep careful track of what you do to it. And even then, most open source software is worthless crap that won't work. (Not unlike most commercial software, it's just the bar is lower to release a pile of free crap.) Mailman and Python are, thankfully, among the exceptions. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailman and Courier
On 25 October 2001, Billy Harvey said: The syslog shows: Oct 24 21:57:15 maestro courieresmtpd: error,relay=:::127.0.0.1,ident=list,msg=554 Syntax error - your mail software violates RFC 821.,cmd: RCPT TO: The Courier FAQ says this error is usually due to the sending software not wrapping the RCPT TO address in 's. Wow, so much for Be liberal in what you accept, conservative in what you emit. ;-) Is that the case in Mailman? Is that an easy fix on my end and if so any pointer to what I should change? Is it something else? The best way to find out is to use packet-tracing software like Ethereal. Ethereal is amazingly cool; just run it for a few seconds while Mailman is passing a message to your MTA, find a packet from that connection, and you can reconstruct the whole SMTP session. Question answered. The second-best way is: Use the Source, Luke. A quick look at Mailman/Handlers/SMTPDirect.py reveals that Mailman uses Python's smtplib module. Specifically, it creates an SMTP object and calls sendmail() on it. No wait, it uses Mailman's custom version of smtplib. So let's take a look in Mailman/pythonlib/smtplib.py for the answer. Here's a snippet from the SMTP.sendmail() method: for each in to_addrs: (code,resp)=self.rcpt(each, rcpt_options) if (code 250) and (code 251): senderrs[each]=(code,resp) So what we're really interested in is the SMTP.rcpt() method; here's the relevant line from that: self.putcmd(rcpt,TO:%s%s % (quoteaddr(recip),optionlist)) OK, now we need to look at quoteaddr(). This function calls rfc822.parseaddr() to extracts the bare address from a possibly-hairy RFC-822 mailbox, eg. John Doe john (not jane) @ example . net - [EMAIL PROTECTED] and then wraps the bare address in ... (Yes, that is a legal mailbox according to RFC 822.) The only time quoteaddr() doesn't do that is if it can't parse the address, *or* if the address is an empty string. So the answer is: yes, Mailman does emit correct RCPT TO commands, but it might screw up in pathological cases. Use Ethereal (or a similar tool) to see what's going wrong between Mailman and Courier. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Old Question, New Twist
On 25 October 2001, David Pierron said: So what I'm getting here is that I should start the Mailman installation all over again? Yes. It *sounds* like Mandrake's Mailman RPM is broken, so you'll have to build from source. I did mention that a: find / -name configure - turned up nothing on my system ... Do I have to acquire more software as well? Ooh, you *are* a newbie! ;-) Congrats on learning how to use find and taking a wild stab in the dark before posting. Many free software packages for Unix, including Mailman, ship with a configure script which you run before building the software. Unless you already have the source for such a package installed on your system, that find command won't turn anything up. I believe someone else already posted clear instructions on how to download, unpack, configure and build Mailman. It's not that hard, you just have to read the instructions included in the source package. I also decided on Sendmail because I want to host many domains with their own virtual mail server ... I don't know if PostFix will do this ... The recommendation to remove Postfix and install Sendmail came from the book: Linux for Windows NT/2000 Administrators The Secret Decoder Ring by Mark Minasi If *I* was reading a book that told me to install Sendmail, I'd take it back and demand a refund. ;-) But clueful people here have said Sendmail's not so bad. I'm just morally opposed to config files that look like line noise. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Archiving problem
On 25 October 2001, leanne lai said: Seems like the Mailman archiving function does not work properly with mailx. When I use netscape mail or pipe or elm to reply to a mail list, the archiving function seems to work fine ie it is indented. But when I try to use mailx to reply, Mailman archival function seems to treat it as a new thread (no indentation) instead of a reply to an existing thread. Perhaps mailx doesn't set the In-reply-to header. Take a look in the archive mbox file to see for sure. Does anyone else have this problem or know ways to get around this? Umm, don't use mailx? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] unsubbing people who don't know their address
On 19 October 2001, Joshua S. Freeman said: I noticed in /mailman/bin a script called 'find_member' but I don't 'read' python and don't know if that's some kind of utility to do what I'm trying to do. You don't have to read Python, just English. Running find_member without arguments gives a help message. If you don't know which lists this person is a member of, find_member looks useful. If you know the list in question, you probably want to use list_members with our old friend grep. Eg. to find all @aol.com users on foo-list: cd ~mailman ./bin/list_members foo-list | grep '@aol\.com' Good luck -- Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] allowing postings from anything
[matthew zeier] I'm trying to use mailman to replace the sysadm mailing list. I have a lot of machines that send automated emails to that address. However, all are getting rejected with: Message has implicit destination [Jon Carnes replies] Web over to the Admin pages and go to the Privacy Options page, field: Alias names (regexps) which qualify as explicit to or cc destination names for this list. and put in the full name of list you are using. I don't *think* that's the right answer. It sounds like the problem is that these automated emails don't have a To or Cc header at all, in which case adding more addresses that are accepted as meaning this list in To/Cc won't make a bit of difference. I think Matthew wants the option immediately before this one: Must posts have list named in destination (to, cc) field. Set it to No. Don't do this on a public list, of course, as you'll get lots more spam this way. You should probably restrict the list of allowed posters. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailman + Postfix
