Re: [Mailman-Users] Debugging mass invitations using web page interface...

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

Mark,


I have updated the script to fix this.


Just a quick note to thank you for the fix.  Muchly appreciated!


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Re: [Mailman-Users] Debugging mass invitations using web page interface...

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

Way way back in August 2016, we had a problem with submitting too
many members via the web interface.  As a solution, the following
was suggested:


You'd need a custom script to do the 'extra text'. I have added an
invite_members script I use at 
 and

 This can send
invitations including the 'extra text'.


We used this script with great success in Aug 2017 and 2018.  But
this year we've run into a problem.  When I submit the script it
appears to hang waiting for some kind of lock.  I can see this
when I eventually CTRL-C out.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/mladmin/Util/invite_members", line 236, in ?
main()
  File "/home/mladmin/Util/invite_members", line 197, in main
mlist = MailList.MailList(listname)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 129, in
  __init__
self.Lock()
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 162, in
  Lock
self.__lock.lock(timeout)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 312, in
  lock
self.__sleep()
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 496, in
  __sleep
time.sleep(interval)
KeyboardInterrupt

In the past we've used the script from a non-priv'd account with
no problems.  When it failed this time, I tried running it as
'mailman' but it still hangs on the lock.  Any suggestions?
(BTW, the line numbers will be different from the original script
because of some debug print statements and additional comments
added.)

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Yahoo rejects

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

Hello -

FWIW, I've seen this recently from Yahoo as well, and have been unable to 
get a reponse from Yahoo about it.


It seems very likely that, as Grant Taylor suggests, its a filtering 
issue. It's been an occasional recommendation here for users of high 
priority lists to use a mail provider other than Yahoo, for more or less 
this reason. Our guess is that if a user or users report mailing list 
messages as spam, instead of unsubscribing, Yahoo's filter may begin 
mistreating list  messages from a given source as spam for a time - 
usually a week or two.


Yahoo's lack of outbound communication, and the 5xy rejection code for an 
active user make unravelling this more of a challenge than it need be.


--
 Tim


 You recently wrote to the UNH Mailing List Server Admin:


On 03/16/2018 01:57 PM, Jim Dory wrote:

-- Forwarded message --
From: MAILER-DAEMON@domain2.example
To: nome-announce-bounces@domain1.example
Cc:
Bcc:
Date:
Subject: Delivery failure
Message from domain2.example.
Unable to deliver message to the following address(es).

<redacted1@domain2.example <redacted2@domain2.example>>:
This user doesn't have a domain2.example account (redacted1@domain2.example
<redacted2@domain2.example>) [0]


Okay.  That seems like a generic "non existent user" type response.


(I've snipped the address)


;-)


I got this delivery failure on perhaps 30 yahoo users over the last couple
days, and it is repeating. When I write to any of the users personally,
they respond that - yes, they are still there.


Okay.  So Yahoo is returning 5xy errors that make it seem like the recipient 
address is invalid for known good recipient addresses.


It sounds like some sort of filtering is either mis-behaving or poorly 
configured to me.


Has there been any noise about Yahoo on mailop about this new behavior?



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die



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Re: [Mailman-Users] HELP! Just broke Mailman with a bogus list.

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

Mark Sapiro recently wrote...


I would be interested in knowing what's wrong and how it
happened. Unfortunately, this issue probably prevents even
running withlist on this list. I.e., Mailman's 'bin/withlist
LISTNAME' will probably throw the same error.


It does.  I did try compiling the original configuration file I
used to create the list and there were no syntax errors.  But
then I would expect a config file with syntax errors not to be
accepted when creating a new list.


To "fix" the problem just move the lists/LISTNAME directory
containing the config.pck and perhaps a few other files out of
the lists/ directory.


That worked and was my first instinct, but I didn't know if that
might cause other issues -- having a list directory that Mailman
was 'expecting' to suddenly be gone.  In any case, moving the
list's own subdirectory out of `~mailman/lists` directory got the
`list_lists` command line and `mailman/listinfo` web page working
again.

So the good news is that it was definitely this new list that
threw a spanner into the machinery, and not some other mysterious
event.

Thanks for the fix.  The files you requested are on the way.

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[Mailman-Users] HELP! Just broke Mailman with a bogus list.

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

I just added a new list where I wanted to experiment with the
topics feature.  But after adding the list, the list_lists
utility no longer works:


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/mladmin/Util/MM2/list_lists", line 130, in 
main()
  File "/home/mladmin/Util/MM2/list_lists", line 100, in main
mlist = MailList.MailList(n, lock=0)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 131, in
  __init__
self.Load()
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 698, in
  Load
self.CheckValues()
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 780, in
  CheckValues
for name, pattern, desc, emptyflag in self.topics:
ValueError: too many values to unpack


And when I tried to delete the list, I got a similar error:


$ ~mailman/bin/rmlist test.list.topics
Not removing archives.  Reinvoke with -a to remove them.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/mailman/bin/rmlist", line 161, in 
main()
  File "/usr/local/mailman/bin/rmlist", line 116, in main
mlist = MailList.MailList(listname, lock=0)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 131, in
__init__
self.Load()
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 698, in
Load
self.CheckValues()
  File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 780, in
CheckValues
for name, pattern, desc, emptyflag in self.topics:
ValueError: too many values to unpack


I am assuming it is this last list that I added that is causing
the problem.  How can I back this out without using the rmlist
utility?

