- Smartlist - lists.rwth-aachen.de

One last question on the arch_trunc script
by Dave Bacon 08 Aug '00

08 Aug '00

Concerning the perl script in which I had an earlier question, (thanks for the fix Roger). The line: if ($ENV{'ARCHIVE'} =~ /[248]$/) is to prevent the script from running with every submission to the list. (I think) What does this line really do? Is there a way to tell how often it is allowing the script to complete? On a lesser used list, is there a way to increase the interval of how often the script completes? I am not sure if it is based on the number of messages sent to the list or on some sort of time interval. Thanks again for your help -- _________________________________________ Dave G. Bacon Computer Network Manager Outagamie Waupaca Library System 225 N. Oneida St., Appleton, WI 54911 920/832-6193(voice), 920/832-6422(FAX) dbacon(a)mail.owls.lib.wi.us _________________________________________

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Archived lists
by Dave Bacon 07 Aug '00

07 Aug '00

I have been using the O'Reilly book "Managing Mailing Lists" to help me set up a SmartList mailing list. Within the book, the section on archives shows a perl script to save messages in an archive organized in "/archive/YYMM/DD" format. I typed the script in and have found it to work just fine with the exception of what looks like a Y2K bug. Instead of creating a YYMM directory having a name of "0008" it creates one with the name of "10008". I think this means it calculates the year as being 100, which is one more than 99 (1999). I have included the script in this email. Any ideas in correcting this problem? Thank you (arch_trunc script replacement from O'Reilly & Associates Managing Mailing Lists) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #!/usr/bin/perl # # arch_trunc, a replacement for the distributed ./bin/arch_trunc # shell script in SmartList. To use it, put it in some list's directory. # # By Alan Schwartz # # This script is run whenever a submission is received and archived # in archive/latest. It's responsible for cleaning up that directory. # This version figures out the date of each file in archive/latest # that should be removed and appends it to the file archive/YYMM/DD # unless (chdir("archive/latest")) { print "Don't start this script directly, it is called by rc.request\n"; exit 64 } # Only do the removing now and then to keep load down #if ($ENV{'ARCHIVE'} =~ /[248]$/) { opendir(DIR,"."); @files = grep(/^\d+/,readdir(DIR)); closedir (DIR); foreach (sort bytime @files) { $recent++; if ($recent > $ENV{'archive_hist'}) { # Archive these and delete them @time = localtime((stat($_))[9]); $newdir = sprintf("%02d%02d",$time[5],$time[4]+1); $newfile = sprintf("%02d",$time[3]); unless (-d "../$newdir") { mkdir("../$newdir",2770); } open(IN,$_); open(OUT,">>../$newdir/$newfile"); print OUT <IN>; close(IN); close(OUT); unlink($_); } } unlink("_dummy_"); #} sub bytime { return -M $a <=> -M $b; } ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- _________________________________________ Dave G. Bacon Computer Network Manager Outagamie Waupaca Library System 225 N. Oneida St., Appleton, WI 54911 920/832-6193(voice), 920/832-6422(FAX) dbacon(a)mail.owls.lib.wi.us _________________________________________

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Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?
by David R. Linn 06 Aug '00

06 Aug '00

>> Quoting "David R. Linn" <drl(a)vuse.vanderbilt.edu>: >> >> > Yes, paritcularly when all that was needed was a trivial change to >> > the list config. >> >> Since YEARS list members complained about this, sending emails to >> Stephen and the list without any reaction of a responsible person. Unfortunately, SRB has been otherwise occupied for a while and a plan to turn the procmail and SmartList machines over to a team never got off the ground. (I was a member of that team) For that matter, neither did a plan to move the lists to procmail.org and smartlist.org. >> Now suddenly someone made a decision without asking the list members. >> >> This list owns the list members not someone at an university who wants >> to be a big list master! My perception is that the change was a result of the sudden decommisioning of the machine on which the list was running. (I have faced such a need in the past; when a machine is compromised, it needs to be off the net **NOW**.) So, the choice is not so much between SmartList and Mailman as it is between Mailman and *nothingness*, i.e. the list would have been abruptly discontinued. >> Such an behaviour is disappointing and doesn't encourage anybody >> continuing to support SmartList/Procmail. Personally, I thanked the RWTH staff for making the extra effort to keep the list alive when they could have let it die silently. >> If the SmartList-Package-Maintainer agree to point to another list >> server for SmartList we could simply set up one very quickly (with >> searchable (web) archive ....) running with SL. I personally believe we need to revive the plan to move the lists to procmail.org and smartlist.org. >> I don't like to remember a password to unsubscribe and I don't like such >> a "list dictatorship"! At least we still have a list on which to discuss this. >> Werner David -- David R. Linn, SEDCON System Manager |INET: drl(a)vuse.vanderbilt.edu Vanderbilt University School of Engineering|Phone: [+1] 615-343-6164 Box 1826, Station B |Disclaimer: I have no authority Nashville, TN, USA 37235 |to speak for anyone but myself. The 2nd millenium and 20th century do not end before December 31, 2000. http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~drl