On 18 October 2001, Alessandro Luiz Petrocino said: When a mail message is sent to the list address, my antivirus program scan the mail, searching for virus attached. The normal process shoud be: - the antivirus program scan only the original message, before send this to the list. But, this doesn't hapen ! The antivirus program scan each mail before send to the user in the list ... with this, my server is high-loaded ... Ouch! I bet what's *really* happening is that incoming message are being scanned not N times, but N+1 times: 1 when the message is received by Postfix (before being passed to Mailman), and then once for each recipient. (Err, maybe not: if your Mailman is setup in the default way, then your outgoing message will be sent 34 times -- once for each block of 500 subscribers. Thus, the scanner should run 35 times. This is still a lot worse than running once, but a lot better than running 16600 times (or whatever your N is). How the mailman wrapper communicates with the smtp server ?? Assuming you have DELIVERY_MODULE set to SMTPDirect (which you should, as it's the default), Mailman will: * open an SMTP connection to port 25 on localhost * send MAIL FROM:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * send RCPT TO:... 500 times (for the first 500 recipients) * send DATA and the message body That number 500 is configurable -- see SMTP_MAX_RCPTS in Defaults.py. If your virus scanner is running 16,600+ times, then there's something seriously wrong either with the scanner or your Postfix configuration. If your virus scanner is running 35 times (1 + (16,600 / 500)), then that is completely understandable. I can see how you might want to reduce it, though, as 34 of those runs are unnecessary. However, that's not a Mailman question -- you'll have to consult the docs for your virus scanner. Probably you want to skip scanning on messages with the SMTP sender set to your list admin address. Or something like that. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Giving descriptive names to mail adresses
On 16 October 2001, Gerhard den Hollander said: Since it's python that would make it a tad difficult, anyone know of a good python primer and a ``coding mailman for the uninitiated'' book ? (or online docs or ..) Try a Google search for python tutorial. (Searching for python primer turned up a Zope primer and a LaTeX (?!) primer, but no Python primers!) Python is by far the easiest languages to learn I've ever encountered. It's also amazingly powerful -- I'm a bit more productive than I was with Perl (back when I worked in Perl nearly full-time), and waaay more productive then I ever was with C. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] list hosting
On 16 October 2001, J. St. Clair said: Am thinking of using your software on my server ... I have a 5,000 subscriber list, does your softare handle that many subscribers? Yes; there have been reports of people hosting lists with 200,000 subscribers. The limiting factor is more likely to be your MTA. Also relevant is the quality/speed of DNS service. For large lists, it sounds like Postfix is the MTA of choice. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailing list not working
On 14 October 2001, Abigail Marshall said: my mailing list simply quit working. I don't know why. The error logs show this series of entries for all messages sent. Oct 14 19:46:01 2001 (45918) Delivery exception: Oct 14 19:46:01 2001 (45918) Traceback (most recent call last): File /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/HandlerAPI.py, line 82, in do_pipeline func(mlist, msg, msgdata) File /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/ToDigest.py, line 121, in process inject_digest(mlist, digestfile, topicsfile) File /usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/ToDigest.py, line 166, in inject_digest digest = Digest(mlist, topicsdata, fp.read()) MemoryError: You might be running out of memory. How big are your digests, and how much virtual memory does this machine have? Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] default hostname
On 11 October 2001, Oliver Egginger said: This isn't a big problem ... I need to change the default Hostname. The Configure options: --build --host --target didn't what is requested. What does ./configure --help say about those options? Only set this value in Default.py had the desired effect. But is overwitten by every new instalation. What does INSTALL (section 5) say about mm_cfg.py? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] removing some lines in normal emails (mailman2.0.6)
On 12 October 2001, Spades said: How do I get rid of all these headers on the mailman 2.0.6 mailing list mail? AFAIK there are only two options: * hack Mailman to not emit those headers * tweak your MTAs config to remove them Pick your poison... Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Upgrading Prob
On 09 October 2001, Sharif Islam said: I installed mailman few months ago on RH 7.0. Everything was working fine. I just upgraded to 7.1. NOw mailman is not working. All the directories and files are there .Any help? thanks That's an almost-completely-useless message. How about explaining precisely *how* Mailman is not working. While you're at it, you should mention which version of Python and which MTA you're using. (Not everyone uses Red Hat, and presuambly not every Red Hat user uses the same MTA.) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Question
On 10 October 2001, Philip Arthur said: Are you allowed to attach images to your emails that go out from the list? Assuming you're already running a Mailman server, why don't you try it on a test list and see what happens? (Hint: it should work; Mailman doesn't look at MIME headers or attachments.) Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Question regarding MailMan settings...
