Re: [Mailman-Users] Query for un confirmed subscription requests v2.1

[Mark Sapiro]

On 04/30/2017 04:06 PM, Dean Suhr wrote:
> 
> Is there a way to query what email addresses have been sent Confirmation 
> messages but not responded/confirmed?  Is there a time after which 
> unconfirmed subscription requests are purged? 


See the script at 
https://fog.ccsf.edu/~msapiro/scripts/list_pending>.

Confirmations expire after PENDING_REQUEST_LIFE (default 3 days.


> I know there are no more features being added to 2.1 … but it sure seems like 
> being able to follow people through the subscription process, and maybe even 
> to have the ability to resend the Confirmation emails would make us look 
> better.  With today’s flow we don't know they requested to subscribe … and 
> they get angry at us because they think we are not responding their 
> subscription request.


You can "resend" a confirmation by inviting the user through the web
admin Membership Management... -> Mass Subscription interface.

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[Mailman-Users] Query for un confirmed subscription requests v2.1

[Dean Suhr]

Greetings,

We have just set up a new small mailing list where we are very hands on with 
invitations to join.  We had Confirm and Approve selected … and came to find 
that a notable percentage of Confirmation messages went to the user’s SPAM 
folders.  (This is in spite of them being subscribers to at least one other 
list of ours).

Is there a way to query what email addresses have been sent Confirmation 
messages but not responded/confirmed?  Is there a time after which unconfirmed 
subscription requests are purged? 

I know there are no more features being added to 2.1 … but it sure seems like 
being able to follow people through the subscription process, and maybe even to 
have the ability to resend the Confirmation emails would make us look better.  
With today’s flow we don't know they requested to subscribe … and they get 
angry at us because they think we are not responding their subscription request.

For the benefit of others … we updated the text on the Subscribe results page 
that you can find under Edit the public HTML pages and text files to tell folks 
that they should look for a Confirmation email.  This web page pops up after 
they click subscribe - no email involved.

And in fact, we removed email verification altogether since we deal in a more 
closed environment.  The risk of someone subscribing someone else by faking 
their email or of a typo is lower than the frustration of double digit capture 
of verification emails into SPAM.

Thanks,

Dean

 
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[Mailman-Users] Query-based distribution lists

[Anup Patwardhan]

Hi All, 


Does mailman support query-based distribution lists like Microsoft Exchange 
does? Can someone shed some light on this? 


Anup 

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Query-based distribution lists

[Mark Sapiro]

Anup Patwardhan wrote:

Does mailman support query-based distribution lists like Microsoft Exchange 
does? Can someone shed some light on this? 


Not out of the box, but there is an LDAP MemberAdaptor at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/558106 that can be used to
base list membership on LDAP queries.

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

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[Mailman-Users] query moderation bit in a list

[D G Teed]

Hello,

We need to lookup who is not moderated in a list with a large membership.

Is there a simple command line query to handle that?

I have a feeling we looked this up before, but can't find any notes on
it nor previous questions in this support list.

--Donald
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query moderation bit in a list

[Mark Sapiro]

D G Teed wrote:

We need to lookup who is not moderated in a list with a large membership.

Is there a simple command line query to handle that?


See
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2010-January/068362.html

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query moderation bit in a list

[D G Teed]

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Mark Sapiro m...@msapiro.net wrote:

 D G Teed wrote:
 
 We need to lookup who is not moderated in a list with a large membership.
 
 Is there a simple command line query to handle that?


 See
 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2010-January/068362.html


Thanks, that was perfect.  Finding who doesn't have moderation is easy from
there.  A diff between this output and list_members output.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query moderation bit in a list

[Mark Sapiro]

D G Teed wrote:

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Mark Sapiro m...@msapiro.net wrote:

 D G Teed wrote:
 
 We need to lookup who is not moderated in a list with a large membership.
 
 Is there a simple command line query to handle that?


 See
 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2010-January/068362.html


Thanks, that was perfect.  Finding who doesn't have moderation is easy from
there.  A diff between this output and list_members output.


Or you can just use the -u or --unset option to the script.

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[Mailman-Users] Query about low-level SMTP errors

[Steve Burling]

This is really an is my understanding correct question...

Our mail server is getting the snot beat out of it by spambots, and even 
though I've turned on pretty aggressive connection rate control and 
limiting of the number of concurrent connections from any particular bot, 
we still occasionally hit sendmail's (configured) limit of 70 child 
processes, at which point we start refusing connections for awhile.  During 
those times, mailman is also refused connections, resulting in errors like 
this from smtp-failure:

Log file: smtp-failure
==
 23 delivery failed with code -1: (111, 'Connection refused')
  1 Low level smtp error: (111, 'Connection refused'), msgid: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  1 Low level smtp error: (111, 'Connection refused'), msgid: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Am I correct that Mailman doesn't consider these permanent errors, and will 
re-try these attempts later?  Nothing seems to be left lying around in the 
queue files, so I'm hoping that subsequent retries succeeded, and not that 
Mailman just gave up and tossed things.  (That doesn't seem likely to me, 
but I figured it was better to ask, so I know if I have to spend more time 
trying to figure out how to make sendmail only refuse connections on the 
non-localhost interface.  Although if anyone knows the magic knob to do 
that, I would appreciate a hint.)

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Query about low-level SMTP errors

[Mark Sapiro]

Steve Burling wrote:

Our mail server is getting the snot beat out of it by spambots, and even 
though I've turned on pretty aggressive connection rate control and 
limiting of the number of concurrent connections from any particular bot, 
we still occasionally hit sendmail's (configured) limit of 70 child 
processes, at which point we start refusing connections for awhile.  During 
those times, mailman is also refused connections, resulting in errors like 
this from smtp-failure:

Log file: smtp-failure
==
 23 delivery failed with code -1: (111, 'Connection refused')
  1 Low level smtp error: (111, 'Connection refused'), msgid: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  1 Low level smtp error: (111, 'Connection refused'), msgid: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Am I correct that Mailman doesn't consider these permanent errors, and will 
re-try these attempts later?


Yes. This error should result in the message being placed in the retry
queue and being retried every 15 minutes until it is delivered or
DELIVERY_RETRY_PERIOD (default 5 days) expires.

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

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 2:32 PM +0900 2006-09-01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  Excuse me?  The GPL *explicitly* approves and authorizes (not to
  mention implicitly encourages) modification and redistribution without
  conditions other than providing source.  That's exactly what license
  means.

Right, and they haven't provided the source.

  Has anybody at Mailman asked CPanel, Plesk, or Apple for source and
  been refused?  Or one of their customers, and been refused because
  they were under NDA?  If we haven't asked, how can we bitch?

I don't know about CPanel or Plesk, but I'd be willing to bet that 
they would not be willing to provide the source code to their changes 
to anyone, although a knowledgeable person could extract the source 
code differences by comparing what is shipped by the commercial 
vendor against our code, although it might take some work to figure 
out which version of our code they should be comparing against.

I'm pretty sure that I know what the answer would be from Apple.  You 
see, the primary problem is that the Server Group is totally and 
completely unresponsive to their own high-paying Platinum-account 
customers (i.e., major Universities and businesses with thousands or 
tens of thousands of machines), and likewise completely unresponsive 
even to internal people at Apple who are working in other groups.


You'd have to ask Barry as to whether or not he has actually 
contacted these groups to ask them to contribute their code changes 
back to the community, or if anyone has gone to the FSF lawyers to 
have them send a letter requesting that the company in question honor 
their obligations under the GPL.

I just don't have the answers to the questions you're asking me.


Moreover, I don't think that it's reasonable for you to respond to me 
in this manner.  What have I ever done to you?  When have I ever said 
anything that would lead you to believe that I would have the kinds 
of answers you require to these extremely loaded questions you're 
asking?


If you want to get into a diatribe about licensing, please be aware 
that I'm a BSD guy, and I've found myself surrounded by a bunch of 
GPL types, so license-wise I've tended to say pretty quiet.

But if you want to argue the finer points of the GPL with someone, my 
response is going to be that none of this would be a problem if 
they'd just use a BSD-like license instead and then be done with it.

As such, I'm not going to be your foil for your GPL holy war, and if 
you want that then you would be better off looking elsewhere.

-- 
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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 1:39 AM -0500 2006-09-01, Brad Knowles wrote:

  If you want to get into a diatribe about licensing, please be aware that
  I'm a BSD guy, and I've found myself surrounded by a bunch of GPL types,
  so license-wise I've tended to say pretty quiet.

Sorry, I meant ... stay pretty quiet.  That was a bad typo to have 
in such a place.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Bretton Vine]

Brad Knowles said the following on 2006/09/01 01:24 AM:
 This is the key point that was not coming across to me, at least not
 until much later in the exchange.  Speaking only for myself, I seriously
 misunderstood what you were asking and why, which greatly colored my
 responses.

My apologies, I could have been clearer. I did try and fork the thread with
the inclusion of (devils advocate!) in the subject line.

 I'm still not certain that we've given you the best answer to this
 question, but I'm hoping that you'll be able to synthesize something
 that you will then be able to contribute back to the community, and we
 will hopefully be able to avoid these kinds of problems in the future --
 at least with respect to this one particular issue.

I may not have what I was looking specifically, but I do have a clearer of
how to approach things in future.

I've had to edit context significantly for various reasons (brevity being
one) but it comes down this. We've had a solution in place for 10 years that
just works but doesn't offer us the functionality we need or clients want
any more. I've been on mailman run lists for ~6 years and found the setup to
be more useful and when the time came for a new server had to make a number
of decisions based on skills available, difference in volumes of legitimate
mail and spam today (compared to setup of ageing server from 96) and new
things to be learnt using a different OS and architecture.

A mistake appears to be the perception (prior to installation and initial
use phase) that Mailman was Majordomo with a web-gui and archives. It's not.
It's a different product and approach entirely. This realisation is hammered
home in the implementation of Mailman -- but not easily visible when
researching alternative solutions to the previous way we did things.

Such a mistaken perception is echoed both up to management and down to users
in selling the solution. You get approval, go ahead and implement and then
there this oops moment and realisation you didn't have all the knowledge
to begin with, and sold management and users a solution you just couldn't
(at the time) anticipate certain problems with. So it's your head on the
block and you either have to wing it or come up with an explanation that
satisfies both users and management without too much trouble in the process.

Just as an example, some list-owners have pending administrative request
queues numbering in the hundreds already. No amount of prodding or pushing
or assisting helps them just to complete a small and easy daily task.
Feedback is my prior list didn't bother me with stuff or Oh, I used to
just ignore that stuff anyway. Horse -- water situation.

Additionally in terms of the historical setup, things with majordomo were
already highly customised to our needs, and when I came in I
assumed/took-for-granted this was the default (old system has even worse
documentation than anything else I've seen chuckles) and also assumed
thing would be echoed in the Mailman setup. My mistake, but during the ask
around for suggestions phase most of the feedback I got was Mailman
orientated, like the move is just a casual change in clothes. It's not :-)

Now despite my mixed positive/negative reactions to documentation and
feedback from the list, and growing growing appreciation of why certain
things were done a certain way, neither users or management have the time to
sift through the same volume of information to reach a satisfactory
conclusion. Instead you get a very offensive response due to resistance to
change, or new variables.

You see the following doesn't cut it in that situation:

 * but we can change it
 * we can modify the source if we need to
 * that's the way the developers chose to do it
 * the documentation was lacking

In an environment where someone has to take responsibility for a situation,
even if it's not their fault as such, providing the best answer to users or
management can go two ways. Shift the blame, or fix the problem -- even if
it means undoing the best practices suggested and letting users/management
realise for themselves why it's a bad idea. But in some environments you
just can't afford to do this.