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dare I say, X-Command?
by Lee Howard 03 Aug '00

03 Aug '00

Another X-Command question. Well there have been some pretty harsh words recently about the idocy of anyone not getting the how-to of the X-Command feature, so admittedly, I'm reluctant to ask anything here, but I've been trying this off-and-on now for a number of months with no success. I've read and re-read the famous *Chapter 2*, reviewed the mailing list archives, prayed to God for enlightenment, and been up and down through the comments in most of the rc files and examples. Still... no luck. I'll admit: I am missing something obvious, easy, and I'm stupid for not seeing it. And now that I've said it myself, I don't need anyone else to state the obvious, but I would appreciate a helping hand in getting this to work. Okay, so I send a non-HTML e-mail from the administrator's account with no subject line to the list-request address. The first line of the body is: X-Command: faxguy(a)deanox.com password showdist And I send it. And the dist list surely doesn't show up in response. Regardless of the command, I get the same response: nothing. I've turned on VERBOSE and LOGEXTRACT, and it looks like the x-command is being processed, but something is killing it... my log follows. Thanks. Lee Howard procmail: [6262] Thu Aug 3 01:25:42 2000 procmail: Assigning "RC_CUSTOM" procmail: Assigning "INCLUDERC=" procmail: Assigning "LOCKFILE=tmp.lock" procmail: Locking "tmp.lock" procmail: Match on "^^X-Command:" procmail: Executing "formail,-X," procmail: Match on "< 4096" procmail: Match on "" procmail: No match on ! "^(X-(Loop: ()testing@deanox\.com|Diagnostic:)|X-Command:)" procmail: Assigning "LOGABSTRACT=yes" procmail: No match on ! "^(Subject:(.*[^a-z])?Re:|X-(Loop: ()testing@deanox\.com|Diagnostic:)|X-Command:)" procmail: Match on "^X-Command:.*()[ ]*()password" procmail: Match on ! "^X-Loop: ()testing(a)deanox\.com" procmail: Locking "dist.lock" procmail: Executing "x_command" procmail: Unlocking "dist.lock" procmail: Assigning "LOCKFILE" procmail: Unlocking "tmp.lock" procmail: No match on ! "< 524288" procmail: No match on "(^(Mailing-List:|Precedence:.*(junk|bulk|list)|To: Multiple recipients of |(((Resent-)?(From|Sender)|X-Envelope-From):|>?From )([^>]*[^(.%@a-z0-9])?(Post(ma?(st(e?r)?|n)|office)|(send)?Mail(er)?|daemon| m(mdf|ajordomo)|n?uucp|LIST(SERV|proc)|NETSERV|o(wner|ps)|r(e(quest|sponse)| oot)|b(ounce|bs\.smtp)|echo|mirror|s(erv(ices?|er)|mtp(error)?|ystem)|A(dmin (istrator)?|MMGR|utoanswer))(([^).!:a-z0-9][-_a-z0-9]*)?[%@> ][^<)]*($.*$.*)?)?$([^>]|$)))" procmail: No match on "^X-Loop: ()testing(a)deanox\.com" procmail: No match on ! "^X-(Diagnostic|Processed):" procmail: Assigning "INCLUDERC=" procmail: No match on ! "^X-(Diagnostic|Processed):" procmail: Executing "formail,-AX-Envelope-To: testing-request" procmail: Match on ! "." procmail: Locking "request.lock" procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=request" procmail: Opening "request" procmail: Acquiring kernel-lock procmail: Unlocking "request.lock" >From redder(a)deanox.com Thu Aug 3 01:25:42 2000 Subject: Folder: request 794

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Whoops. (Was: RE: Smartlist web interface...)
by Charlie Summers 29 Jul '00

29 Jul '00

At 2:09 PM -0400 7/29/00, Charlie Summers is rumored to have typed: > Satisfied now? (*sigh*) There is a vast difference between healthy scarcasm and just being snide - I pride myself on being a curmudgeon, but usually manage to sound like more than just a bitter old guy. Although I _do_ stand by the ideas in the last letter, I apologize for being a pain in the...er...neck in my tone. No excuse for it - I can't even blame Microsoft. Charlie

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RE: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic t hat smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?)
by Munday, Merrick 29 Jul '00

