Charles Buckley writes:
> I experimented with this a bit, and found that I could eliminate
> the footer on my public (browsable) list on the same server. So I
> tried converting my other private (non-browsable) list to be
> browsable, at which point I could eliminate the footer, and then
> switch the list back to being non-browsable.
>
> But once I tried to implement the workaround on the non-browsable
> list I wanted to change, I got the same defective behaviour when
> trying to switch the list to be browsable
Did you test on the second private list *without* changing the
"private" flag? If not, my guess is that the private flag is a red
herring, and that there is some other issue with the recalcitrant list
that causes you to get bounced back to the login page.
Please check the Mailman and webserver logs to see if there is
evidence of errors there. With luck there will be a Python traceback
from an exception. If you're using Apache as the webserver,
tracebacks are usually in the error.log, and there may be a 5xx status
in the access.log (I bet not though since you get served the login
page rather than a Server Error page, and that makes me somewhat
pessimistic about finding a traceback in error.log).
> I saw a report of this behaviour on this mailing list from the year
> 2000.
If you have an URL for this post, or a timestamp, or even a precise
date, it might be helpful. I can't find it.
> It is still going on now in 2023. One would think that some
> information on how to workaround this bug would have been found
> between now and back then.
I rather doubt it's the same bug (but it's worth comparing). Mailman
2.0 was in beta in 2000, and pretty much anything from mail composed
by badly written Japanese MUAs to mail composed by the even less
conformant Windows 2000 Outlook betas could crash it. Mailman 2.1 was
released in 2006 with a *lot* of attention to input validation and
exception handling, although more on the email side than the web UI
side.
> Note that, when I am able to successfully change a setting, I am
> never sent back to the list admin login page.
That's expected. My guess is that some content, probably an invisible
control character in a text field in the form (I've seen ^T mentioned
more than once, don't ask me why), is causing the form parser to raise
an exception, which who-knows-why gets caught by the not-logged-in
handler. (My guesses are close to correct about 20% of the time.
Good enough to look there first, but don't bet your car. ;-)
I think all the browsers you mention have developer modes or plugins.
Mailman pages don't have horribly complicated DOMs, so if you want to
go through either the DOM or the page source for the form and see if
you can spot some weird character in one of the fields (likely, but
not certainly, the footer you're trying to change), you might have
some luck. Also, "_" (underscore) may be a "weird character" --
Mailman 3's list importer complains about footers that contain it.
(Who knows why, I don't think it's weird, but Mailman 3 does kvetch.)
Regards,
Steve
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