Re: [Mailman-Users] Solaris 10 and Mailman
-Original Message- Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 6:41 PM Subject: [Mailman-Users] Solaris 10 and Mailman Hello, Does anyone happen to have a SMF script for mailman they would care to share. Thanks in advance. Con Wieland Office of Information Technology University of California at Irvine Hi, A quick google turns up the following : https://github.com/snltd/smf/blob/master/manifest/mailman.xml It looks (at a brief glance) like it'd work pretty much straight out of the box although you will probably have to change exec line so that it calls mailmanctrl rather than mailman.sh as it does. You'll probably also want to change the dependency 'name' for your MTA as the one you're using will probably differ from svc:/snltd/exim:default.. or you could always just drop the requirement to have mailman's operation 'dependent' on the state of your system's MTA. I quite like this SMF xml for mailman as it lists filesystem, network, MTA and name services as 'dependencies' so in a way it should check that all the daemons needed for a healthy mailing list service are running. Anyway it looks like a pretty good place to start. Good luck. Steff - Steff Watkins Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London,SW75BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems Team Phone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
[Mailman-Users] Will this cause problems for the lists?
Hi all, Just been reading the wonderful emails and pages about upgrading Mailman, which is a task I've had to do once before. Now one thing that really gives me the shivers is the idea of installing the new updated version of Mailman right over the old/current version as I've seen suggested a couple of time. OK, if it works for you fine but I feel that that leaves you very little room for rollback should the new version not perform quite as expected. So I currently have a nice working setup that's installed as /usr/local/mailman-2.x.x symlink'ed to /usr/local/mailman and that works just fine. It allows me to have the current version and the previous version there for comparison/rollback/experimenting. Now one thing I have noticed that has bothered me/caused me some problems with this sort of setup is that everytime I have to upgrade I have to copy all the mail-list data out, then make sure that ownerships/permissions of the mail-list data in its new location is correct. So I had an idea. What if I make a directory, /usr/local/mailman-data for instance and then symlink the data, lists and archive directories from the current active mailman directories back into this separated data directory. I've been running with this setup for a few days now and it seems to be working just fine, no complaints from users or systems. I'm also thinking that it is likely to make upgrades require less downtime as the new version can be built and linked into the current list data and then rolled over. OK, maybe not if there a file format conversion needed but in general yes. However, I'm just wondering if I may be building up a problem for myself when one of the less frequent Mailman processes or events occur. So is separating the data out from the mailman binaries in this way a good idea or not worth the effort? Regards, Steff Watkins - Steff Watkins Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London,SW75BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems Team Phone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Looking for lists with no members. Repopulstinglists. was: Resetting bounce scores globally
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 1:40 AM
To: Steven Jones; mailman-users@python.org
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Looking for lists with no
members. Repopulstinglists. was: Resetting bounce scores globally
Steven Jones wrote:
Is there a way to scan my 440 lists and look for lists with
no subscribers? it seems my localhost ipv6 problem has
caused at least one list to be emptied of all subscribers by
the bounce processing.so I have had to re-populate it.
In the great spirit of Me too!-ism, here's my offering of a little
script I use with my local mailman setup:
=
#!/usr/bin/perl
$MAILMAN_BASEDIR='/usr/local/mailman';
open(FOO,$MAILMAN_BASEDIR/bin/list_lists -b |);
while ($line=FOO) {
chomp($line);
print(== $line: );
chomp($line);
open(FO1,$MAILMAN_BASEDIR/bin/list_members $line|);
@Members=FO1;
close(FO1);
$Count=$#Members+1;
print($Count\n);
}
close(FOO);
=
Save it as a text file, chmod it +x, check that the perl call points to
the right place and $MAILMAN_BASEDIR likewise.
Pretty pedestrian, not very pretty output but it works.
Steff
-
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Is there a Command to extract the lists owners?
I need to email each list owner to let them know the server will be off line while I upgrade it, so I need their email addresses. regards Hi, bin/list_owners will give you a list of the email addresses of all your lists owners, one email addres at a time. If you add the -m option, you also get all the moderators email addresses also. Simples! :) Steff - -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Is there a Command to extract the lists owners?