So far I've discovered that yes, most of the safe defaults are the best
desired functionality. And that on a Debian/Exim setup it's best to install
from source, and if using virtual domains to install a separate installation
of mailman per domain. The additional overhead on the box isn't that much
for ~20 domains. It might be for more than that though. I've also found the
documentation to be scattered but where there is info that can be
referenced, it's generally pretty good.

Once we have a stable system that meets the needs of users and management
I'll be happy to share the setup of how we've done it in our particular way
along with some rationale behind the different decisions based both on what
I've learnt on this list, and from user/management feedback.

Obviously every installation is in a 

Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Bretton Vine]

Brad Knowles said the following on 2006/09/01 08:39 AM:
 If you want to get into a diatribe about licensing, please be aware 
 that I'm a BSD guy, and I've found myself surrounded by a bunch of 
 GPL types, so license-wise I've tended to say pretty quiet.

Note, the issues raised are not unique to Mailman or other popular GPL
products. There is an undercurrent of concern over how Ubuntu is building on
Dedian but not necessarily contributing back, and developer dissatisfaction
at the Debian level moving to the more trendy and dynamic Ubuntu front.

The GPL approach has obviously been useful (and popular) but I find many
'just solve the problem' type individuals seem to favour the BSD approach.
Kind of you're welcome to use and modify, just don't blame us for any
consequences, whereas with the GPL it's more about a zealous popular
uprising against corporate overlords.

I don't think there is any obligation for someone who changes the source of
a GPL product to give the changes back to the original developers, but there
might be a case of 'good manners' at play in that it is polite to do so. I'm
sure developers welcome input even if they choose not to include it in the
primary code distribution.

One can however approach someone who has modified the source and request the
modified source but there may be trouble getting a diff version of the
modifications made and reasons why.

However it's probably a case of motivation. Developers would need to be
motivated to chase one of the organisations mentioned and it would be
time-consuming and require effort when they might prefer to be coding.
Obviously a gap here for a champion from within the user base to pursue the
matter further.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Todd Zullinger]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Has anybody at Mailman asked CPanel, Plesk, or Apple for source and
 been refused?  Or one of their customers, and been refused because
 they were under NDA?  If we haven't asked, how can we bitch?

I asked cPanel a few years ago.  I got the run-around and they closed
the support ticket 2 or 3 times without providing any source or diffs.
Only after persisting did they send me a link to a half-assed diff
that I know didn't match all that they changed.

I've since had the displeasure of working on a cPanel hosted system
and there is a source directory for mailman.  If anyone's really
curious, I'll diff it against whatever the official source release
they're claiming it is.

They may be honoring the letter of the license, but they deserve the
shit they get here for abusing the spirit of it so badly.  If I made
changes to Mailman that caused a regular stream of frequently asked
questions I'd fix the problems or get involved in helping answer them
just so I could sleep at night.  cPanel doesn't do that and they are
charging folks good money to package up free software.  That leaves a
bad taste in *my* mouth, and I'm not even a significant contributor to
Mailman.

- -- 
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==
The more laws, the less justice.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero De Officiis, 44 B.C.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[stephen]

Brad Knowles writes:

  I just don't have the answers to the questions you're asking me.

That's fine.

  Moreover, I don't think that it's reasonable for you to respond to me 
  in this manner.  What have I ever done to you?

Since you ask, lots of nice things.  I've certainly benefited from
your contributions to these lists and the FAQ.  Thank you!

I'm not sure what you mean by manner, but the reason I responded is
that I got triggered by the juxtaposition of us vs. them language
with GPL.  I agree that there's a justification for a feeling of us
vs. them between Mailman and the companies mentioned, but in my
experience the GPL normally contributes to such antagonism, and I've
never seen the GPL help alleviate it.  So I want the GPL out of the
discussion (unless the companies are in violation of their license,
which seems possible---that's why I asked for evidence).

  When have I ever said anything that would lead you to believe that
  I would have the kinds of answers you require

Aren't you the guy who was there when the Postel Principle was coined?
wink  You're right, I should ask Barry, but Barry's not here right
now that I can see, and you usually do have answers, good answers.

  to these extremely loaded questions you're asking?

What's loaded about the questions?  True, my phrasing assumed that you
probably knew the answers to the questions, but I didn't mean to imply
any obligation for you to know them.

Your post asks for more than the GPL does.  I agree that it would be
good if these companies would participate actively in the community.
But I'm more confused than ever why you cited the GPL in support of
that, since you write:

  But if you want to argue the finer points of the GPL with someone, my 
  response is going to be that none of this would be a problem if 
  they'd just use a BSD-like license instead and then be done with
  it.

  As such, I'm not going to be your foil for your GPL holy war, and if 
  you want that then you would be better off looking elsewhere.

All I want w.r.t. the GPL is that downstream do what it explicitly
demands, since that is the license Mailman uses.

And maybe Mailman should consider asking for source code from these
companies, to improve support for not a few users.

Steve


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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[stephen]

Todd Zullinger writes:

  [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   Has anybody at Mailman asked CPanel, Plesk, or Apple for source and
   been refused?  Or one of their customers, and been refused because
   they were under NDA?  If we haven't asked, how can we bitch?

  [...]
  I've since had the displeasure of working on a cPanel hosted system
  and there is a source directory for mailman.  If anyone's really
  curious, I'll diff it against whatever the official source release
  they're claiming it is.

If you actually do have the right to do so, yes, please.  If nobody
else wants it, feel free to send it to me personally, and I'll stick
it up on a website and post an URL in the FAQ.  It ought to be
available for the benefit of cPanel users who might be able to use it,
even if we're not going to use any of it in Mailman itself.

  They may be honoring the letter of the license,

And then again, they may not be.  Checking the source will help to
figure that out.

Cheers,
Steve

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Todd Zullinger]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 If you actually do have the right to do so, yes, please.

I do, AFAIK.  Mailman is GPL'd and I have legitimate root access on
that system so I have access to the source code.  AIUI, the GPL
doesn't permit them to restrict what I do with the source that I get.
So it's tough titties for cPanel if they don't like me sharing it with
the rest of the world. :)

The diff is rather large and messy.  The source dir on cpanel seems to
include a build dir with the mailman bin/ utils in it along with some
of the stuff from contrib and cron.  There are also various remnants
of the build process (config.status, Makefiles, etc) strewn about --
perhaps to discourage anyone from using the source easily. :)

In the interests of completeness, I've not excluded any of that from
the diff, so it's rather large (~ 7MB unzipped)!  This source came
from /usr/local/cpanel/src/3rdparty/gpl/mailman-2.1.7 on a cpanel
system.

The diff:

http://pobox.com/~tmz/mailman-2.1.7-cpanel.diff.bz2 (1.7MB)

Let me know if you want any other info from the cpanel system and I'll
do my best to get it for you.

- -- 
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==
The only reason we still have elections in this country is to see if
the pollsters were right.
-- Ed Rollins

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 9:30 PM +0900 2006-09-01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  Your post asks for more than the GPL does.  I agree that it would be
  good if these companies would participate actively in the community.
  But I'm more confused than ever why you cited the GPL in support of
  that, since you write:

I'm not really citing the GPL, at least not per se.  I know what the 
GPL actually requires, but as far as I'm concerned any changes that 
are made without being approved by Barry or filtered back into the 
community would qualify as unapproved.

  All I want w.r.t. the GPL is that downstream do what it explicitly
  demands, since that is the license Mailman uses.

If they were willing to do that, I'd be reasonably happy.

  And maybe Mailman should consider asking for source code from these
  companies, to improve support for not a few users.

That's a good idea, but that's another issue for Barry.

-- 
Brad Knowles, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

 -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
 Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See http://www.lopsa.org/.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[stephen]

Todd Zullinger writes:

  I do, AFAIK.  Mailman is GPL'd and I have legitimate root access on
  that system so I have access to the source code.  AIUI, the GPL
  doesn't permit them to restrict what I do with the source that I
  get.

You have to actually receive a distribution to have GPL rights.
Merely having access to somebody else's copy is not enough.  The
system owner can indeed tell you what uses you are and are not
allowed, just as a cashier has legitimate access to the contents of
the cash register, but isn't allowed to just share out the change to
anybody who comes along.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Todd Zullinger]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 You have to actually receive a distribution to have GPL rights.
 Merely having access to somebody else's copy is not enough.

The system owner most certainly allows me to access and use the source
that he was provided as part of the cPanel installation.  If you have
reason to believe that there are other factors which would prohibit
the system owner from sharing that source code, feel free to point
those out.  But of course, I've already posted the diff and don't plan
to retract it. ;)

- -- 
ToddOpenPGP - KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
==
Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a
virtue.  Fleas are interested in dogs.
-- P.J. O'Rourke

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicitdestination(devils advocate!)

[Mark Sapiro]

Brad Knowles wrote:

At 9:30 PM +0900 2006-09-01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  And maybe Mailman should consider asking for source code from these
  companies, to improve support for not a few users.

That's a good idea, but that's another issue for Barry.


FWIW, I only this week discovered that Apple has Mailman source code on
it's web site.

I found the following quote somewhat ironic -

  Apple uses software created by the Open Source community, such as the
  HTML rendering engine for Safari, and returns its enhancements to the
  community.

(http://www.apple.com/opensource/)

Anyway, if you go to http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
and follow any of the Mac OS X 10.3  Darwin 7.0 or later source
links you will find links to Mailman source. I don't know whether this
is Apple modified source or just our source. I haven't had time to
investigate this.

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

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicitdestination(devils advocate!)

[Mark Sapiro]

Bretton Vine wrote:

Just as an example, some list-owners have pending administrative request
queues numbering in the hundreds already. No amount of prodding or pushing
or assisting helps them just to complete a small and easy daily task.
Feedback is my prior list didn't bother me with stuff or Oh, I used to
just ignore that stuff anyway. Horse -- water situation.


FYI, in case you missed it, beginning with 2.1.6 there is a
max_days_to_hold list setting and the corresponding
DEFAULT_MAX_DAYS_TO_HOLD mm_cfg.py setting.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicitdestination(devils advocate!)

[Mark Sapiro]

Todd Zullinger wrote:

The source dir on cpanel seems to
include a build dir with the mailman bin/ utils in it along with some
of the stuff from contrib and cron.

The build directory is created by configure and contains 'configured'
versions of the scripts.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[stephen]

Todd Zullinger writes:

  If you have reason to believe that there are other factors which
  would prohibit the system owner from sharing that source code,
  feel free to point those out.

There are none to worry about, except that he/she arbitrarily decides
he/she doesn't want to.

I'm just concerned that sharing might not be the intention of the
system owner.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Todd Zullinger]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I'm just concerned that sharing might not be the intention of the
 system owner.

No problem.  Sharing this source code is perfectly fine with the
system owner.  I know him well enough to know that implicitly.

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==
Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicitdestination(devils advocate!)

[Todd Zullinger]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Brad Knowles wrote:
 Looking at 
 http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.4.7.ppc/mailman-117/mailman/NEWS,
  
 it looks like they got up to version 2.1.5, but again I'm still 
 trying to figure out what parts may have been modified by Apple.

I grabbed the source from:


http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/tarballs/other/mailman-117.tar.gz

which is linked from (among other places):

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.4.7.x86/

The mailman sources are in the tarball in the mailman dir.  The diff
to that is here:

http://pobox.com/~tmz/mailman-apple.diff.bz2

There are other Apple specific things in the tarball, Makefile, init
script, etc, which are worth checking out to see how they package
Mailman and how that may affect those coming here for some help with
those Apple packages.