On 10 October 2001, Shaheeb Roshan said: I am curious about the MailMan script i downloaded from Python.org. Is there anyway to configure it so that when someone on the list recieves a message I broadcast to the list, they see To: field contain their own address? No. Doing it that way would require creating a separate message for each subscriber, greatly increasing the storage and bandwidth overhead of running a large list. (One mailing list manager that does work that way is Dan Bernstein's ezmlm, which is designed to work with qmail. See www.qmail.org.) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Negative regular expression for deny list
On 08 October 2001, Jonathan Vafai said: I want to restrict one of my mailing lists to only messages coming from a single domain. ( The reason for this is that my users are automatically subscribed, but have multiple email addresses within my domain that they'll be posting from.) Oooh, fun regex problem! Therefore, what I want to do is only accept emails from .*@.*nyu.edu. Not quite. You want to accept emails from addresses that match .*@(.+\.)?nyu.edu$ Your regex would accept messages from [EMAIL PROTECTED], or [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Actually, to be even more strict, you only want to accept messages from addresses that match [^@]+@([^@]+\.)?nyu.edu$ -- because there MUST be something before the @ sign, and there may be ONLY one @ sign in an address. (Actually, there's a specific list of characters that are verboten in an email address, because they are special characters in RFC 822. So the localpart of the address regex should probably be something like [\(\)\\\@\,\;\:.\[\]]+ ...but that's getting excessively anal-retentive.) I will stick with the convenient fiction that .+ is what your regex should start with. This should do the trick for you: .+@(?!(.+\.)?nyu\.edu$) The .+ matches any localpart. (?!...) means, match the preceding expression only if it's *not* followed by the pattern in parentheses. (*Python Essential Reference*, 2nd ed., p. 137.) In this case, the preceding expression is .+@, ie. any localpart followed by @. The negative match part is for any nyu.edu domain, as explained above. Note that with the $, this regex will match [EMAIL PROTECTED], meaning you will deny senders from this domain. Without the $, that lame attempt to fool your regex would work. This double negative stuff makes my head hurt. Maybe Mailman should have a sender accept regex too. ;-) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] installing on OS X
On 04 October 2001, Giovanni 8 said: Compiling /Users/mailman/Documents/Mailman/versions.py ... env: python: No such file or directory Some Python script is using the #!/usr/bin/env python hack, a common trick. For it to work, you must have a binary called python on your path. [gosc:~/Documents/sources/mailman-2.0.6] mailman% % ls -l /usr/local/bin total 3912 -rwxr-xr-x 1 aaa wheel 48 Mar 1 2001 pydoc -rwxr-xr-x 2 aaa wheel 996596 Oct 4 15:32 python.exe -rwxr-xr-x 2 aaa wheel 996596 Oct 4 15:32 python2.1.exe python.exe != python. Are you sure that's a Mac OS X executable? You should probably rename it to python if so. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Apologies
On 04 October 2001, Jim Kutter said: I certainly have egg on my face. The most obvious solution is always the answer. The solution to my earlier problems was quite simply this and nothing more: my cron daemon died. That's why qrunner wasn't starting, and that's why messages were flooding my Mailman queue... Doh. You're not using Solaris, are you? We used to use Solaris 2.6 for our main web server, and every so often the cron daemon would just die. That screwed up a lot of things, including Mailman. I think that syslogd also died occasionally. More quality bug-ware from Sun... Greg (We have been much happier since we switched to Linux for our main web and email server.) -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] wrapper issues..