-Original Message- From: Odhiambo Washington [mailto:odhia...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 10:37 AM To: Steff Watkins Cc: Mailman Users List Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Is there a Command to extract the lists owners? On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 12:27, Steff Watkins s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk wrote: I need to email each list owner to let them know the server will be off line while I upgrade it, so I need their email addresses. regards Perhaps it would be nice if this command also listed the listname against the owners? It does. Use the -w option. This stuff is really easy to find out about. Just trying running the command with an option of '--help' . If the command doesn't recognise the option it will usually complain and stop working so no damage done there. However if the command (and I'm talking generally about unixy sort of commands, not just Mailman in particular).. If the command does recognise the '--help' option it wil... give you help! The '-h' option is usually good for this as well. If you're really tetchy about supplying unknown options to random binaries then do the operation as a standard or restricted user. Then you minimise the potential for any damage you might do. Simples! :) Steff - -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] reboot servers
The servers are all vps'es with 256 ram.. I'm assuming you meant 256 Megs RAM.. to which I say Luxury :) and the lists are as big as 33,000 subscribers per list, 3 lists per vps.. it's one big mailing list for a TV station and newspaper.. only one message (newsletter) is sent out every day to the subscribers.. but setting: ..and a well-behaved SMTP daemon will just queue up the emails and file them out onto the internets as and when it sees a gap in the traffic. Are you just using these servers for mailing purposes, or have you got all the extra gubbins like samba daemons, webservers, named/bind/dns servers, enterprise management suites, X11 servers and the like running on there as well? Of course the other problem might be that your system is not interfacing very well with the upstream mailer. How reliable/how quickly does a standard non-list email take to send from that system to... somewhere else? I'd really look at pruning down the excess cruft in the runspace of those servers, getting rid of all the unnecessary processes that seem to get foisted onto the box when the install CD does its job. If you think that memory may be a problem then up the size of your swap/virtual memory. Disk-space is cheap right now and if you're just stacking a load of processes then having a useful lump of swap can come in very handy. mailq shows several errors like: too many open files Ahhh! The old 'not enough open file descriptors to do a decent job' problem. You haven't said what O/S you're using so I couldn't really give you a definite on this one but have a look on google (other search engines are available!) for how to increase the number of open file descriptors (or handles) in your O/S. It'll usually involve sticking a line or two into the /etc/system file and rebooting. It sounds a bit like your O/S hasn't been tuned to handle the number of processes it has running so either kill off some of the excess/unwanted/unneeded daemon processes, twiddle arund with the etc/system file.. And good luck! :) Regards, Steff -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Solaris 10 and Python
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of McNutt Jr, William R Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 8:53 PM To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] Solaris 10 and Python Has anyone successfully made this work on a Sun Solaris 10? I've been at this for three days and no matter what I do, I only manage to change error messages. At this point I've made it through the ./configure step, but it's breaking on make install. Any chance you can post what the failure message your make session returns? [this is me busily digging a very deep hole from which I may never return!] At this point, with no further info, I'm guessing it's most likely that you've probably not got your binary search path or your link library path setup to pick up all the things that make needs. A side question: is this list the best place to discuss mailman build issues? If not, then someone please squeal and the line of banter can be taken off-list. Steff - -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Are any attachments ok to allow on a listserv?