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==
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[John W. Baxter]

On 8/31/06 4:09 PM, Brad Knowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Actually, I think either unapproved or unauthorized are the most
 appropriate terms.  After all, the code is released under the GPL,
 and anyone who is making modifications to that code and then making
 their modified version available to their customers (or otherwise
 benefiting from those modifications) are supposed to contribute the
 source to their changes back to the community.  But CPanel has not
 done this, neither has Plesk, nor Apple.
 
 Now, in a way, Apple gives back to the project more than they
 probably realize, but that's not the same thing.
 
 
 So, while we don't make that big a deal of this issue, I think I'm
 actually being reasonably lenient on these companies.

I continue to think that un-vetted is closer.  GPL doesn't give Mailman's
copyright holders control over what changes are made, which unapproved or
unauthorized would seem to imply.

I think.

  --John


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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination (devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 9:06 AM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:

  Well a lot has been generated in this discussion already, now it's just a
  case of summarising it and having someone edit. I like writing, and would
  happily contribute but I can drag on a bit so need a good editor :-P

Yeah, I have that problem too.  That's why what was supposed to be a 
one-off article on spam-fighting for the LOPSA.org website has turned 
into a six-part series.  I put in everything I could think of, and it 
was just too damn bloody long to make a single post.

  There wasn't a very solid connection between the source, the documentation
  and patches. Lots of information, but no index (metaphorically). Lots of
  pointers and usefool tools for searching, but no real start here to do it
  differently to the default approach.

The problem is that we have our suggested method for handling virtual 
domains, but we cannot possibly know all the different other methods 
that might be out there that people might want to use, and how they 
might want to apply (or mis-apply) those methods to Mailman.  So, 
it's kind of hard for us to develop a guide to answer all those 
possible questions.

We can tell you how it is done in the current code, and we can give 
you pointers to alternative methods, but I don't see how we can 
realistically be expected to go beyond that.

  I understand Mailman is superior to Majordomo in this respect, or is this
  configuration dependant?

I think that Mailman is at least somewhat more resistant to mail 
loops, but all bets are off when messages are passing through 
gateways from Internet e-mail to proprietary internal e-mail systems, 
and then possibly going back out again.  Most gateway systems like 
that will strip off all the ugly additional header information that 
we need in order to be able to do our job of trying to avoid loops, 
etc

  No disagreement. But safeguards are merely insurance when you have proper
  education in how to use tools no? As opposed to a necessity due to gaps in
  the knowledge chain.
  (i.e. the safety line is not intended to be used as a hand rail)

No, the safety line is not intended to be used as a hand rail, but if 
you're installing something without any prior specific knowledge of 
the groups that will be using it, but you might have a reasonable 
expectation that some of them might use whatever you install as a 
handrail regardless of whether or not you intended for them to do 
that, then what do you choose to install?

Do you install a safety line and hope that all the users are going to 
be smart enough to not attempt to use it as a handrail?  Or do you go 
ahead and install a handrail under the assumption that some users are 
going to be stupid/ignorant enough to use it as a handrail 
regardless, despite all possible warning signs that you might put up?

If you know you have some users that would prefer not to have a 
safety line or handrail at all, and others who would need the 
handrail, what do you install?


IMO, the only sane choice is to go ahead and install a handrail by 
default, but make it easy for the people operating the ride to easily 
switch out for a safety line or nothing at all, depending on their 
increased knowledge of their userbase.

  Actually, if you're in an environment with lots of people interaction,
  showing them a short-cut is like a good dead of the day, and in terms of
  user-interface spreads nicely. Trouble is all the arcane knowledge is locked
  up in the heads of people who spend more time in front of a pc than 
people :-)

No good dead ever goes unpunished.  ;)

  Ok, sounds fair. I'm a customer. I want to understand why things are done a
  certain way. I want to know why they're no done differently, and I'll be
  stubborn and even try it myself until it stops working.

Which gets us back to the answer that the default is safer this way, 
and if you want to change it then you are given the option of doing 
so.

If you want to further beat your head against that brick wall, you're 
welcome to do so.  Just keep in mind that insanity is defined as 
doing the same action repeatedly while expecting different results.

   I'm not about to
  embark on learning Python just to understand Mailman (although it would be a
  useful exercise in a broader sense) but I do wish documentation had the same
  level of diligence and peer-review that the code gets (not specifically
  mailman -- software in general)

In this case, there's not much to improve with regards to the 
documentation.  There's just not much to document.

There are lots of other areas where the documentation is known to be 
horribly weak, nonexistent, or wrong, and we would welcome any 
assistance from anyone who wants to help us fix that.  But this is 
not one of those areas.

  I can point my users to documentation and URLs but I can't make them read :-)

No, but you should be able to read, and if they are not able to do so 

Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination (devils advocate!)

[stephen]

Brad Knowles writes:
  At 2:07 AM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:
  
(locally) it's been referred to as a be strict in what you send, relaxed 
   in
what you receive approach but not everyone adheres to (or is aware of) 
   this
way of looking at things and it seems antiquated to some.
  
  It's called the Postel Principle, and some of us are old enough to 
  remember when the term was first coined.  While there are cases where 
  it is not always appropriate to apply the Postel Principle, there are 
  still plenty of us around that firmly believe that using safe 
  defaults is a better way to go.

IMHO, it's the *same way to go.*  AIUI (I seem to be missing a post or
two) Mailman accepted the mail, Mailman did not drop it on the floor,
Mailman *could* have sent it---but the Postel Principle doesn't imply
that it should have done so.  We have good reason (by default, which
default doesn't apply to Bretton's shop, it seems) to believe that
that post should be looked at (strictly ;-) by a human before sending.


Steve


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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Mark Sapiro]

Bretton Vine wrote:

Mark Sapiro said the following on 2006/08/31 02:55 AM:

 Do you have an actual message?

Yes

 Where did this message come from?

A list-member, cc'd to non-list member (subsequently subbed)


It occurred to me that if the list has archives, the raw message as
sent to the list members will be in
archives/private/listname.mbox/listname.mbox. This message will not be
the exact message received by Mailman and held for implict destination
because Mailman does manipulate headers a bit, but as long as the list
is not fully personalized, the To: and Cc: headers should be intact.

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

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Bretton Vine]

John W. Baxter said the following on 2006/08/31 06:58 PM:
 And, unfortunately, were I preparing a list of options for a You really
 ought to look at these options and check that they are set appropriately
 paragraph, I probably wouldn't include this one.  There are so many which
 are more important for such a thing.

Perhaps a list of you /really/ should set these settings to X would be
useful to people short on time :-) Of course you could just bundle the
product that way in the first place but where's the fun in that?

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Dragon]

Bretton Vine sent the message below at 10:08 8/31/2006:
John W. Baxter said the following on 2006/08/31 06:58 PM:
  And, unfortunately, were I preparing a list of options for a You really
  ought to look at these options and check that they are set appropriately
  paragraph, I probably wouldn't include this one.  There are so many which
  are more important for such a thing.

Perhaps a list of you /really/ should set these settings to X would be
useful to people short on time :-) Of course you could just bundle the
product that way in the first place but where's the fun in that?
 End original message. -

That is what the Defaults.py file is for.

The defaults as shipped were chosen by the developers. We should 
assume that they were chosen for good, logical reasons that apply to 
the majority of installations.

But if you don't like the defaults or have a reason to choose a 
different setting, you can change them at your own risk either 
through configuring each list or by overriding the setting in mm_cfg.py

Open source projects are never going to have documentation to the 
standard you want. Unless you or somebody else is willing to take on 
that large project, continuing to harp on the subject is only going 
to serve to annoy people.

The fact that this software is made available to the community free 
of charge is a gift to the community. The fact that people like Brad 
and Mark and others are willing to expend large amounts of their time 
responding to queries here should be taken as what it is, another 
gift to the community. I think they have gone above and beyond the 
call of duty in this discussion and I am amazed at the restraint they 
have shown.

Dragon

~~~
  Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
~~~

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Steve Burling]

--On August 31, 2006 7:08:22 PM +0200 Bretton Vine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
wrote:

 Perhaps a list of you /really/ should set these settings to X would be
 useful to people short on time :-) Of course you could just bundle the
 product that way in the first place but where's the fun in that?

To which I reply:

Could we maybe leave this poor dead horse to rest in peace?

Apparently, many of the posters to this list believe (with some 
justification, imho) that it should take explicit action to undo safe 
defaults, rather than requiring explicit action to set safe values.  You 
disagree.  You've made that abundantly clear.  Fine.  We believe that you 
disagree.

But based on my (rather more than I care to contemplate) years in this 
business, I think you're wrong.

-- 
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Bretton Vine]

Dragon said the following on 2006/08/31 07:44 PM:
 But if you don't like the defaults or have a reason to choose a
 different setting, you can change them at your own risk either through
 configuring each list or by overriding the setting in mm_cfg.py

I'm not criticising, and I'm more than willing to put in some effort. What
useful settings apply? The default 'legacy' antispam measures are merely an
example (for example).

 Open source projects are never going to have documentation to the
 standard you want. Unless you or somebody else is willing to take on
 that large project, continuing to harp on the subject is only going to
 serve to annoy people.

That's the trouble with email - tone is lost, along with intention ;-)

 I think they have gone above and beyond the call of
 duty in this discussion and I am amazed at the restraint they have shown.

The teacher learns more from the student than the student learns from the
teacher. It would be wise not to forget that. big grin

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It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot,
irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known,
but to question it. - Jacob Chanowski
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Bretton Vine]

Dragon said the following on 2006/08/31 07:44 PM:
 The fact that people like Brad and Mark and others are willing to expend
 large amounts of their time responding to queries here should be taken as
 what it is, another gift to the community. I think they have gone above
and beyond the call of
 duty in this discussion and I am amazed at the restraint they have shown.

(on a more serious note)

I view it differently. I have had great feedback and I highly doubt either
of the parties mentioned viewed a response as a restraining, difficult
exercise. I /really/ use lists to their full advantage and with some in
particular have never felt my input or response was an exercise in patience
or restraint. It's a labour of love. You do it because it's what you do.

That's not to say I don't appreciate a response (some time after the fact)
with another avenue to explore (thanks Mark) but compare the difference
between you're harping on about nothing to have you tried this?. The
latter (in hindsight) is blindingly obvious -- and yet no-one else let their
sub-conscious ponder the problem a while longer.

Lists are communities. And community isn't about 'gifts' from the elders or
sticking to sensible rules. It's about invigorating the elders so they feel
like children in a toy-store again.
(and no I'm not being ageist or condescending or merely rebellious here)

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This is a test designed to provoke an emotional response: The water supply
IS tainted
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Bretton Vine]

Steve Burling said the following on 2006/08/31 07:55 PM:
 Could we maybe leave this poor dead horse to rest in peace?

Only if I get a last word in edgewise :-)

 Apparently, many of the posters to this list believe (with some 
 justification, imho) that it should take explicit action to undo safe 
 defaults, rather than requiring explicit action to set safe values.  You 
 disagree.  You've made that abundantly clear.  Fine.  We believe that you 
 disagree.

Then you've misunderstood me. I don't disagree, and since turning the
setting off have seen an immediate *and* significant increase in the amount
of spam getting to open lists which answers a question I raised earlier.

The point I was illustrating is that if you have to justify the rationale
behind a default setting to a third-party-decision-maker -- what is the most
appropriate and concise response?

 But based on my (rather more than I care to contemplate) years in this 
 business, I think you're wrong.

I may well be. However I dispute the reasoning that things are done a
certain way 'just because that's the way they're done'. This thread has
resulted in far more knowledge than I need convey on to my boss/clients, but
it has been immensely useful too. Both in terms of my learning, and
proposing alternate perspectives. Just because I present a point-of-view
doesn't mean I agree with it. Nor does it invalidate it.