29 Jul '00

> From: Charlie Summers [mailto:charlie@lofcom.com] > Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000 6:43 PM > >At 4:39 PM -0400 7/28/00, Munday, Merrick is rumored to have typed: >> Actually no. Depending on the configuration, MS Outlook will wrap longer >> X-Command lines, whereupon Smartlist will not process them properly. > > (*sigh*) Well, gee, if you tell your email client to wrap lines, and it >does, why sound surprised. Simply change the settings to keep OE from >wrapping. (I assume that's possible; although I don't use OE myself, >certainly every other mail client I've ever used on unix, Win, or Mac allows >to switch wrap on and off.) I assume that by OE you mean Outlook Express. I was precise in my statement -- I meant Outlook, not Outlook Express. Both Outlook Express and Outlook (when installed in the Internet Mail Only configuration) do provide a rudimentary option to control line wrapping. One can set a "wrap lines at X" parameter -- but X must be specified as 132 or less, so even in these configurations one cannot turn wrapping "off". However, when using Outlook through an Exchange Server (the so-called Corporate/Workgroup installation), there is _no_ option to control line wrapping. >> Now you may feel that using broken MS mail clients is foolish, but ... > > But that's _not_ "broken" behavior; if you set a client to wrap, and it >does, that sounds like correct behavior. As I mentioned above, there is no wrap setting. To me, that's broken. > (Note the pattern here...I actually expect people to _think,_ where >everyone else seems to accept user error [or user stupidity] as an excuse to >write complex work-arounds.) Charlie, you are obviously on the Guru level with SmartList and Procmail, and I respect your expertise in these areas. I am not a SmartList/Procmail guru, and that's why my participation on this list is limited -- I refrain from talking about things I have little knowledge of. However, I do know the MS stuff pretty well. In this case I think you need to back up a little, be a little less harsh when you're not in an area that lies within your expertise. --Merrick

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Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?
by David R. Linn 29 Jul '00

29 Jul '00

Yes, paritcularly when all that was needed was a trivial change to the list config. I see this as a sign of the times. The 3rd gen list managers, developed before the rise of the WWW, are slowly being displaced by the 4th gen list managers that provide integrated WWW interfaces to list managment for the list manager, list supscription management to the user, and WWW-accessible archives for everyone. Both SmartList and Majordomo have add-ons that provide this but the 4G list managers have them as a part of the core.

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RE: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic t hat smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?)
by Munday, Merrick 29 Jul '00

29 Jul '00

> From: Charlie Summers [mailto:charlie@lofcom.com] > Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000 4:12 PM > Am I the _only_ person who read the .example files, and so > know that the > X-Command line may be placed in the body if one incorporates > the recipe in > .examples/rc.local.r00? This eliminates _all_ discussion > about mail clients, > since it will work perfectly with _any_ client. Actually no. Depending on the configuration, MS Outlook will wrap longer X-Command lines, whereupon Smartlist will not process them properly. One will recieve diagnostic headers such as: "X-Diagnostic: Suspicious X-Command Format". We've been forced to use other mail clients to send X-Commands. Now you may feel that using broken MS mail clients is foolish, but ... that's what's on the machines of the people that need to do the list maintenance, so ... --Merrick Munday

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Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?
by Werner Reisberger 28 Jul '00

28 Jul '00

On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 12:39:36PM -0400, Mitchell Darer wrote: > "easily searchable mailing list..." > > so is MailMan that list? No. Easily searchable list means a full text search capability which is easy to use. There isn't such a thing on the new site. Werner

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Re: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?)
by Roger Burton West 28 Jul '00

28 Jul '00

[Dan sent me this in error. - Roger] ----- Forwarded message from Dan Kappus <dk(a)squaretrade.com> ----- Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 09:35:41 -0700 From: Dan Kappus <dk(a)squaretrade.com> To: Roger Burton West <roger(a)firedrake.org> Subject: Re: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?) On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 05:25:21PM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote: > On or about Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 09:17:49AM -0700, Rob Flickenger typed: > > >I'm certainly willing to bear with SmartList's 'homely' appearance. It's > >extensible, stable, and very fast... And eventually, when the community > >finds the time to put a pretty face on it, it will truly kick ass, and > >we'll all be ahead of the learning curve... =) > > OK. What does a web interface for smartlist need? > > Considering the "list administration" side first: > > The most basic version would simply send appropriately-formatted > X-Command: mail to the list-server. That's fairly trivial to > get right. But I'm considering the possibilities inherent in > a slightly larger CGI, which might be run suid to the list user, > which could maniupulate the list data files directly - to check > authentication, add/remove users, and so on. keep a database of all the users that are subscribed to all the lists hosted by a particular instance of smartlist, and let users, with insecure passwords which are mailed to them at a rate specified by the admin, change their subscribtion info and settings. actually, list administration is the braindead side of it. many list admins can do list admin stuff, but their users are unable to subscribe and unsubscribe. > > As for the user side, how would you prevent malicious foreign > unsubscriptions without a password? The existing "confirm" patch > from aks would be helpful, here. just ask for a confirm in an email message. > > Do we want a mhonarc-like archiving system, given that mhonarc is > pretty easy to integrate with smartlist already? mhonarc is good, especially given that the mailman developpers are often thinking about ditching pipermail in favor of it! for some reasons that web archives are important, see the o'reilly book "practical intranet groupware" -- dan kappus, system admin squaretrade, www.squaretrade.com p.s. I do both mailman and smartlist here ----- End forwarded message -----

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