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of Ruth Indeck Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 3:52 PM To: Mailman Users Subject: [Mailman-Users] Are any attachments ok to allow on a listserv? Many people say that the best thing is not to allow attachments at all on a listserv. So you get a list with.. let's say 100 users on. Sounds reasonable, right? One of those users just 'has to share' a 'great PDF' that they found on the environmental effects of mining cheese off the north face of Donald Duck and so posts it to the list. Let's say that the PDF is a reasonable size of.. 3 megs? 3 megs in.. times 100 (subscribers) = 300 megs out. OK, if you've got a fast line but it may slow things down a little if you haven't. Now, let's say that one of the receivers of the original email decides to reply to that email. Users being the general bundles of light and joy that they are known to be don't necessarily think to strip off any attachments when they forward.. Oh.. and let's go full-on Armageddon-scenario and say that this particular user also ADDS their own pdf file (again 3mb) as a response. Now you got an email with two 3meg files comes into your list.. for distribution to 100 users. Boom! There goes the neighbourhood! :) OK.. Maybe a bit over the top doomsday scenario but it is still reasonably possible. Now imagine being the poor sap on the end of a slow line trying to get their email and having to wait while you clean out their mailbox with the original email (3mb) and the reply (6mb)... *yawn* this email's taking forever! I'd personally disallow any attachments unless it was specifically stated in the list's description that they were allowed and to be expected. If the list users must share files/content then they can always just put in their email a URL pointing to the resource. That way you also reduce the chance/risk of a virus/piece of malware sneaking in as the end user's web-browser should (hopefully) do some form of content-vetting/virus-scanning/BL checking beforehand. Of course, YMMV. Steff - -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] one line command to change generic_nonmember_action
-Original Message- On Behalf Of Syn, Joonho Sent: Friday, October 15, 2010 7:53 PM To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] one line command to change generic_nonmember_action I'm writing a simplified mailman dashboard page for my company's internal use and one of the functions we want is to be able to toggle the generic_nonmember_action for any given list. Has anyone out there devised a one line command which will allow this? Hi, I'm not sure if there is a direct command that can do this but I've been doing something similar lately. I had a setup of 20+ mailing lists which had to be identical in a specialised configuration. Doing that by the web interface filled me with dread so I started looking around and found the mailman utility 'bin/config_list'. This brilliant (imnsho!) utility allows you to either dump out a list's configuration in plain text or read in a list's configuration, again in plain text. Let's see you have a list called SomeList. You can dump out the entire configuration (not the members list, just the list's functional settings) by typing: cd ~mailman bin/config_list -o - SomeList This will dump to screen ( -o - ) the configuration of SomeList. It's just a minor logical step to do bin/config_list -o /usr/tmp/somelist-conf.txt SomeList Which dumps the config into a file /usr/tmp/somelist-conf.txt If you were to look at that file you'd find a section like this: == # When a post from a non-member is received, the message's sender is # matched against the list of explicitly a # href=?VARHELP=privacy/sender/accept_these_nonmembers accepted, # held, a href=?VARHELP=privacy/sender/reject_these_nonmembers # rejected (bounced), and a # href=?VARHELP=privacy/sender/discard_these_nonmembers discarded # addresses. If no match is found, then this action is taken. # # legal values are: #0 = Accept #1 = Hold #2 = Reject #3 = Discard generic_nonmember_action = 1 = You could either replace the value at the end of the line, or just swap in a whole new line. Then save the text file and read the configuration BACK to the list: bin/config_list -i /usr/tmp/somelist-conf.txt SomeList Note the change from '-o' (output) to '-i' (input). It would be easily possible to pipe these commands together, maybe using sed as the output=input parser. So something like, bin/config_list -o - SomeList | /usr/bin/sed -f swapscript - | bin/config_list -i - SomeList Where 'swapscript' is a simple script to detect the generic_nonmember_action = 1 line and change it as you want. Of course there's probably a simpler/better way of doing this but it should work. Regards, S Watkins --- Steff Watkins Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems TeamPhone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Test messages
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of Malcolm Austen I habitually configure lists with spam filter entries of the form: ^Subject:.*test.* Other entries contain the words 'spam', 'virus' and 'digest'. Then, if you only want to test the process to the list, all you need do is put 'test' into the subject line. You could, of course, apply emergency moderation for the duration of the test! I'm sure there are other options (I don't have back-end shell access to my lists) that involve stopping the outgoing mail and archive handlers. = Malcolm. I'm not too sure how useful this would be for testing end-to-end throughput. When I was a little green about the gills (or greener than I am now) wrt. Mailman I had a problem with an intermittently unresponsive list. I looked at most things I could think of but couldn't find the problem. Eventually the penny dropped and I realised that those pesky 'runner' processes had something to do with something in particular the Incoming and Outgoing runner. Sure enough my process list showed that the Incoming runner was there but the Outgoing runner would die. (I fixed that issue, it was something to do with directory ownerships). End result, email came into the list and then just sat there. Anyway, if you had a spam rule then surely that'd be great for testing the message coming into the list at which point it'd be blocked (as spam) but it wouldn't test whether the message would be mailed out/forwarded to the list members. I'm showing a bit of interest in this request as I'd like to know if there is a way of doing just this, sending a test email to an established list that only list admin and/or myself would recive to check the list is running fine. One thought/idea I've had is to have a test list which has only my work email address, an offsite email address and maybe one or two of my colleagues (for verification purposes), lock it right down so that only the members can use it, add the Me too tag so that we'd receive any emails we sent to the list and use that to check that the mailman service is functional. Does that sound a valid way of doing it, too much effort FWIW or missing the point as it wouldn't test a particular list just the mailman service? Regards, Steff --- Steff Watkins Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems TeamPhone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] some users recive email but they can't send