I've heard arguments from developers critical of third parties modifying the
software in a particular way and then failing to support it accordingly.
I've heard arguments that the developers know what's best. I've questioned
whether these approaches are based on developer-need, user-input or pure
reasoning. I don't believe I've done anything a curious individual could be
faulted for, nor do I see any evidence that people willing to take a
moment's pause for a reasoned response reacting uncomfortably or being
unwilling to share their experience or philosophy-of-approach.

In closing, I needed a simple answer. I couldn't find one myself, so I
asked. In return I learned far more than I requested, and developed an
immediate respect for those who understood where I was coming from.
In time perhaps those who endured irritation will understand. :-)

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All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every
organism to live beyond its income. — Samuel Butler (1835-1902),British writer.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 10:06 AM -0700 2006-08-31, John W. Baxter quoted Brad Knowles 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:

  We're not a commercial environment, and we've actually had pretty bad
  experiences with people/companies that are in commercial environments
  taking our software and making unapproved modifications to it, or
  providing the software to their customers but *not* providing
  adequate support to those customers.

  unapproved may be a bit strong.  Perhaps un-vetted would be closer?

Actually, I think either unapproved or unauthorized are the most 
appropriate terms.  After all, the code is released under the GPL, 
and anyone who is making modifications to that code and then making 
their modified version available to their customers (or otherwise 
benefiting from those modifications) are supposed to contribute the 
source to their changes back to the community.  But CPanel has not 
done this, neither has Plesk, nor Apple.

Now, in a way, Apple gives back to the project more than they 
probably realize, but that's not the same thing.


So, while we don't make that big a deal of this issue, I think I'm 
actually being reasonably lenient on these companies.

  I just recently wrote a FAQ entry on this subject -- see FAQ 1.32.

  Quite nicely done!

Thanks!

-- 
Brad Knowles, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

 -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
 Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See http://www.lopsa.org/.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 8:44 PM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:

  The point I was illustrating is that if you have to justify the rationale
  behind a default setting to a third-party-decision-maker -- what is the most
  appropriate and concise response?

This is the key point that was not coming across to me, at least not 
until much later in the exchange.  Speaking only for myself, I 
seriously misunderstood what you were asking and why, which greatly 
colored my responses.

I'm still not certain that we've given you the best answer to this 
question, but I'm hoping that you'll be able to synthesize something 
that you will then be able to contribute back to the community, and 
we will hopefully be able to avoid these kinds of problems in the 
future -- at least with respect to this one particular issue.

-- 
Brad Knowles, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

 -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
 Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See http://www.lopsa.org/.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 8:25 PM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:

  I view it differently. I have had great feedback and I highly doubt either
  of the parties mentioned viewed a response as a restraining, difficult
  exercise. I /really/ use lists to their full advantage and with some in
  particular have never felt my input or response was an exercise in patience
  or restraint. It's a labour of love. You do it because it's what you do.

Maybe I'm getting better at this process than I have been in the 
past, but I most definitely held back quite a bit in my responses.  I 
did allow myself to get a bit testy, but that's about it.

It took me a while to realize that you were more playing devil's 
advocate (on behalf of your boss) as opposed to actually believing in 
some of the things you were saying.


And yes, a great deal of context is lost in e-mail.  Remember that 
about 90% of all human communication is not verbalized, and of the 
remainder about 90% is more in the tone of how you respond as opposed 
to the actual words that are chosen.  Pretty much all of that is lost 
in e-mail, leaving only the words -- and about 1% of what would 
normally be conveyed in a natural human conversation.

  That's not to say I don't appreciate a response (some time after the fact)
  with another avenue to explore (thanks Mark) but compare the difference
  between you're harping on about nothing to have you tried this?. The
  latter (in hindsight) is blindingly obvious -- and yet no-one else let their
  sub-conscious ponder the problem a while longer.

A lot of my responses were defensive in nature, responding to the way 
I felt that our entire community was being attacked, and I took that 
pretty personally.

As such, there really wasn't any time available for me to ponder the 
question in any more depth.  If I'd had that time, I might have been 
able to find a better way to convey what it was I was trying to get 
across.

Now, I may have managed to moderate my response quite a bit, but that 
doesn't change the fundamental nature of the situation as it occurred.

  Lists are communities. And community isn't about 'gifts' from the elders or
  sticking to sensible rules. It's about invigorating the elders so they feel
  like children in a toy-store again.

It should be about enabling people to contribute something and allow 
them to feel useful, in whatever way that they find that they are 
best able to do.  We don't always succeed in that goal, however.  But 
as we work towards that goal, we should find that when everyone helps 
everyone else, we all benefit from the combined strength, and the 
result is much greater than the sum of its parts.

The big problem comes when a new person comes in, or a new situation 
occurs, and one or more members of the community feels like they are 
being attacked, and how they respond.  The result can either 
strengthen the enlarged community, or be extremely destructive.

-- 
Brad Knowles, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

 -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
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  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See http://www.lopsa.org/.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination(devils advocate!)

[stephen]

Brad Knowles writes:
  At 10:06 AM -0700 2006-08-31, John W. Baxter quoted Brad Knowles 
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  
We're not a commercial environment, and we've actually had pretty bad
experiences with people/companies that are in commercial environments
taking our software and making unapproved modifications to it, or
providing the software to their customers but *not* providing
adequate support to those customers.
  
unapproved may be a bit strong.  Perhaps un-vetted would be closer?
  
  Actually, I think either unapproved or unauthorized are the most 
  appropriate terms.  After all, the code is released under the GPL, 

Excuse me?  The GPL *explicitly* approves and authorizes (not to
mention implicitly encourages) modification and redistribution without
conditions other than providing source.  That's exactly what license
means.

Has anybody at Mailman asked CPanel, Plesk, or Apple for source and
been refused?  Or one of their customers, and been refused because
they were under NDA?  If we haven't asked, how can we bitch?

  and anyone who is making modifications to that code and then making 
  their modified version available to their customers (or otherwise 
  benefiting from those modifications) are supposed to contribute the 
  source to their changes back to the community.  But CPanel has not 
  done this, neither has Plesk, nor Apple.

C'mon, Brad, you know what the GPL actually says.  They're supposed to
give the source to their customers.  That's all it says.

It is quite possible to write a license that says you *must* give your
modifications back to some entity.  You could argue that the reason
the GPL doesn't do that is that the community is the only
appropriate beneficiary, but it's impossible to legally define the
community in a satisfactory way.  But I don't think that's what
Richard Stallman has in mind when he declares licenses containing such
clauses unfree.  Nor do they satisfy the DFSG or the OSD.  I believe
it's that the whole idea of demanding payment of any kind is unfree.

  So, while we don't make that big a deal of this issue, I think I'm 
  actually being reasonably lenient on these companies.

I would say we're not trying to accomplish by jawbone what we refuse
to put in the license.  And that's very important to me.  It's one of
the things I like best about this community.  Of course you're
certainly welcome to consider that you're being lenient; I'm simply
explaining that I very much appreciate your lenience, but I
rationalize it differently.

Once again, has anybody simply *asked* these companies for their code,
and maybe for some contribution of labor toward integrating it?  If
so, how recently?  I realize that we probably dislike some of their
changes, so they wouldn't make it into the mainline (at least not as
defaults), but it could exist on more or less deprecated branches.
Surely there are CPanel- or Plesk-using ISPs who would like to have
Mailman project support available to their customers; we should be
able to get moral, if not financial, support from them.

Sincere regards,
Steve


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[Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Bretton Vine]

Setup: Debian AMD64 (mix testing/stable), Exim 4.62, Mailman 2.1.8 from
   source (with patch to allow @listname in allowed posters), multiple
   installations of Mailman (one instance of MM per virtual domain)

In the last 24 hours we've had the same situation occur with two corporate
clients.

[case 1]
List-member (and host of an INX) sent notification to a network-notices list
with a CC to one of their employees. The message was held for administrative
approval with the error: message has implicit destination
 + they are a member, have allowance to post to list
 + they claim no BCC in their message
 + virtualdomain1

[case 2]
List-member sends message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and BCC's
[EMAIL PROTECTED] The message was held for administrative approval
with the error: message has implicit destination
 + they are a member, have allowance to post to list
 + they indicated BCC to second list in follow-up query, problem resolved
   and message approved for second list

Now in [case 1] we are being held accountable for the 24 hour delay in
responding by authorising the post. This is a critical matter as it impacts
on local Internet infrastructure, but due to the number of lists and
virtualdomains it's simply impossible to have immediate notification for
/every/ administrative request for every list. A once-a-day notification is
one of many as it is and I (or my boss) spend up to an hour a day each
morning just dealing with (mostly spam, non-member) administrative requests.

Now I've already notified client of the reasons (with links to FAQ etc) over
why the message has implicit destination error occurs, and switched it off
for that list in particular. What I need though is a concise and accurate
answer as to why this is the default setting in a Mailman installation.

I understand the reason, but I need a non-technical, max 4 line rationale.
Failing that I've been instructed to switch it off for /all/ the lists we
host for corporate clients. Mind you that instruction stands regardless.

What confuses me though is that in [case 1] the list-member claims to have
sent the message as:

 TO: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

In [case 2] it was clearly:

 TO:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 BCC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

But both instances resulted in the same administrative delay.

So I'm a little confused. In terms of the info I can find online, there is
no reason [case 1] should have resulted in an error /unless/ the list member
had also included some BCC: addresses, which they claim not to have done. In
[case 2] the error was quickly explained and rectified and the client happy.
Obviously in [case 1] it's a slightly different story as due to the delay in
notification/approval our national peering infrastructure had problems and
someone needs to be held accountable -- in this case me :-)

i.e. What happened, don't let it happen again.

Now when I test the following I /don't/ get the error.

 TO: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Which brings to mind an obvious possibility, but this being what it is that
isn't one that can be entertained. (heads must roll! chuckles)

The configuration for all MM virtual domains is the same (barring domain
specifics) and the configuration is highly tweaked to our environment based
on online documentation relating to Mailman and Exim.

Can anyone shed some light (and yes, I've googled and gone through numerous
FAQ answers which have bought me some time but not a reason why the default
installation behaviour is as it is for BCC to lists etc)

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Bretton Vine]

Dragon said the following on 2006/08/30 10:03 PM:
 Oops... forgot to send my reply to the list too. Sorry about that 
 Bretton, I did not mean for you to receive it twice.

Not a problem, and thanks for the reply ;-)
However it doesn't solve my problem of determining why a
 TO: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
resulted in message has implicit destination error.
I can't seem to reproduce the incident myself for some reason.

 I think that the answer is quite simply that it was a design decision 
 made based upon what the designers thought would be desirable for 
 most users.

(no criticism intended to developers, but I have to ask:)
Was this requested by users; were users involved in this decision; or was it
a case of developers deciding for users what they thought was best given the
environment of email/lists from the developer perspective?

I repeat, no criticism intended, I just need to be able to give a complete
answer and am anticipating the questions I'll be asked. :-)

 Personally, I believe it to be a reasonable default.

I don't disagree. However the documentation is clear that BCC'ing a list
will result in administrative oversight (if setting is'on'). But not very
clear as to why a TO:list;CC:3rd-party would result in the same by a post
from a list member who is authorised to post.

In terms of the logs, the error is /exactly/ the same whether it's

 TO: list
 CC: someone

or

 TO: list
 BCC: someone

or

 TO: someone
 BCC: list

Yes, I'm being pedantic -- but an explanation of the principle doesn't
always answer what happens in practice. I know answers can't be sucked out
of thin-air, but perhaps this has come up before?
(or not and I need to look deeper)

 Of course, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from turning the 
 setting off. You probably would want some pretty aggressive anti-spam 
 filtering and possibly graylisting enabled on your incoming queue of 
 your MTA if you do that.