On 05 October 2001, stormlrd said: Hi, Logfile : ** [EMAIL PROTECTED] D=list_request_director T=list_request_transport: Child process of list_request_transport transport returned 2 from command: /home/mailman/mail/wrapper I do not know what returned 2 means... therefore no idea on how to fix... That's an oddity of Exim's error message. It means terminated with exit status 2. Check your Mailman logs. Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Major problem
On 03 October 2001, Jim Kutter said: A condition occurrs where Mailman does not respond to anything via e-mail. I.E.Mails to *-request addresses don't work, postings do not appear, etc... This is not a problem in Sendmail because the maillog reports that the mail is being forwarded properly to wrapper. Once it hits that, everything comes to a screeching halt. Sounds like qrunner isn't running. Here is a tail of my error log. Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): kids = main(lock) Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): File /home/mailman/cron/qrunner, line 252, in main Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): keepqueued = dispose_message(mlist, msg, msgdata) Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): File /home/mailman/cron/qrunner, line 121, in dispose_message Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): if BouncerAPI.ScanMessages(mlist, mimemsg): Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): File /home/mailman/Mailman/Bouncers/BouncerAPI.py, line 59, in ScanMessages Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): addrs = func(msg) Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): File /home/mailman/Mailman/Bouncers/DSN.py, line 46, in process Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): if string.lower(msg.gettype()) 'multipart/report' or \ Oct 03 12:00:04 2001 qrunner(22037): TypeError : read-only character buffer, None OK, maybe qrunner is running, but it's crashing. Try running qrunner manually -- ie. su - mailman and run the qrunner crontab line at the shell prompt. Do you still get this traceback? (I would expect you to.) BTW, you forgot to mention: * Mailman version * Python version * OS and OS version * MTA and MTA version Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailman won't deliver?
On 02 October 2001, Nigel Kersten said: If I send a message to a list address, it appears in the archives, but never gets sent. In the Mailman logs I get: (in the smtp file) All recipients refused: (61, 'Connection refused') Assuming Mailman is configured to connect to the SMTP server on the same host (the most obvious and common configuration, I think), try this from the Mailman host: $ telnet localhost 25 Then look at your firewall, your MTA configuration, TCP wrappers, etc. This ia not a Mailman problem -- Mailman tells you what the problem is in its log! Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Catholic Information Network (CIN) Moderators List flooded with blank emails
On 02 October 2001, Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) said: Since the Catholic Information Network (CIN) changed to the Mailman program yesterday, our moderators' list (which has 40 to 50 moderators) is flooded with blank emails. Yikes! The first thing I would do is start tailing log files to try and identify a culprit. Mailman's logs are in ~mailman/logs; I would tail -f post smtp smtp-failure qrunner for a start. (Umm, this assumes GNU tail -- older, more primitive Unices are not as capable. I'm assuming you know something about administering a Unix system, otherwise you probably shouldn't be using Mailman.) Of course, your MTA is also a factor. Which MTA are you using, anyways? Whatever, I'm presuming you know where its logs are -- go tail them, too. Or hell, just *look* at the logs from overnight, when your poor moderators were getting 100s of messages. Old info is better than no info. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Ok, what's up with python? (ImportError) when running mailman configure..