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Hernandez Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 10:14 PM To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] some users recive email but they can't send Hello, I have a problem with a user of a list that I create. She receive all the list emails but she can't send emails. She recive this error response: Remote host said: 554 chile-da...@mail.degu.cl: Relay access denied I think that is strange because other users have no problems sending emails to the list. -- Regards, Daniel H. As Mark Sapiro will probably say This is not a mailman problem! (or something like that). Looking at the error message I'm guessing that your MTA is postfix. Is that right? You have not said whether other users in the degu.cl domain can send email to the mailing lists managed by your mailman installation. If so, have you checked to see what transmission path they are using? The long and the short of it is that your mail transport agent (MTA) is configured to only aloow emails from certain domains. That's flagged up by the Relay access denied error message. If your mail server daemon is not allowed to receive emails from the domain it will not forward them, no relaying. It's a way of cutting down on your MTA being used as a spam relay (which is good!). You may want to look in your /etc/postfix/filtered_domains file to see if the IP address of the sending host (mail.degu.cl) is in there and so is allowed to connect to your mailman host's mailer daemon. Failing that maybe the remote client should be setup to send emails to recognised mail gateway systems rather than trying to connect directly to the mail servers themselves. Best wishes, S Watkins --- Steff WatkinsNatural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems TeamPhone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] some users recive email but they can't send
Remote host said: 554 chile-da...@mail.degu.cl: Relay access denied Second thought on this (still not a Mailman problem, OK?) Has the user concerned setup their mail client to correctly authenticate with the mail server? It could be that their mail client is using the correct transmission path but when trying to negotiate with the mailserver it has not been setup to properly authenticate them with that mailserver. As such, the email would be from an unauthorised user and so would be bounced back. Again, this is mainly an anti-spam measure. Regards, S Watkins --- Steff WatkinsNatural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems TeamPhone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] sendmail issues
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of Paul Flower Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2010 1:55 PM To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] sendmail issues Problem is this: I can create a new mailing list no problems and subscribe a handful of users to it and send out email without any dramas but as soon as I import the entire mailing list subscribers (152 members so not big by any stretch of the imagination) nothing goes out. It all appears to work fine but no emails go out. Immediate diagnostics, as others have suggested, involve looking at the logfiles for your MTA and checking that they have actually been sent. It could be that your network provider has a mechanism for side-spooling/delaying/blackholing email subsmissions to large numbers of recipients. So sending to 20 addresses would be OK, but one you start sending to more than that the email is automatically quarantined in the event that it may prove to be spam. Check with your network provider to make sure that there are no limits in place that may have delayed your outbound emails. Also check with your local system's mail spool and make sure that the emails aren't all sat in an outbound queue waiting to be cleared/sent. Good luck, Steff --- Steff WatkinsNatural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems TeamPhone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Apache startup warning/error: mailman DocumentRoot?
-Original Message- Anyway, here's the warning/error: Warning: DocumentRoot [/var/www/localhost/htdocs/mailman] does not exist ^ apache2: Could not reliably determine the servers fully qualified domain name, using ###.###.###.### for ServerName I *do* have this path explicitly set in the /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/lists.example.com config file, ^ Everything works fine... I can go to lists.example.com and manage my lists, and all links in the list messages are of the form ...lists.example.com/... and they all work for managing bounces, etc. It looks like apache is carping about not being able to find the mailman docroot for localhost (IP addr: 127.0.0.1, usually!) You then have the path set for the configuration of the IP host lists.example.com in its own config file. If you set DocumentRoot correctly in the config file for the localhost webserver instance, it should do away with the annoying error message. Steff --- Steff Watkins Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems TeamPhone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Subscription Confirmation to Welcome Delay
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces On Behalf Of Greg Sims Sent: 25 May 2010 04:22 To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] Subscription Confirmation to Welcome Delay Hey There, 1. Web form is filled out to subscribe by user 2. Sever generates an email to the user to confirm the subscription request 3. User replies to the subscription confirmation to the server - typically hitting Reply and then Send 4. The user receives a Welcome to the mailing list email Is it possible for the timing between step 3 and step 4 to be decreased? We have plenty of available server capacity available if this is a concern for some reason. Hi, I initially thought that this might be due to one of the mailman cronjobs but looking through the crontab made me realise that that probably wasn't so. Have you got a complete copy of one of these delayed/deferred emails? If so, have you had a look at the mail envelope/headers to see where the email is actually being delayed? It does sound like something may be deferring the outbound emails. Are they sent from the same email user as is listed on the emails generated by the web form submissions? Without the headers from one of the delayed emails determinign which part of the delivery process needs tweaking/kicking is going to be difficult. Regards, Steff --- Steff Watkins Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems TeamPhone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Email sent to list isn't delivered?