We've found relatively little spam making it to any lists as it is. By just
how much a margin will turning the setting off impact on posts from
non-members reaching the list is non-member posting is already disallowed?
Is it just theoretical, negligible or will have it have major impact?

In terms of our logs, the message has implicit destination occurs maybe
once for every 50 or so post by non-member/unapproved-address to
member-only list so if you look at it from a higher level service provider
approach it doesn't seem like it would make much of a difference, and
therefore is unnecessary to leave the setting enabled.

I don't quite agree, but it seems to be a point of view without a strong
counter-argument.

regards
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Dragon]

Bretton Vine sent the message below at 14:22 8/30/2006:
Dragon said the following on 2006/08/30 10:03 PM:
  Oops... forgot to send my reply to the list too. Sorry about that
  Bretton, I did not mean for you to receive it twice.

Not a problem, and thanks for the reply ;-)
However it doesn't solve my problem of determining why a
  TO: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
resulted in message has implicit destination error.
I can't seem to reproduce the incident myself for some reason.

The TO: and CC: headers of an e-mail are both treated as explicit 
destinations and should not trigger this behavior. The only type of 
implicit destination I am aware of is an address in a BCC: field.

I just tested this on one of my lists. I sent an e-mail with the To: 
set to one of my other e-mail addresses and the CC: set to my list 
address. I did this with the require_explicit_destination setting 
both on and off. I did not receive an error, the post was not held. I 
had require_explicit_destination set to on for all of my lists in the 
past but I have changed that since we implemented some aggressive 
anti-spam measures on our server. It worked as advertised when I had 
it enabled.

My personal opinion on this situation is that the user was not 
telling you the truth. Whether that was from forgetting or outright 
deception I have no way to know. The only other thing I can think of 
is that some other type of error resulted in the message being held.

I will admit I am not overly familiar with the internals of mailman 
as I am just a (somewhat) knowledgeable user and not an active 
developer. However, I still cannot see how this could happen and 
cannot duplicate the behavior as I understand it.


(no criticism intended to developers, but I have to ask:)
Was this requested by users; were users involved in this decision; or was it
a case of developers deciding for users what they thought was best given the
environment of email/lists from the developer perspective?

As I am not one of the developers and I was not using mailman when 
that feature was implemented, I cannot answer if there was any 
community input into that decision. However, the decision that was 
made seems quite logical to me.


I repeat, no criticism intended, I just need to be able to give a complete
answer and am anticipating the questions I'll be asked. :-)

I don't really understand why this is a concern, to me it just 
doesn't make a difference. It is very easy to override the implicit 
destination behavior if it is not appropriate for your lists. I 
honestly think somebody is making a mountain of a mole hill here.


  Personally, I believe it to be a reasonable default.

I don't disagree. However the documentation is clear that BCC'ing a list
will result in administrative oversight (if setting is'on'). But not very
clear as to why a TO:list;CC:3rd-party would result in the same by a post
from a list member who is authorised to post.

In terms of the logs, the error is /exactly/ the same whether it's

  TO: list
  CC: someone

or

  TO: list
  BCC: someone

or

  TO: someone
  BCC: list

Yes, I'm being pedantic -- but an explanation of the principle doesn't
always answer what happens in practice. I know answers can't be sucked out
of thin-air, but perhaps this has come up before?
(or not and I need to look deeper)

As I said above, this should never have happened as far as I can 
tell. I'm sure one of the developers with more knowledge about this 
will correct me if I am wrong.


  Of course, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from turning the
  setting off. You probably would want some pretty aggressive anti-spam
  filtering and possibly graylisting enabled on your incoming queue of
  your MTA if you do that.

We've found relatively little spam making it to any lists as it is. By just
how much a margin will turning the setting off impact on posts from
non-members reaching the list is non-member posting is already disallowed?
Is it just theoretical, negligible or will have it have major impact?

If you set the default non-member action to Hold, no posts from 
non-members will get through unless a moderator explicitly approves 
them. If your spam filtering is good enough to keep examining the 
held messages from being an excessive work load, then by all means, 
disable the setting.

The only potential problem I see, and it is a difficult one to solve, 
is with e-mails with forged sender addresses that match list member 
addresses. These e-mails will get through to the list.

Since the use of the BCC: with a forged FROM: address is a common 
spammer tactic, it will result in some unwanted noise. How often that 
would happen is anyone's guess. How tolerable the problem would be is 
also anyone's guess.

Just be aware that such things do tend to increase list-member 
dissatisfaction and the more volatile/vocal members may comment upon 
such things on the list. This was one of the driving forces behind my 
lists migrating from an older 

Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Brad Knowles]

At 11:22 PM +0200 2006-08-30, Bretton Vine wrote:

  (no criticism intended to developers, but I have to ask:)
  Was this requested by users; were users involved in this decision; or was it
  a case of developers deciding for users what they thought was best given the
  environment of email/lists from the developer perspective?

The developers *are* the original users.  They wrote Mailman for 
themselves and their own needs, and were willing to share that with 
others.  What has happened since is that a variety of other features 
have been added over time, based on their own requirements and 
desires as well as input from others.

But all of the core developers are also heavy users of Mailman, both 
on python.org and on other mailing list servers -- including some of 
the largest known Mailman-hosted mailing lists servers.

  Personally, I believe it to be a reasonable default.

  I don't disagree. However the documentation is clear that BCC'ing a list
  will result in administrative oversight (if setting is'on'). But not very
  clear as to why a TO:list;CC:3rd-party would result in the same by a post
  from a list member who is authorised to post.

I'm not convinced that your case is what you think it is.  I have not 
heard enough details about the problem to know for sure.

  We've found relatively little spam making it to any lists as it is. By just
  how much a margin will turning the setting off impact on posts from
  non-members reaching the list is non-member posting is already disallowed?
  Is it just theoretical, negligible or will have it have major impact?

The answer is it depends.

This week, changing this setting may make no visible difference, but 
next week you might get bombarded with spam being sent to the list 
which does not include the list address as a named recipient in 
either the To: or Cc: headers.

Every site is different.  Every list is different.  Every month is 
different.  Every week is different.  Every day is different.

Pick out which of these different issues apply to your different 
situation, and then figure out which different answer applies to your 
case.

  In terms of our logs, the message has implicit destination occurs maybe
  once for every 50 or so post by non-member/unapproved-address to
  member-only list so if you look at it from a higher level service provider
  approach it doesn't seem like it would make much of a difference, and
  therefore is unnecessary to leave the setting enabled.

At some sites, you're not going to see this kind of spam very often. 
At other sites, you see boatloads of it on an hourly basis.  It all 
depends.

We prefer to have this option default to on, because it is safer 
that way, and people can always choose to set their choice to be more 
permissive.  The reverse would be much worse for sites that have 
these kinds of problems, especially if those sites tend to be 
administered by less Mailman-savvy personnel, since a great deal of 
damage could be done in a very short period of time.

-- 
Brad Knowles, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

 -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
 Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See http://www.lopsa.org/.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Brad Knowles]

At 8:12 PM +0200 2006-08-30, Bretton Vine wrote:

  Now when I test the following I /don't/ get the error.

  TO: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

  Which brings to mind an obvious possibility, but this being what it is that
  isn't one that can be entertained. (heads must roll! chuckles)

Being that your client is lying to you.  I'd go with that, myself.

You could ask them to send you a verbatim copy of the message as they 
transmitted it to the list, and go back to your logs to make sure. 
I'd be willing to bet that they are either knowingly lying to you in 
order to cover their own asses, or they don't fully understand the 
question that they're being asked so that they are not giving you an 
accurate answer.

-- 
Brad Knowles, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

 -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
 Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See http://www.lopsa.org/.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Mark Sapiro]

Bretton Vine wrote:

I repeat, no criticism intended, I just need to be able to give a complete
answer and am anticipating the questions I'll be asked. :-)


I think most of what I'm going to say here has been said by Dragon and
Brad already, but just for emphasis...

The major reason for require_explicit_destination is it helps filter
spam on an 'open' list (generic_nonmember_action = accept) and on a
closed list where the spammer might spoof a list member's address as
sender because much spam does not address the recipient directly.

The default setting in Defaults.py can be overridden by any site that
whishes the default for new lists to be No.

Whatever is chosen as the Defaults.py value for any particular list
setting, some will wish it had been the other way. It is simply not
possible to create out of the box defaults that will satisfy
everyone. That is why a site can change the defaults for itself and
individual lists can be changed to be different from the site defaults.



In terms of the logs, the error is /exactly/ the same whether it's

 TO: list
 CC: someone

or

 TO: list
 BCC: someone

or

 TO: someone
 BCC: list

Yes, I'm being pedantic -- but an explanation of the principle doesn't
always answer what happens in practice. I know answers can't be sucked out
of thin-air, but perhaps this has come up before?
(or not and I need to look deeper)



What you are saying above is not correct.

require_explicit_destination means only that the list posting address
or one of the acceptable_aliases addresses must appear somewhere in a
To: or Cc: header of the post as received by Mailman. The presence of
a Cc: header or Bcc: header (which Mailman probably never sees). has
nothing to do with it.

Thus of your 3 examples above, if 'list' is the list posting address
that Mailman expects to see, only the 3rd example will be held for
implicit destination because in this and only this case, Mailman
doesn't see the list address as a recipient of the post.

Further,

To: someone
Cc: list

will also be accepted.

When the message is held for 'implicit destination', view the headers
of the message in the admindb interface and/or forward the post to
yourself, and you will see that what I'm saying is correct.

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

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Bretton Vine]

Dragon said the following on 2006/08/31 12:24 AM:
 I just tested this on one of my lists. I sent an e-mail with the To: set
 to one of my other e-mail addresses and the CC: set to my list address.
snip
 It worked as advertised when I had it enabled.

I can confirm my own testing duplicates this.

 My personal opinion on this situation is that the user was not telling
 you the truth.

I share this opinion, but have no evidence to support it other than mild
speculation. Co-incidence I had two instances in a given 24 hour period,
where one fitted the model perfectly and worked as indicated, while the
other defies explanation yet requires it.

 I cannot answer if there was any community input into that decision.
 However, the decision that was made seems quite logical to me.

Ditto, however if you'll bear with me here, I'm not a developer either
(sysadmin) and answers that satisfy technical people don't always satisfy
decision-makers (however familiar they are with the concepts/technology).

What I'm gathering from the development of this discussion is that my
initial suspicions were correct and it's possibly just a case of someone
trying to shift blame. After all, they would have received immediate
notification of the moderator approval and if urgency was of the essence
could easily have followed up with me direct.

When you're in the business of providing list-based communication to paying
clients (who understand the usefulness of lists, and are mostly technically
inclined etc) it doesn't help to give a BOFH answer. At least by discussing
the issue I have references from other people who've tested the situation
and together we contribute to the pool of user knowledge :-)

 I don't really understand why this is a concern, to me it just doesn't
 make a difference. It is very easy to override the implicit destination
 behavior if it is not appropriate for your lists. I honestly think
 somebody is making a mountain of a mole hill here.

I have an excellent boss, who requires exact, simple answers to often
difficult questions. I don't think I'm alone here. And one should never
mistake ignorance for idiocy, something an /awful/ lot of open source
developers (well zealots perhaps) are inclined to do (imho), whether it be
through elitism or sheer exasperation at the types of questions asked by a
user base. i.e. RTFM or RTFAQ default reply.

If I'm being pedantic (yes again!) it's because these things do come up, and
where I was schooled you weren't a fool for asking a question, no matter how
simple or obvious the answer might be to anyone else.

 As I said above, this should never have happened as far as I can tell.
 I'm sure one of the developers with more knowledge about this will
 correct me if I am wrong.

