I don't think this is the problem. So far as I know he has been using single-word passwords with only alphabetic characters in them. I'm really surprised that there would have been a bug involving initial or terminal whitespace, but I suppose these things happen. (Trying to imagine how that could have been left out of the tokenizer -- can't quite do it :-) ). We are using version 2.1.18-1 -- which appears to be the most recent stable release.
I do appreciate your efforts to help, but you should realize that some of them are based on assumptions that simply don't hold in this case -- although they pretty universally held when Mailman was originally written, and for some time afterward. The primary underlying assumption is that the list administrator will have access to at least most aspects of the OS and server environment. In this case, that isn't true. We subscribe to web hosting from Webhostingpad.com. The level of our service does not give me a virtual machine, doesn't provide me with root access, doesn't even provide me with a shell, and does not provide me with direct access to any databases (I can create them and layout the tables, but that's about it). So I can't look at server logs and can't run shell scripts. I can't throw SQL at a db. I can't see any of the file system that's outside of my "home" directory tree. So I can't even see where any of the usual Mailman files are. I can only manage things through the Mailman web interface. Oddly, I can create cron jobs, but really have no way of testing/debugging them aside from creating the job and seeing what happens. Mailman lists are offered as one of the utilities under the Mail heading in Cpanel. It's simple. It works. So suggestions about checking server logs, or the database, or running a shell script just aren't things I'm able to do. There's really no point in our having a higher degree of service since (whenever I turn this over to someone else), the level of knowledge of whomever ends up managing it after I do will be very low -- and may not include any *NIX experience at all. I'm trying to create an integrated web site and set of communication utilities that are virtually self-maintaining, other than having to modify web pages now and then, and maybe having to manage/configure mailing lists and users and such. For this reason, I am not interested in patches or custom code -- much as I love Python myself. In our entire band I would estimate that there are maybe three people who know what Python is, and I'm one of them. Any C or C# or C++ programmers? Maybe one or two others. Any really competent ones? Highly doubtful. Maybe one other. Now you might argue that Mailman was never intended to be deployed in such a lame support environment. That is almost certainly true. But it's ALMOST good enough to stand on its own feet in this environment, and I think that a number of subscribers to Webhostingpad make use of it. It's been working very reliably and well with this one exception -- which is certainly the problem of this single user. Since Mailman doesn't log failures and doesn't return specific enough diagnostics to tell exactly what's going on, I'll have to deal with it a more direct and personal way. I think the best thing to do would be to get one of his buddies to sit down with him and show him how to do it and what his problem is. Thanks for the suggestions. _______________ Gary H. Merrill Chatham Design Consultants +1 919.271.7259 > -----Original Message----- > From: Mailman-Users [mailto:mailman-users- > bounces+ghmerrill=chathamdesign....@python.org] On Behalf Of Mark Sapiro > Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2015 9:04 PM > To: mailman-users@python.org > Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Diagnosing command failures > > On 01/21/2015 08:42 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote: > > > > And, you could send him an email with a > > <mailto:LISTNAME-request@...?subject=who%20PASSWORD> link in it hand > > have him just click that and send. > > > > I assume you can find his password with something like > > > > bin/dumpdb lists/LISTNAME/config.pck | grep <his email> > > > > since your original request was for logs. > > > It occurs to me that possibly he is having so much difficulty because his password > contains leading or trailing white space. I don't think this is possible with recent > versions, but there have been bugs in this area in the past. What is your Mailman > version? have you seen his password with something like the above? > > -- > Mark Sapiro <m...@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, > San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan > ------------------------------------------------------ > Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users > Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 > Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ > Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman- > users/ghmerrill%40chathamdesign.com ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