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of Martijn de Munnik Sent: 12 May 2010 14:05 To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] Email sent to list isn't delivered? Hi, I installed and configured Mailman on Solaris with Postfix. Everything seems to work except sending emails to the list :( I can subscribe to the list and get the confirmation email, also the lists admin gets an email about the subscription. But when I send an email to the list nobody on the list gets that email? After some postfix processing the mail is successfully delivered to mailman: --- # pwd /opt/youngguns/mailman # ls -la total 66 drwxrwsr-x 20 root mailman 20 Apr 28 09:30 . drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 16 Apr 28 09:23 .. drwxrwsr-x 11 root mailman 70 Apr 28 11:24 Mailman drwxrwsr-x 4 root mailman4 Apr 28 09:30 archives drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman 42 Apr 28 11:25 bin drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman 13 Apr 28 09:48 cgi-bin drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman 12 Apr 28 09:48 cron drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman7 May 12 14:34 data drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman7 Apr 28 09:48 icons drwxrwsr-x 6 root mailman6 May 7 16:05 lists drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman4 May 12 14:44 locks drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman8 May 7 16:06 logs drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman3 Apr 28 09:48 mail drwxrwsr-x 38 root mailman 38 Apr 28 09:31 messages drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman2 Apr 28 09:30 pythonlib drwxrwsr-x 11 root mailman 11 Apr 28 10:32 qfiles drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman 16 Apr 28 09:49 scripts drwxrwsr-x 2 root mailman2 Apr 28 09:30 spam drwxrwsr-x 39 root mailman 39 Apr 28 09:31 templates drwxrwsr-x 4 root mailman 19 Apr 28 09:48 tests --- When I run as root I only get a warning, no errors: Hi, you don't say what the effective user-id of the various qrunner processes is/are? If they were running as user root (very bad idea. Don't do it unless you really have to kids! ..And even then... Mm,kay?) then they would be able to write to the data directory. Similarly, if the user that your mailman installation runs under is NOT a part of the mailman group it would NOT be able to write to the data/spool directories. Can I suggest you look in your messages and syslog files to see if any of the mailman processes have carped about not having write access to some part of your installation. It's solaris so will probably be /var/adm/message and /var/log/syslog although your setup may be different. I'd strongly suspect that this is probably a file/directory ownership problem first off. Good luck, Steff --- Steff Watkins Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Systems programmer Email: s.watk...@nhm.ac.uk Systems TeamPhone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2 Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. - HHGTTG -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] /var/lib/mailman/archives/private 90% full
So I go in and manually gzip the listname.mbox/listname.mbox file, but that doesn't stop the growth. ... - Sandi Forgive me if I'm barking up the wrong sequoia here... Do you mean that even though you've archived your files the amount of filespace is still above 90%? If so, that could be because the Mailman processes themselves are holding the location of the ends of the files so that it can write to them. It may be holding files open so that it can continuously write to them as and when it needs to. As such, even if you reduced the actual file length to zero bytes then a process would be holding open an X megabyte image of the file so the O/S would see it as X megabytes in use. I'd suggest arranging a little downtime and using the startup script, shutdown Mailman and then start it up again. This should only need a minute or two at the most. It should cause the various qrunner processes to close any files they may have open and then re-open them. This may reclaim the unused space that is marked as in use but isnt. Regards, Steff Watkins [What? No footer containg amusing quotes from HHGTTG?] -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Archive access Forbidden