I'm hoping for more information so I can prepare a summary of the situation.
Clearly there are two potential answers:

 1. We don't have the full information from the original poster
 2. We don't have the full information in terms of documentation or skills

If you're in the business of 'making things happen' via mailing lists, and
over 10 years experience in doing so which of the above is more relevant?
(it helps to have good mentors who can see the impact of collaborative
principles and not just the ideologies available to implement them -- the
textbook answer is seldom the one they want to hear)

 The only potential problem I see, and it is a difficult one to solve, is
 with e-mails with forged sender addresses that match list member
 addresses. These e-mails will get through to the list.

Exim ACLs seem to be taking care of that nicely. Roughly 1 in 10 000 failure
over last 6 months. And the system has that sort of load on a daily basis.

 Just be aware that such things do tend to increase list-member
 dissatisfaction and the more volatile/vocal members may comment upon
 such things on the list. This was one of the driving forces behind my
 lists migrating from an older version of majordomo to mailman earlier
 this year.

In my experience (to date) list-member dissatisfaction is related more to
unwanted posts from fellow list-members who don't know how to
reply-to-sender when a list is set to reply-to-list; and those who don't
know how to reply-to-list when it is set to reply-to-sender and less about
unwanted posts.

  i.e. user-education/user-error related more than spam concerns

(For epic flame wars feel free to join some .ZA lists where people are more
than happy to bicker for days over netiquette and internet ideology chuckles)

 That is one person's opinion, I would be willing to bet that most people
 who run members-only lists would disagree.

That one person's opinion is the foremost expert on Internet policy on the
African continent. And yes, we've been running lists for quite a long time
already. And that person pays the bills, and only funds what produces
results so their opinion counts considerably if I want to remain employed grin

 I don't quite agree, but it seems to be a point of view 

Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination (devils advocate!)

[Bretton Vine]

Brad Knowles said the following on 2006/08/31 12:09 AM:
snip useful comments
 We prefer to have this option default to on, because it is safer that
 way, and people can always choose to set their choice to be more
 permissive. 

(locally) it's been referred to as a be strict in what you send, relaxed in
what you receive approach but not everyone adheres to (or is aware of) this
way of looking at things and it seems antiquated to some.

I *know* the developers develop according to their needs, and needs change
with time and input. And the openness of the GNU approach allows anyone to
modify at will (provided they have the skill), and heck no-one likes
documenting stuff but someone has to do it.

But many people will choose a Mailman solution on the basis of cost and
relative availability of help and support. Plus Mailman has largely
dominated what was previously a majordomo or listserv orientated world.

Just because a 'default option' seems sensible and obvious to implement from
a developer perspective doesn't mean you can avoid having to explain it.
This is a frustration I personally have as I'm often the person documenting
things smarter people do on the network I look after.

No matter whether you're a core developer, patch developer, documentation
person, or verbal user, people are going to use your product. It's either
going to be good, or outright crap. And even when it's the best solution
available, and all the right decisions have been made in implementation
design, users may choose something else because it's *more shiny*.

And sometimes users may become irate at your implementation of a solution on
their behalf and decide they can do it themselves, only to repeat all the
same mistakes you made and end up at the same end result -- feeling like
fools but too embarrassed to return and ask for your help.

In a commercial environment this is quite costly to both parties so avoiding
that situation leads to more successful/stable product iterations (not to
mention $$$)

Ok, granted, no-one's specifically 'selling' anything here. That doesn't
negate responsibility for the default options though. It's insufficient to
give people an option to change something. Some need to know why/how/what.

/wipes froth from mouth

 kinds of problems, especially if those sites tend to be administered by
 less Mailman-savvy personnel, since a great deal of damage could be done
 in a very short period of time.

I have lots of experience with non-list savoy people, from list-owners to
list-users. Few of them are inclined to actually /look/ for an answer. It's
much easier to ask someone else. And in many cases a sheep-like mentality
occurs where people do things a certain way because that's just the way
it's done or things _may_ go wrong if we do it differently.

Think of a lowest-common-denominator list user. What would you recommend as
an OS interface to them? osx or windows or linux or even dos? Now apply the
same basic principle to a web-based list-administrative interface. Throw in
some experienced majordomo users for good measure, along with some people
that are unaware of anything other than a browser called IE exists and give
them full control of their own lists. Seriously, what's the worst that can
happen -- someone learning from mistakes, something we do naturally?

In my experience, presenting the end user with all the options early on
(with clear explanations) leads to a more rapid and confident learning curve
than giving them permanent training wheels and no explanation. Takes a bit
more effort, but the rewards are well worth it. But at the same time you
have a market that wants a one-size-fits-all solution. Catch-22.

A mailing lists key function is to act as a list. Not as a spam filter. Sure
it's a useful extra, perhaps even pretty-bells-and-whistles useful. But does
it actually contribute anything to the core function, or add any value that
can not be achieved from within the mail system itself?
If not, why is the default set to on?

Another school of thought evident in many .conf files I've seen is something
like the following:

# Uncomment the following line to enable $functionality. This setting is
# disabled by default because it is important you understand why it exists
# and actually turn it on purposefully (which is what we suggest you do)
# See http://. for full explanation
#
# Functionality = 1

regards
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Bretton Vine]

Mark Sapiro said the following on 2006/08/31 01:22 AM:
 Whatever is chosen as the Defaults.py value for any particular list
 setting, some will wish it had been the other way. It is simply not
 possible to create out of the box defaults that will satisfy
 everyone. That is why a site can change the defaults for itself and
 individual lists can be changed to be different from the site defaults.

I understand, thanks for the additional clarification :-)
(Lot easier to illustrate a point when a number of people say the
same/similar thing)

 What you are saying above is not correct.
snip
 Thus of your 3 examples above, if 'list' is the list posting address
 that Mailman expects to see, only the 3rd example will be held for
 implicit destination because in this and only this case, Mailman
 doesn't see the list address as a recipient of the post.

Aaaah, but that's the crux of the situation. I have read the documentation.
I have searched the FAQs. I have asked the list and I keep getting the same
answer: there is no obvious reason a {TO:listname,CC:thirdparty} post should
result in the message has implicit destination error.

However I am expected to provide one.

I have an example of {TO:list1;BCC:list2} resulting in the administrative
error so I know it works as it should. But I also have an example where I
get that error without the different inputs and yet can't reproduce the
error myself.

If I'm being a bit anal it's because I need to be quite sure of myself if
I'm going to suggest the problem exists between keyboard and chair ...

 Further,
 To: someone
 Cc: list
 will also be accepted.

Yup, tested and it works. Except I have a message from a list-member that
matches that setup and still resulted in the error indicated. Odd? I think
so. Does the error lie with the system, no, I'm pretty sure it doesn't going
by the useful input I've had. Thanks again :-)

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Mark Sapiro]

Bretton Vine wrote:

Mark Sapiro said the following on 2006/08/31 01:22 AM:

 Thus of your 3 examples above, if 'list' is the list posting address
 that Mailman expects to see, only the 3rd example will be held for
 implicit destination because in this and only this case, Mailman
 doesn't see the list address as a recipient of the post.

Aaaah, but that's the crux of the situation. I have read the documentation.
I have searched the FAQs. I have asked the list and I keep getting the same
answer: there is no obvious reason a {TO:listname,CC:thirdparty} post should
result in the message has implicit destination error.

However I am expected to provide one.


I understand and I sympathize.  In another life, I worked at a college.
The main user liason/applications programmer person for the student
information system used to refer the these kinds of things as being
caused by a 'poltergeist'. It drove me crazy, because I knew there was
a real explaination for every glitch, and I wanted to find it, but I
think the 'poltergeist' explaination worked for many of the users.


I have an example of {TO:list1;BCC:list2} resulting in the administrative
error so I know it works as it should. But I also have an example where I
get that error without the different inputs and yet can't reproduce the
error myself.

If I'm being a bit anal it's because I need to be quite sure of myself if
I'm going to suggest the problem exists between keyboard and chair ...

 Further,
 To: someone
 Cc: list
 will also be accepted.

Yup, tested and it works. Except I have a message from a list-member that
matches that setup and still resulted in the error indicated. Odd? I think
so. Does the error lie with the system, no, I'm pretty sure it doesn't going
by the useful input I've had. Thanks again :-)


Do you have an actual message? Where did this message come from? Is
this a message captured from the admindb interface, received from the
list after approval or sent to you after the fact? Or are you just
talking about the message without actually having it in hand?

Here's my advice for the next time if there is one. Examine the actual
message headers in the admindb interface and in addition to approving
the message, check the box to forward a copy to yourself. It would
have been really handy if you had done this with the original message,
but of course you had no way to know you would want/need this
information.

Also, you've probably already set require_explicit_destination off for
the list so there won't be a next time.

Hint - look at max_num_recipients before you get burned on that one too.

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

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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Brad Knowles]

At 1:21 AM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:

  As I said above, this should never have happened as far as I can tell.
  I'm sure one of the developers with more knowledge about this will
  correct me if I am wrong.

  I'm hoping for more information so I can prepare a summary of the situation.
  Clearly there are two potential answers:

  1. We don't have the full information from the original poster
  2. We don't have the full information in terms of documentation or skills

I would say that both situations are possible, and maybe even likely.

  If you're in the business of 'making things happen' via mailing lists, and
  over 10 years experience in doing so which of the above is more relevant?
  (it helps to have good mentors who can see the impact of collaborative
  principles and not just the ideologies available to implement them -- the
  textbook answer is seldom the one they want to hear)

Well, I've been using Unix for over twenty-two years, a professional 
Unix system administrator for almost seventeen, specializing in DNS 
and Internet e-mail administration for over a decade, including a 
two-year stint as the Sr. Internet Mail System Administrator for 
America Online, and one of the first people to do some serious 
large-scale anti-spam work that was contributed back to the user 
community (with the approval of my boss).  I've been involved in 
administering large mailing lists for over a decade, and I've 
assisted with some of the largest mailing lists on the planet (as of 
the time of their creation).

I've been a technical reviewer of a couple of O'Reilly books, 
technical reviewer of a couple more technical Internet-related books 
from other publishers, I've written an article on the Network Time 
Protocol that will be published in the October issue of _;login:_ 
magazine (published by the USENIX Association), a six-part series on 
spam-fighting best practices that will soon be published on the 
LOPSA.org website, and I've got a book of my own that I'm working on 
writing.

And with all that, I know I'm not the most experienced or talented 
person on the Mailman project.  I'm just a mail operations guy who 
helps to run the python.org mail system and co-moderator of some of 
the mailing lists on python.org -- including this one.

So, does my opinion count?

  That one person's opinion is the foremost expert on Internet policy on the
  African continent. And yes, we've been running lists for quite a long time
  already. And that person pays the bills, and only funds what produces
  results so their opinion counts considerably if I want to remain employed
  grin

The person in question wouldn't happen to be named András Salamon 
(see http://www.dns.net/andras/), would he?  If so, András and I go 
way back (back to the time when he was originally working to create 
the DNS Resources Directory), and if he's got any questions he can 
come straight to me.

Last I had heard, András had left the day-to-day management work down 
in .ZA, and had gone on to establish one of the leading venture 
capital firms down there, but I haven't checked in with him lately, 
so maybe he's off doing something else now.

  When someone asks but why is this enabled by default an answer of but you
  can turn it off is seldom sufficient in satisfying their curiosity.

The answer is that it's turned on by default because that's the 
safest choice.  Period.  End of discussion.

Now, the option does exist so that you can decide to change that 
setting, if you prefer.  But you're not going to change the default 
that's built-in to the code as it is shipped.  And I'm pretty sure 
you're not going to get a different answer from the core developers.