On 02 October 2001, Paul said: I get this error when running configure. Seems most of the python commands fail, despite having a clean install. This can't be this difficult!!! I've set my path.. echo $PYTHONPATH /usr/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload File conftest.py, line 1, in ? import pwd, string ImportError: dynamic module does not define init function (initpwd) Your Python installation is either incomplete or deeply screwed up. Did you build Python yourself, or was it included with the OS? (Most Linux distributions include it, but they also usually get it right.) From the python build dir (Setup.dist) Is this my problem? # Modules with some UNIX dependencies -- on by default: # (If you have a really backward UNIX, select and socket may not be # supported...) #fcntl fcntlmodule.c# fcntl(2) and ioctl(2) #pwd pwdmodule.c# pwd(3) #grp grpmodule.c# grp(3) That's probably the problem. You're not going to get very far in life without working pwd and grp modules -- those are the Python interfaces to getpwnam(), getpwuid(), getgrnam(), etc. Crucial for something like Mailman. Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Limited posting
On 02 October 2001, Amanda said: Quick and dirty answer - you could set your Reply-To to some other location. Not quite -- a correctly-configured auto-responder (apparently they do exist) will reply to the envelope sender, or the address in the From or Sender headers if it doesn't know the envelope sender. Any auto-responder that replies to Reply-to should be taken out and shot. (Uh-oh: aren't you the one who gently scolded me yesterday for being a bit abrasive? I'd better tone down this harsh justice on the Internet frontier rhetoric... ;-) Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] PDF Attachments
On 02 October 2001, Larry Hansford said: The problem is that in testing sending this newsletter as an PDF attachment, Mailman sends it out as an embedded text message -- unreadable 50Kb of ASCII code. Is there a setting that allows me to set it up to keep the PDF file as an attachment rather than embedding it in the message? Have you tried sending the message to a regular email account, ie. with no Mailman in the way? Mailman doesn't do anything with MIME in list messages, so this is probably a problem with your mail client. (Specifically, I bet it's not setting the content-type to application/pdf.) Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] getting a subscriber's lists
On 02 October 2001, Kiat Huang said: Is there a way through the web interface or other means (say as the mailman admin, or a user not root (linux)) that can list all the lists a given user is subscribed to? This works for me as root (using bash): cd ~mailman for list in lists/* ; do ./bin/list_members $list | grep -s $address echo $list done Any user in group mailman should be able to run this as well. It's inefficient, but as long as you don't have 100 lists with 1 subscribers each, it shouldn't be too painful. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] PDF Attachments
On 02 October 2001, Larry Hansford said: Thanks, Greg! The problem seems to be solved, but I'm not sure why. I checked my Eudora setup, and all seemed well. I went into the TEST group admin page, and changed the setting for message size from the default of 40K to 120K -- the actual PDF attachment I was testing with is 39K -- and re-started Sendmail to ensure all was clean with it's load, aliases.db file, etc. I then re-sent the message, and all came through properly. Glad to hear it. Is PDF a binary format? If so, a 39k file will probably be base64-encoded to 1.5*39k, blowing the 40k message limit. Even if not, the overhead of MIME crud and headers might push it past 40k. Whatever. Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] HTML interface still quirky
On 02 October 2001, Eric Pretorious said: What is happening? caricature of Van Gogh's The Scream goes _here_ I think you'll find that painting was by Edvard Munch. Unfortunately, I don't know how to get you to feeling like Starry Starry Night over Mailman, which is probably much more agreeable. ;-) Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] 2 mailmans with 1 exim
On 02 October 2001, Rob Lingelbach said: I'm running 2 instances of mailman-2.0.6 with 1 exim-3.33. I need to have 2 different MAILMAN_HOME's in exim's configure file to cover the different installation locations of mailman. I see in mailman's README.EXIM an example of how to do this with virtual domains, using $domain in the path; does anyone have an example of the exim comfiguration with absolute paths? thank you. Well, you could define MAILMAN1_HOME and MAILMAN2_HOME, and then have two sets of Mailman directors (identical except for MAILMAN?_HOME). I think you could get away with only one set of transports, as long as the UID and GID are the same. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Messages
On 29 September 2001, JT Whitlock said: Since downloading your service last night I have received at least a dozen letters from all over the nation with questions on how to best use your service. You didn't download a service, you joined an Internet mailing list devoted to discussing Mailman, a mailing list management tool for Unix. And those messages come from all over the world, BTW. It sounds to me like you're in the wrong place. Instructions for unsubscribing from the list are included with every list message, or visit http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users. From there, unsubscribing isn't too hard -- just look around and you'll see it. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] footer doesnt appear
On 01 October 2001, Ben-Nes Michael said: I noticed that when I send HTML page to a mailing list the footer does not appear. Look closer at the raw HTML landing in list members' mailboxes. I'll bet you'll see the Mailman footer appended after the /body/html. If mail clients don't render that, there's not much you can do. (Short of modifying Mailman to grok MIME and add its footer outside of the HTML message.) What can be done ? Don't send HTML email to mailing lists. Is it a bug with mail formating ? No, it's a bug with mail clients that let their users send HTML email. smirk Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Few questions for the Mailman list...