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of David Southwell Sent: 29 December 2009 15:04 To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] Archive access Forbidden with result: Forbidden You don't have permission to access/pipermail/bps_comps_print_announce/ on this server Attempt to view archives from Topic Section of the mailing list administration page using link for Go to list archives also fails Extract from httpd-error.log [Tue Dec 29 12:50:12 2009] [error] [client 62.49.197.51] attempt to invoke directory as script: /usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin/ [Tue Dec 29 12:50:47 2009] [error] [client 62.49.197.51] Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /usr/local/mailman/archives/public/bps_comps_print_announce, referer: http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/listinfo/bps_comps_print_announce Extract from httpd.conf ScriptAlias /mailman /usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin Directory /usr/local/mailman Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all /Directory ScriptAlias /pipermail /usr/local/mailman/archives/public Directory /usr/local/mailman/archives/public Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all Options Indexes MultiViews AddDefaultCharset Off /Directory Hi, I'm guessing that the directory indexing mechanism of Apache is getting confused. The line ScriptAlias /pipermail /usr/local/mailman/archives/public tells apache that anything with a URI starting with /pipermail is a script, so Apache will take any call to that URI as a call for an exectuable. Looking at my local setup I see that the only indexing material in the 'archive/public' subdirectories are the file index.html. So you have to configure Apache to look for index.html as the indexing mechanism within a script only directory. Something like: Directory /usr/local/mailman/archives/public DirectoryIndex index.html /Directory should do the trick. Don't forget to restart Apache after adding that line. HTH, S Watkins -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Archive access Forbidden
-Original Message- From: David Southwell [mailto:da...@vizion2000.net] Sent: 29 December 2009 16:23 To: mailman-users@python.org Cc: Mark Sapiro; Steff Watkins Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Archive access Forbidden OK guys -- thank you everyone BUT BUT Alias /pipermail /usr/local/mailman/archives/public Directory /usr/local/mailman/archives/public/ Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all Options Indexes MultiViews AddDefaultCharset Off DirectoryIndex index.html /Directory Errm... suggestion... tidy up! :) AFAIK Apache doesn't allow you to just sequently add Options lines together. If I've read it correctly, the Options Indexes MultiViews would cancel the Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI as it is a later instruction.. I could be wrong on that, been a while since I went grubbing around in Apache's mechanics. My own setup for this looks like: Alias /pipermail/ /usr/local/mailman/archives/public/ Directory /usr/local/mailman/archives/public Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all /Directory No Indexes, no Multiviews and definitely No ExecCGI. Something just makes me feels queasy about making a web archive of a public mailing list in a way that it might be possible to have someone include a script in the mail that may have an ever so slight chance of executing. You're not running SSIs, are you? Really, make life as easy as possible for yourself. K.I.S.S... Kiss It Simple, Sunshine! As simple as you can possibly get away with. One other problem with this is that we only see the relevent part of the httpd.conf file. I am not knocking you for that, security minded people work on the idea of least-disclosed the better. Problem is that there may be a directive in some other part of the httpd.conf file which totally banjaxs your mailman setup. Are you in a position to run a test instance of the webserver, say on something like port 8080 with a totally plain-vanilla stock httpd.conf file? You could then inject the mailman configuration into that and see what is needed to make it work. If you then inject those changes into your standard (port 80) httpd.conf and they still fail, you would at least know that there was some directive in the original webserver setup that was playing havok with your mailman setup. Regards, S Watkins -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Unsubscribe link on msg_footer
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of Andrea Cappelli Sent: 17 December 2009 11:27 To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] Unsubscribe link on msg_footer Hi list, I would place in email footer the link to give possibility to the user to unsubscribe (possibly directly, without insert the password) I try to do this adding in msg_footer the following Unsubscribe: %(user_optionsurl)s?password=%(user_password) sunsub=1unsubconfirm=1 but Mailman (2.1.11 on Debian Lenny) said me that I can't use user_optionsutl in this variable There is any other way to do this? Thank you I'm sorry to say this but this gives me the screaming hab-dabs. Emailing a user's password in plain text WITHOUT the user requesting it or expecting it??? Please... No... Don't do it. Walk away from the whizzy super-fasty-clicky-interfacey-clicky thing and ... No! Just don't.. Please? By all means link them back to the webpage that allows them to unsubscribe. By all means link them to the webpage that allows them to have a password reminder/reset their password. But don't EVER just randomly send out a user's password to them BECAUSE... Well, they MIGHT want to unsubscribe... Or floss the cat.. Or... Sorry to seem like such a insert preferred expletive here but this opens the door to some many different types of Hell it is strongly to be discouraged. Regards, (Xmas cheers and all that... Ho ho ho!) S Watkins == -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] Using robots.txt