Using Mailman version: 2.1.20

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Debugging mass invitations using web page interface...

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

Mark Sapiro  recently wrote (in part):


You could use the script ... to list the pending subscriptions. Some
may have been accepted already, so the fact that one isn't there
doesn't mean it wasn't sent, but if you know the order from the
original input, you can probably figure how far it got.


Between being able to see who is now already subscribed from my
original list, and looking at the pending subscription requests, I
should be able to figure out who we've missed.  Thanks for pointing
out yet another useful MM2 utility!

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Debugging mass invitations using web page interface...

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

Mark, once again thank you for your valued expertise...

With regards to the failed thousand invitations submission via the Web
UI:


The admin CGI is processing the mass subscribe/invite list. While it
is doing this it is not generating any output. If it takes 'too
long' the web server will time out waiting for output from the
CGI.


Makes perfect sense.  (I wonder if MM3 uses Ajax or other web
techniques to provide some sort of progress indicator to prevent this
from happening.)

So when Apache timed out, would it have killed the admin CGI on the
way out?  In other words, would the admin script still run to
completion and send out all the invitations from that batch?  Or is it
most likely to have been a partial run?  Am I correct that the only
place I will find a record of the invitations sent will be in the
Sendmail mail logs?  I'd like to avoid sending dup invites if
possible.

Thanks for pointer to the command line invitation script.  I'll add it
to my growing arsenal.

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[Mailman-Users] Debugging mass invitations using web page interface...

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

Dear Mailman Cognoscenti,

I'm helping one of my list owners send out 5K plus invitations to
students to subscribe to his mailing list.  Our current configuration:

   Mailman v2.1.20
   RHEL v5.11
   Semdmail v8.13.8
   Apache v2.2.3

Since this was the first time doing this, I suggested breaking the
batch input into 3 groups, 50, 500, and the rest.  The 50 went fine,
as did the 500, but the largest batch gave him a generic web server
error:


Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was
unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, r...@conundrum.unh.edu and
inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might
have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server
error log.


I looked at the logs and I couldn't find anything that hinted at what
went wrong.  So I asked the owner to send me the last back and I'd
give it a try.  I wrote a script that removed folks already subscribed
to his list and split the remaining subscribers up into 6 files with a
thousand records each.  I just tried uploading the 1st batch of 1K,
with the following options:

Subscribe these users now... (*) Invite
Send welcome message...  (*) No
Send notifications...(*) No

And entered a 7 line paragraph explaining the invitation.

I ended up having the same error happen.  Looking at the Mailman logs,
I can't see any difference before or after my submission.  In the
HTTPD logs, I see:


[Fri Aug 26 19:59:23 2016] [warn] [client 132.177.215.132] Timeout
waiting for output from CGI script
/usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin/admin, referer:
https://lists.unh.edu/mailman/admin/campus.connection/members/add



[Fri Aug 26 19:59:23 2016] [error] [client 132.177.215.132]
Premature end of script headers: admin, referer:
https://lists.unh.edu/mailman/admin/campus.connection/members/add


So is there an inherent limit to the number of invites that can be
submitted via the web form?

As a work around, how would I do large invites on behalf of the owner
from the command line, including the 'extra text' that is allowed via
the web interface?

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  the UNH Mailing List Server Admins
  Bill Costa, senior admin
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[Mailman-Users] Cloning a Mailman server to a virtual machine.

[The Mailing List Server Admin]

Dear Mailman Cognoscenti,

We have Mailman (and ListProc) running on a physical machine which
needs to be decommissioned.  Cloning the system to a virtual machine
(VM) shouldn't be a problem, but I am unsure about the tasks needed to
make a smooth transition.  I've looked at several articles about
moving Mailman to new hardware, but a lot of the lower level service
details are not mentioned.  Here's my first stab at what I think needs
to be done.

  Mailman v2.1.20
  RHEL v5.11
  Semdmail v8.13.8
  Apache v2.2.3

After informing the list owners of date/time mailing list services
will be unavailable, at the appointed time...

On the existing machine:

   1. stop cron sudo service crond stop
   2. stop Sendmail sudo service sendmail stop
   3. stop Apache   sudo apachectl stop
   4. stop Mailman  sudo service mailmain stop
   5. stop ListProc su --command=/home/server/stop server
   6. check mail queue  sudo mailq

   7. Wait ?? for machine to quiet down?

Clone existing system to VM.

   8. shutdown old machine
   9. boot VM clone
  10. test email and lists
  11. alert list owners

My concern is that a mailing list server is a very stateful beast, so
I want to avoid sending duplicate posts/digests, or accidentally
dropping new postings on the floor.  Thanks for any insights you may
have to offer on the process.

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  the UNH Mailing List Server Admins
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