On 01 October 2001, Jon Carnes said: I was particulalry interested in: 1. How your software stores and accesses the mailing list information (List Members, Administrators, Moderators, Members). The information for each list is stored in a large database file called config.db which is stored in a directory ~mailman/lists/email-list-name. The database stores the configuration of the list as well as the members and the configuration of each member in that file in text format. Mailman also maintains a backup copy of config.db in the file config.db.last. This is a copy of config.db before the last time it was changed. Jon forgot one little detail, which is the format of config.db. It's a Python marshall file, ie. written by the marshall module from Python's standard library. Mailman comes with a bunch of command-line utilities for viewing/manipulating lists, but if you need to step outside the box, you'll have to write a bit of Python code. Eg. if you run this from ~mailman: $ python Python 2.1 (#2, May 8 2001, 10:50:59) [GCC 2.95.2 2220 (Debian GNU/Linux)] on linux2 Type copyright, credits or license for more information. from marshal import load config = load(open(lists/foo/config.db)) the config.db for the foo list is loaded into a Python dictionary 'config', which you can then grub about in as much as you please. This is probably not necessary very often, but it's nice to know that it can be done. BTW, this holds for Mailman 2.0 and earlier. I believe Mailman 2.1 uses pickle (another, more powerful persistence mechanism for Python) for list config information. 6. I'd also like to know what way the lists are stored... Are they in a flat file/DB/Hash? How's this achieved for your product? The lists are stored in a db format as part of the config.db file. The data is stored as text, and can be accessed and manipulated by any standard .db access program. Were you talking about the list meta-data (name of list, subscribers, subscriber options, etc.) or the message archive itself? The archive is stored as one big traditional Unix mbox file, ie. with messages separated by \n\nFrom . I believe the web interface to the archive is generated by reading that mbox file and spewing a bunch of HTML files. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Why https only works from remote hosts ?
On 01 October 2001, Oliver Egginger said: Hello, from remote hosts everything works fine. I'am using mailman 2.0.6 (with Apache 1.3.20 and OpenSSL 0.9.6b in the back). List subsciption (and so on) works very well (remote and local), but when I visit the list-owner admin page (via https) from my local machine ( https://my_host/mailman/admin/test ), I receive this error message by trying to send the passwort: -- Bad Request Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand. Reason: You're speaking plain HTTP to an SSL-enabled server port. Instead use the HTTPS scheme to access this URL, please. -- That's strange. What web browser are you using? And are you accessing your local host using a name that resolves to the loopback interface (127.0.0.1) or to your machine's real IP address? It might be that accessing the web server on different network interfaces is the problem; if you're not sure which interface a particular name corresponds to, try using the IP addresses directly -- eg. http://127.0.0.1/mailman/admin/test or http://a.b.c.d/mailman/admin/test where a.b.c.d is your machine's real (externally visible) IP address. Just a wild guess. I'd be more inclined to blame your web browser. Also, what web server are you using? Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] support of attachments?
On 26 September 2001, Anmar M. Al-Massari said: i just want to know does mailman supports mail attachments? Yes, just like any other low-level mail-handling tool. MIME messages look like any other messages to Mailman, and it happily passes them on to list subscribers. The main problem with MIME and Mailman is that the default archiver, Pipermail, knows nothing about MIME. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] mailman failing to use /mailman/alias when calling .cgi scripts
On 27 September 2001, Jon Carnes said: In the admin setup, under General Options what is the Base URL set to? Based on your example above, it should be: http://mydomain.com/mailman/ If you left off the /mailman/ on the end, then that would account for what you described... I suspect that if you even leave off the trailing slash, you would have the problem described. The description set off trailing slash bells in my head. Greg -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using Mail-From: Authentification
On 27 September 2001, Franz Georg K?hler said: Unfortunately, I need mailman to just use the from:-Header as authentification, due to the fact that exim prevents me from changing my sender header to the address which i'm using on mailing lists. If you have root privileges on the Exim server in question, I rather doubt this: there are very few things that Exim won't let you do, given enough time grovelling through the manual. Also, if you're a trusted users to that Exim server, you can get away with a lot more (eg. supplying an enveloper sender with exim -f). Have you tried using an MUA (eg. mutt) that lets you set the Sender header yourself? If all else fails, what about resubscribing to the Mailman list as the address that you're stuck with using? Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer[EMAIL PROTECTED] MEMS Exchangehttp://www.mems-exchange.org -- Mailman-Users maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