-Original Message- From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org] On Behalf Of Max Pyziur Sent: 09 November 2009 01:09 To: mailman-users@python.org Subject: [Mailman-Users] Using robots.txt Greetings Mailman's email lists are visible search engine spiders from http://www.somedomain.com/pipermail/emaillistname/etc However, /pipermail is an alias of /var/mailman/archives/public/ per mailman.conf I've tried placing a basic robots.txt file at /var/mailman/archives/public/ and set permissions to 644. However, my lists still get spidered. Any suggestions on where to place the robots.txt file to prevent spidering? Thanks! Max Pyziur p...@brama.com Hello Max, AFAIK your robots.txt file should be in the TOP level directory of your website, so that it is browseable via http://www.somedomain.com/robots.txt . This is the default location for it and 'good' spiders will look for it there. It should contain the allow/deny details for the whole of your website and in your case would look something like this: User-agent: * Disallow: /pipermail/ .. Which informs all browsers to disallow any URL starting (containing?) the phrase /pipermail/. Give that a whirl and see how it does. Regards, Steff Watkins === -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] FW: Administrator Authentication
From: Kuntz, Taina M. Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 2:17 PM To: 'mailman-users@python.org' Subject: Administrator Authentication I am the List Administrator for a couple of mailing lists. I am unable to get into the system. I'm not sure if I typed my password incorrectly too many times or if I've forgotten my password. Is it possible to get my password reset? Thanks! Taina (tku...@purdue.edu) Hello Taina, I don't know if this is the preferred/recommended/offically sanctioned by Bob way to do this but if you have shell access to the mailman system then in the 'bin' sub-directory of the mailman installation is a python script called change_pw. Quickly scanning through it it says in its preamble: Thus, this script generates new passwords for a list, and optionally sends it to all the owners of the list. Take a look at that. It may just fit your needs. Regards, Steff Watkins (Internet? Email? It'll never catch on, you know!) -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
Re: [Mailman-Users] message about probes
-Original Message-
From: mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org
[mailto:mailman-users-bounces+s.watkins=nhm.ac...@python.org]
On Behalf Of Stephen J. Turnbull
Sent: 29 April 2009 16:29
To: Mark Sapiro
Cc: Gruver, Sandi; 'mailman-users@python.org'
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] message about probes
Mark Sapiro writes:
Gruver, Sandi wrote:
2 possible successful probes
/mailman/private/sqlhelp///includes/session.php?baseDir=../../
../../../../../../etc/passwd HTTP Response 200
I saw the same thing in my Logwatch the other day. These
messages are reported in the httpd report.
These are, IMNSHO, attempts by persons (or scripts or bots) to attempt
to exploit a potential hole that may be in your setup.
Of course, if the hole isn't in your setup then they get no success and
so no exploit. Ho hum, they'll say, and move on to one of the X hundred
millions of other websites on the internet and try again. It's shotgun
principle; take a shotgun into a field with 100 crows, fire the shotgun
and you're bound to hit at least one crow.
Aha, I see where I went wrong ... /mailman is an Apache ScriptAlias
(or equivalent), isn't it. (I prefer a cgi-bin ScriptAlias so
it's immediately obvious what the URL is supposed to resolve to.)
I think you may be mixing up concepts here, or rather splitting a
concept. A ScriptAlias under Apache points to a cgi-bin location and so
it IS a cgi-bin alias. They're both obvious where they point to if
you look through the webserver config file. As Apache is one of the
major players in the webserver market, it is likely that your install of
Mailman runs under Apache and so technically it'd be an Apache
ScriptAlias to Mailman! :)
Good to know that this probably isn't a problem after all. But do
check the logs to make sure that it is mailman's CGIs that are being
accessed!