  Some people want options and flashing lights and a machine that goes ping
  while others actually want to know why the lights flash in the first place.
  I work for the latter wink

Yeah, but sometimes the answer is that the light flashes because it 
was programmed to flash, and there is no deeper answer to be had. 
People who ask those kinds of questions need to understand when 
they've been given the complete answer, even if it is less 
enlightening than they wanted.

-- 
Brad Knowles, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

 -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
 Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See http://www.lopsa.org/.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination (devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 2:07 AM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:

  (locally) it's been referred to as a be strict in what you send, relaxed in
  what you receive approach but not everyone adheres to (or is aware of) this
  way of looking at things and it seems antiquated to some.

It's called the Postel Principle, and some of us are old enough to 
remember when the term was first coined.  While there are cases where 
it is not always appropriate to apply the Postel Principle, there are 
still plenty of us around that firmly believe that using safe 
defaults is a better way to go.

  I *know* the developers develop according to their needs, and needs change
  with time and input. And the openness of the GNU approach allows anyone to
  modify at will (provided they have the skill), and heck no-one likes
  documenting stuff but someone has to do it.

The methods of open source development pre-date Richard Stallman and 
his GNU followers.  Some of us remember those days.

  But many people will choose a Mailman solution on the basis of cost and
  relative availability of help and support. Plus Mailman has largely
  dominated what was previously a majordomo or listserv orientated world.

I think that Mailman has become the leading open-source mailing list 
management system for the small to moderate size lists, but we still 
have some issues with larger lists that preclude us from taking the 
complete title away from programs such as Listserv.

That said, there are multiple choices in this field and I think 
that's a good thing, because Mailman will not be a perfect fit for 
everyone, and probably won't even be a good fit for a significant 
number.  There's always room for improvement, and our biggest problem 
is that we've identified many different areas where we already 
recognize the room/desire/need for improvement and yet we still have 
a limited amount of time available to fix those things.

  Just because a 'default option' seems sensible and obvious to implement from
  a developer perspective doesn't mean you can avoid having to explain it.

That may be true, but in this case the answer is pretty simple -- 
it's safer that way.  No further explanation is required, or likely 
to be provided.

  No matter whether you're a core developer, patch developer, documentation
  person, or verbal user, people are going to use your product. It's either
  going to be good, or outright crap. And even when it's the best solution
  available, and all the right decisions have been made in implementation
  design, users may choose something else because it's *more shiny*.

That's perfectly fine by me.  We don't require that everyone use our 
software.  Indeed, I would say that we probably don't want everyone 
to try to use our software.  We're relatively happy with the user 
community we've got, and we know that there are a lot of ways that we 
think that this software needs improvement.

We don't need (or want) to be all things to everyone.

  And sometimes users may become irate at your implementation of a solution on
  their behalf and decide they can do it themselves, only to repeat all the
  same mistakes you made and end up at the same end result -- feeling like
  fools but too embarrassed to return and ask for your help.

That's fine, too.  If they want to go off by themselves and learn 
their lessons the hard way, then that at least gets them out of our 
hair.

If they choose to come back and share their experiences with us, I'm 
happy to listen to what they've learned to see if there is anything 
we can take from their experience, so that the entire community can 
benefit.

  In a commercial environment this is quite costly to both parties so avoiding
  that situation leads to more successful/stable product iterations (not to
  mention $$$)

We're not a commercial environment, and we've actually had pretty bad 
experiences with people/companies that are in commercial environments 
taking our software and making unapproved modifications to it, or 
providing the software to their customers but *not* providing 
adequate support to those customers.

I just recently wrote a FAQ entry on this subject -- see FAQ 1.32.

  Ok, granted, no-one's specifically 'selling' anything here. That doesn't
  negate responsibility for the default options though.

No, we're not selling anything here, but we are still obligated to 
create safe defaults for the options within our software.  Failure to 
create safe defaults would be negligent behaviour, and potentially 
legally actionable.

It's insufficient to
  give people an option to change something. Some need to know why/how/what.

Balance the need to know against the issue of legal actionability. 
Trust me, the latter will win every time.  Especially when the answer 
is as simple as because it's safer that way.

  I have lots of experience with non-list savoy people, from list-owners to
  list-users. Few of them are inclined to actually 

Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Brad Knowles]

At 2:22 AM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:

  Aaaah, but that's the crux of the situation. I have read the documentation.
  I have searched the FAQs. I have asked the list and I keep getting the same
  answer: there is no obvious reason a {TO:listname,CC:thirdparty} post should
  result in the message has implicit destination error.

  However I am expected to provide one.

There is no answer we can give you.  The software does not work the 
way you have described.

The only two possible answers I can think of are:

1.  The user was intentionally lying to you.

2.  The user did not fully understand the question and the situation, 
and therefore gave you an inaccurate response.


Therefore, if you want to be able to give a complete and correct 
technical response, you must gather more information from the user, 
including incontrovertible proof of exactly what they sent to your 
server so that you can duplicate the described behaviour.

Until you can duplicate the described behaviour based on the 
information you have from the user, it will be impossible for you to 
give a complete and correct technical answer.

  If I'm being a bit anal it's because I need to be quite sure of myself if
  I'm going to suggest the problem exists between keyboard and chair ...

Just ask for more information.  You don't need to imply anything, 
just tell them that you're trying to test all the possible paths 
through the code, to understand how the system could have responded 
in the way it did.

If they are unwilling or unable to help, then you should tell your 
management that you do not believe it is possible for the code to 
behave in the manner described but that you do not have enough 
information to prove that, and then it's up to them to make a 
decision.

Making real-life decisions with incomplete information is something 
that human beings do every moment of their waking life, it shouldn't 
be too hard for them to do it again in this case.

-- 
Brad Knowles, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

 -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
 Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See http://www.lopsa.org/.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Bretton Vine]

Brad Knowles said the following on 2006/08/31 02:37 AM:
 So, does my opinion count?

Of course it does. Credentials are useful, experience more so. Heck next
week we have a whole bunch of experts here to give opinions to the industry
(shameless plug for iweek)

 The person in question wouldn't happen to be named András Salamon

Nope, but he's a key figure on the network I look after and has been
involved in it various ways since inception and to this day.

 Last I had heard, András had left the day-to-day management work down in
 .ZA, and had gone on to establish one of the leading venture capital
 firms down there, but I haven't checked in with him lately, so maybe
 he's off doing something else now.

Oxford atm.

 The answer is that it's turned on by default because that's the safest
 choice.  Period.  End of discussion.

Fair enough. At least there is something to reference now instead of
I don't know, give me 5 mins with google and I'll get back to you
grin

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For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs
to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice
as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you
hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud.
That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. -
Neil Gershenfeld, When Things Start to Think, 1999
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Larry Stone]

On 8/30/06 8:07 PM, Brad Knowles at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 At 2:22 AM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:
 
  Aaaah, but that's the crux of the situation. I have read the documentation.
  I have searched the FAQs. I have asked the list and I keep getting the same
  answer: there is no obvious reason a {TO:listname,CC:thirdparty} post should
  result in the message has implicit destination error.
 
  However I am expected to provide one.
 
 There is no answer we can give you.  The software does not work the
 way you have described.
 
 The only two possible answers I can think of are:
 
 1.  The user was intentionally lying to you.
 
 2.  The user did not fully understand the question and the situation,
 and therefore gave you an inaccurate response.

Just a thought and I may be all wet here but is it possible the user is
sending to an alias for the listname, possibly an alternative hostname for
the machine, that mailman doesn't know is an acceptable alternative and
therefore considers it to an implicit destination?

For example, mailman expects lists.example.com but mail is sent to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] which is the same host.

-- 
Larry Stone
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.stonejongleux.com/


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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination

[Bretton Vine]

Mark Sapiro said the following on 2006/08/31 02:55 AM:
 It drove me crazy, because I knew there was
 a real explaination for every glitch, and I wanted to find it, but I
 think the 'poltergeist' explaination worked for many of the users.

Yeah, the radial flux in the atmospheric pressure excuse may work for most
users but not for my boss :-)

 Do you have an actual message?

Yes

 Where did this message come from?

A list-member, cc'd to non-list member (subsequently subbed)

 Is this a message captured from the admindb interface, received from the
 list after approval or sent to you after the fact?

Actually you've hit the nail on the head here. I didn't look at the headers
in the mailman interface and the headers of the received message only reveal
normal From: To: Cc: etc

 Or are you just talking about the message without actually having it in hand?

No I have it, I just didn't know what to look for when the error occurred,
and approved it. Given that this was a time-critical notification for local
infrastructure, and concerns were only voiced long after alternatives had
been explored the blame has to fall somewhere.

(which is ok if there is a *good* explanation and solution at hand)

 Here's my advice for the next time if there is one. Examine the actual
 message headers in the admindb interface and in addition to approving
 the message, check the box to forward a copy to yourself. It would
 have been really handy if you had done this with the original message,
 but of course you had no way to know you would want/need this
 information.

Exactly. Hopefully others will learn from this experience and it won't be a
wasted exercise and merely a brief annoyance.

 Also, you've probably already set require_explicit_destination off for
 the list so there won't be a next time.

Pretty much

 Hint - look at max_num_recipients before you get burned on that one too.

Set to 5 (default)

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I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use
language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But
I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't
afraid of vacuum cleaners. - Jef
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Re: [Mailman-Users] query re message has implicit destination (devils advocate!)

[Brad Knowles]

At 4:56 AM +0200 2006-08-31, Bretton Vine wrote:

  So far my experience has been wonderful with the product, good and bad with
  the documentation, and rather difficult in terms of user-error, namely mine.

I am of the opinion that all software sucks, but some sucks less than 
others.  IMO, Mailman sucks less than any other MLM I've seen.


Of course, amongst most open-source projects, documentation is a 
serious weak spot.  Those who are developers write code, not 
documentation.  And if they do write documentation, you frequently 
wish that they hadn't.  Those who are operational-types (like me) 
don't write code, and usually don't write documentation, and if they 
do write documentation you frequently wish that they hadn't.

The good documentation writers rarely seem to cross paths with any 
open source project I've seen.

It's a known serious weak spot within the Mailman project, and we'd 
love to be able to resolve this issue, but that means we need to get 
some people onboard that are good at writing documentation.  Any 
suggestions you may have in this area would be gratefully accepted.

  No offence intended, but this is a rather closed-off point of view. It's
  completely valid yes, but leaves no room for organic growth. A view of we
  have enough users, we do this for our own reasons, we know we can improve
  this and that but there's no urgency actually shrinks a community in the
  end.

I can't say where things will end up.  I don't think I can even make 
much of a guess.  I can tell you that we're getting a large enough 
influx of users that it is difficult for us to keep up without doing 
anything more to actively draw in more users.

In that kind of high-growth environment, it's hard to justify doing 
anything that would actively draw in more users and would likely 
hamper other development efforts that we consider to be more 
important than maximum growth of the userbase in the shortest 
possible time.


My preference would be to have a more sustainable growth pattern over 
a longer period of time, based on a higher quality product that we've 
been able to develop and field, then let the growth take care of 
itself.

But that's just my personal view, and is not necessarily shared by anyone else.

  I'm not saying there's an obligation to use or prove your software (and
  time/effort interacting with the user base) just that any project can become
  bigger than the sum of its parts and developers should be aware of that.

I think that the developers are well aware of this issue, especially 
since multiple other groups have taken the Mailman code and made 
unapproved changes to it, and then fielded that to their users -- but 
without providing adequate support for their modified versions and 
thus leaving us holding the bag they created.

  That's fine, too.  If they want to go off by themselves and learn their
  lessons the hard way, then that at least gets them out of our hair.

  Doesn't seem quite efficient to have people duplicating labour for no reason
  other than stubbornness.

Sometimes you can't stop them, no matter what you do.  IMO, when you 
discover that the kind of situation you've got with a particular 
person, then the best thing to do is to recommend that they go ahead 
and do whatever they want on their own systems and to report back to 
you regarding their success.