I did a quick scan through the code of my local Mailman setup and could
not find a session.php file. If anything this looks like an attempt by
someone or something to try and exploit one of the many CMS systems that
are out there that have session handlers written into their code Or
possibly a bulletin board system or two!
The attempt works by calling a php script called session.php which is
passed the variable 'baseDir=../../../../../../../../etc/passwd'.
Whatever script this is targetted at has probably been found to have a
duff sanitising routine and so will probably evaluate it directly. If
the script is NOT buried more than 8 levels of sub-directory down the
target website it will eventually evaluate to /etc/passwd. The script
is labelled as includes so I'm guessing it is meant to just reurn the
contents of the requested file. In this case, it'd be /etc/passwd.
This in itself is of questionable use. They could potentially get some
usernames out of it if it worked but most likely would not get many (or
any) of the encrypted password hashes as they are stored in the
/etc/shadow file (usually, depending on O/S).
Mark, do you understand what the attacker is trying to exploit here?
It's not at all obvious to me.
They're attempting to force a script to return to contents of the
password file.
Since /mailman/ is a scriptalias, and those are both actual scripts,
it's mailman/private and mailman/admin
that are going to be interpreting everything after the script name.
Hhmm... Except the /mailman/ scriptalias itself points to a directory...
which is marked up as active content by virtue of being a script
alias. Now, unless you have had a really bad run of luck and the person
who setup Mailman felt they really needed a 'backdoor' in to be able to
see what was in there and so setup a htaccess file/index.php, what
SHOULD happen is a call to http://blahblah/Mailman/ will return a big
fat juicy failure message telling the user/bot that they are not allowed
to look there.
The next segment of the path is the listname, and anything after that
is either garbage or a query about the list, so I can't see an attempt
to exploit mailman here, despite the fact that they're specifically
invoking mailman CGIs. Am I missing something?
I'd guess that it was not a Mailman specific 'attack', mainly because of
the call to includes/session.php. A poorly setup webserver could, maybe,
possibly, ever so slightly try and satisfy the request but if you have a
setup like that then it's not really hackers/crackers/phreakers you have
to worry about more than your sysadmin/webadmin who has let that setup
run on the public internet in the first place.
I think that this has raised a good point though. If you spot
'questionable activity' to your webserver systems then it's probably
wise to spend a few minutes looking at it, cut'n'pasting the same URIs
inta web-browser and seeing what it shows and looking at the webserver's
logfiles. Make sure that your webserver behaves properly, or fails to
behave in a way that would be useless to any potential attacker... and
then
Re: [Mailman-Users] Bounce updating
Hi all, I have a question about the mailman bounce procedure. Is it possible to obtain a list of bounces that were removed from the list due to a high score? Essentially what I want to do is create a list of members that were removed from the list due to bounces and present that list to the list owner. Is there a built in function that can do it, or is there a way I can do it manually? If this question has already been addressed in the FAQ, I apologize, I might have missed it (there were a lot of topics). If you can just point me in the right direction in that case, I would be very grateful. Cheers, Sam Hello Sam (and others), I had a similar-ish scenario a few weeks back. Quick story: the Mailman setup here had a short spate of auto-unsubscribing people from various lists at 9am every day for about four days. One of the lists had about 100 people removed in one morning and the list owner queried whether I could supply them with a list of those who were unsubscribed . The easy solution I found was to grep the 'subscribe' logfile for the listname and the phrase 'auto-unsubscribe' which returns lines like: Mar 11 09:00:02 2009 (1577) somelist: ...@***.***.net auto-unsubscribed [reason: BYBOUNCE] Looking into it a bit further I found that the 'bounce' logfile records some (minorly) useful info about what it is doing. Doing a grep on the term 'disabled' returns lines such as: Mar 10 09:00:02 2009 (3577) Notifying disabled member *...@***.org for list: somelist What may be of most use to you however is to modify this grep to match the phrase deleted after exhausting notices which I believe is the error line given when an email address goes over its bounce score. This returns lines such as: Mar 12 09:00:02 2009 (3388) somelist: ***...@.com deleted after exhausting notices From there it is a short hop to having a script running under cron that'll grep through the bounce logfile, matching lines containing deleted after exhausting notices within the cronjob cycle period which would dump the output to stdio and so by default email back to you. Regards, Steff Watkins === -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9