Otherwise, you're mud wrestling with a pig, which only gets you dirty 
and sweaty and annoys the pig.

  However my point is that Mailman will still be used commercially.

True.  Like it or not, there's nothing we can do to stop them.

 Which
  creates expectations.

Also true.

 You can't manage the expectations of others so it's a
  difficult road to travel.

Indeed.  We do the best we can through what documentation is 
available (including the FAQ), but there's little we can do beyond 
that.

  I understand. But look at it from a point-of-view of say a prior majordomo
  installation where the safe defaults are different defaults. Look at it from
  the point-of-view of someone who knows the prior defaults and may be
  confused by the change. Yes the new defaults are safe, but why?
  (obvious answer: changing environment and needs)

Majordomo is different from Mailman, and I would not be surprised if 
certain features were present in one package and not in the other, or 
if certain defaults were set one way in one package and the opposite 
way in the other.

But if people don't understand that different software is frequently 
different, I'm not sure that there's much I can do to help them, and 
I'm not sure that there's much that anyone else can do to help them, 
either.

  For the lowest common denominator?  None.  Even the simplest possible
  web interface would be too complex for them.

  Boy, that's harsh.

Do you want a complete and total moron to have his finger on the 
nuclear button, and capable of blowing up 

[Mailman-Users] Query the available lists

[Hung Phan]

The log file shows many queries looking for available lists. Is there  
a way to find out who queried the available lists?
OS 10.4.6, Mailman 2.1.5

Jul 12 02:21:08 2006 (10579) No such list polaris-parents:
Jul 12 02:23:08 2006 (10596) No such list orion-parents:
Jul 12 02:29:24 2006 (10645) No such list assessment:
Jul 12 02:30:24 2006 (10654) admin.py access for non-existent  
list:delta-parents
Jul 12 02:36:54 2006 (10710) No such list kosmos-parents:
Jul 12 02:37:24 2006 (10713) No such list teamdelta:
Jul 12 02:41:10 2006 (10746) admin.py access for non-existent  
list:endeavor-parents
Jul 12 02:42:56 2006 (10761) admin.py access for non-existent list:  
parents
Jul 12 02:50:26 2006 (10820) admin.py access for non-existent list:staff
Jul 12 02:50:40 2006 (10821) No such list staff:
Jul 12 02:50:56 2006 (10830) No such list volunteers:

Thank you,
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Query the available lists

[Mark Sapiro]

Hung Phan wrote:

The log file shows many queries looking for available lists. Is there  
a way to find out who queried the available lists?
OS 10.4.6, Mailman 2.1.5

Jul 12 02:21:08 2006 (10579) No such list polaris-parents:
Jul 12 02:23:08 2006 (10596) No such list orion-parents:
snip

Look in the apache access_log to find the access at the corresponding
time and the url including the non-existent list name. This will give
you the IP address of the requestor. That's all the identifying
information you can get.

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

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[Mailman-Users] Query list for dynamic mailings (sub lists)?

[Vince Van De Coevering]

I've been asked to upgrade the mailing portion of the companies e-deals web
site.  The current method of sending mail is primitive at best and requires
a lot of maintenance to keep bounces to a minimum.  I am impressed with
mailman and its ability to manage most of these functions. 

What I need to be able to do is to send mail to all customers, those
customers who sign up for a particular store and to send email to customers
on (or near) their birthday.  Obviously, I would need to extend the data
tables to contain those pieces of information (store ID and birth date).  

From reading the FAQs and the Mailman web site I believe the best approach
would be to create a mailing list for each store and an umbrella list which
covers all stores.  I probably could support the birth date requirement by
creating a 3 tier list: birth date; store (umbrella of jan-dec birth date
lists); global (Umbrella of store lists). 

My preference would be to create a single list and to perform some sort of
query when the mail is sent to create a dynamic sub list (by store, by birth
date, by store  birth date, etc.) of members.  

Has anyone done or seen a modification to do this?

Vince Van De Coevering
IT Manager
Figaro's Italian Pizza, Inc.
503-371-9318 x216
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Query

[Jim Tittsler]

On May 7, 2005, at 03:36, Anshuman Prusty wrote:

 In the test server at gospelcom.net, I am testing the subscriptions  
 for the newsletter and receiving the following error messages

 -- 
 --

 Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to www.scflists.com:80 in / 
 usr/local/www/gospelcom/docs/settingcaptivesfree/Client.php on line  
 635 www.scflists.com

 Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to www.scflists.com:80 in / 
 usr/local/www/gospelcom/docs/settingcaptivesfree/Client.php on

These are errors in your custom PHP scripts, not in Mailman (which is  
coded in Python).  Whatever your Client.php script is attempting, is  
failing to connect to your www.scflists.com machine (which does  
appear to be running Mailman.)

 Are the www.scflists.com domain name specific? If we use the domain  
 name www.settingcaptivesfree.com later after the migration will it  
 work? In the interim the domain name used is http:// 
 settingcaptivesfree.test.gospelcom.net/ .

If you change the URL of a list after it is created, you will need to  
use the bin/fix_url script.

   http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py? 
req=showfile=faq04.029.htp
   http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py? 
req=showfile=faq04.053.htp

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[Mailman-Users] Query

[Anshuman Prusty]

Hello –

Our site is www.settingcaptivesfree.com and we have some mailing lists like 

1. SCF Update (www.scflists.com/mailman/subscribe/scfupdate_scflists.com) 
2. Never Thirst (www.scflists.com/mailman/subscribe/neverthirst_scflists.com) 
etc.

We are currently in the process of moving our website to a new server, and have 
the following question. Can you help, or otherwise direct us to someone who can?

In the test server at gospelcom.net, I am testing the subscriptions for the 
newsletter and receiving the following error messages




Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to www.scflists.com:80 in 
/usr/local/www/gospelcom/docs/settingcaptivesfree/Client.php on line 635 
www.scflists.com

Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to www.scflists.com:80 in 
/usr/local/www/gospelcom/docs/settingcaptivesfree/Client.php on line 635 
www.scflists.com

Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to www.scflists.com:80 in 
/usr/local/www/gospelcom/docs/settingcaptivesfree/Client.php on line 635 
www.scflists.com

Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to www.scflists.com:80 in 
/usr/local/www/gospelcom/docs/settingcaptivesfree/Client.php on line 635

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output 
started at /usr/local/www/gospelcom/docs/settingcaptivesfree/Client.php:634)

in /usr/local/www/gospelcom/docs/settingcaptivesfree/enroll/enrollSubscribe.php

on line 29



Are the www.scflists.com domain name specific? If we use the domain name 
www.settingcaptivesfree.com later after the migration will it work? In the 
interim the domain name used is http://settingcaptivesfree.test.gospelcom.net/ .

Regards,
Anshuman

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[Mailman-Users] Query on editing headers and confirmation messages

[Rob Hackney]

I am setting up a announce-only list which is sitting on my LAN behind a
firewall. I've got a couple of queries which I haven't been able to find
answer for on the FAQ: I am not allowing access to the web interface so
the only way a subscriber can unsub is via email. I'd like to edit the
RFC2389 header info if possible:
Current:

To:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
From:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Reply-To:  [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
List-Unsubscribe:  http://server.domain.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/test
~delete this entry~,
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]  ~keep this~
List-Archive:  http://lists.domain.co.uk/pipermail/test ~delete this
line~
List-Post:  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
List-Help:  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
List-Subscribe:  http://server.domain.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/test,
~delete this entry~

How would I go about doing this?  Worse case I know that I can prevent
the header info being sent out but this seems to prevent delivery.

I also need to edit the confirmation message and remove the web address.
Do I just need to edit the unsub.txt in /templates/en?

Finally, one of the problems we are going to have to overcome is
maintaining our lists (we'd like to keep a record of unsubscribers
hopefully).  The lists are updated by requests on our website and also
manual data entry, then imported.  I've seen that I can use the dumpdb
command to export member list however I don't appear to have a db file -
it's a pck file and I can't seem to find any packages that can view
these files.  Can I still use the db command?
thanks

This email is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual(s) to 
whom it is addressed.  It should not be deemed to constitute a binding contract 
between TKC Group and the recipient(s) unless a purchase order number is quoted.  Any 
views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily 
represent those of TKC Group Ltd.  If you are not the intended recipient(s), please do 
not copy or disclose its contents. Please return it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] then delete 
the email.

intY has scanned this email for all known viruses (www.inty.com)

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[Mailman-Users] query

[Sumit AGARWAL]

On admin login I want to autanticate user from the user values stored in my mysql 
database.
How I can do it?
sumit


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Re: [Mailman-Users] query

[Brad Knowles]

At 3:41 PM +0530 2004/06/01, Sumit AGARWAL wrote:
 On admin login I want to autanticate user from the user values stored
 in my mysql database.
	This is not possible with the current version of Mailman.  IIRC, 
there has been some discussion of adding back-end database features 
to Mailman 3, but I don't know the specifics of that work.

	There may also be some unofficial patches from third-parties 
which provide back-end database features for Mailman.  You would do 
well to search the Mailman SourceForge page at 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailman, and especially the list of 
patches at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=103atid=300103.

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[Mailman-Users] Query about 2.1a4

[Larry Gadallah]

Hello all:

I just tried installing 2.1a4 on a FreeBSD 4.5 box with Apache
and Sendmail 8.11. Seemed to work well, except that when users tried
to confirm subscriptions via the web, they would get to the page
where they are asked for the confirmation cookie, and no matter
what was submitted, the system would never get past that page.

Didn't see any problems in the log dir, or in the databases. I 
backed off to 2.0.8 for now, but I'd really like to use the real
name features in 2.1. Anyone have a clue for me as to what's going
wrong here?

Thanks in advance,
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[Mailman-Users] Query

[Tao Wu]

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am a user of mailman 2.0.7 system. These a couple of days, I lost quite a lot of 
pending administrative requests. The server always notifies me there are some 
requests, however, while I log in, the system always says the pending requests lost 
due to some errors. What's the reason for this problem? Thanks a lot in advance.

Best regards,

Tao WU


-
Mr. Tao WU

School of Chemical, Environmental and Mining Engineering
The University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD
United Kingdom

Tel: (+44) 0115 84 66710 (Office)
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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[Mailman-Users] query

[vivek bhaskarrao kute]

Dear Sir/madam

I had seen your site and come to know that using mailman
i can send mails to group
but now i want to know how it will work

my questions are 
1. whether this software will be handeled by server or i have to send mails from my 
machine becoz my server is at different place
and what commands i have to use for sending mail

2. how many addressess i can put at a time

and pls send me details about how to install how to download

thanking u 
vivek

_
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[Mailman-Users] Query

[Lord Soth]

Hi!, i've started up the mailman, but I have 1 problem
I'm trying to access web-base administration on a list (called 'foro') but 
when I put the password and click 'Let me in...', it keeps trying 'till 
timeout (sometimes, it doesn't show the html asking for password!)

Can you help me? thanks :)
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[Mailman-Users] query about mailman

[Shahid Nazir]

Dear Sir, 
i want to solve a problem regarding 
limiting a size of attachment in mailman
sir,
i wnat to limit a attachment size of a posting before it is sent to the
list where as the body message size can be limited in mailman
i will be grateful if u can solve my problem
regards
one of the user of mailman
shahid


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[Mailman-Users] query regd configure script

[Rajmohan B]

Hi,

I have certain packages installed in my home directory - ~/local/. How should i make 
configure scripts to search for the header files in my home directory 
in addition to the system default? Because after i run configure script and run make, 
i get errors relating to header files being not found.

Is there any option which can be given to configure script?

Thanks in advance.

regards,
Rajmohan



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