[Mailman-Developers] Creation/deletion of lists through-the-web

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 12:27:49PM -0400, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
>     JRA> IMHO, the proper solution for sendmail is for the admin to
>     JRA> put an :include: in /etc/aliases pointing to
>     JRA> /home/mailman/data/aliases, and rebuild that from scratch
>     JRA> against the current list of lists every time that list
>     JRA> changes.
> 
> I'm really trying to avoid having to write the sendmail code myself.
> I just have too many scary flashbacks when I even think about mucking
> with sendmail. ;}

It seems pretty plain to me.  Just expand the "list of lists" though a
text filter that explodes the list names into what the doco says the
alias entry needs to look like.

> Now that everything's checked in, folks can see how I'm doing it with
> Postfix, so I hope eventually someone will contribute a
> Mailman/MTA/Sendmail.py module.  Until then, I'll work it so it does
> something simple.

See above.  :-)  I can't code, but I *can* design...

>     JRA> You're working at the 'compiled' level there, right?
> 
> If I understand what you're asking, yes.  IOW, I don't muck about in
> the plain text aliases file, but I write directly to the file that
> newaliases would produce.

Thought so.  Forgive me, my revered senior hat, but that's a bad
design.  You've put yourself at their mercy by going behind their
API...

>     JRA> I suspect you'll need one more: how to get the aliases
>     JRA> database rebuilt when it's been changed.
> 
> That's the beauty of the Postfix approach: I'm modifying the database
> directly so it doesn't need to be rebuilt (i.e. no need to run
> newaliases).  I don't even have to notify Postfix since it'll notice
> the change after one minute.

See above.  ;-)

>     TW> And what about the domain the list should be created on ?
> 
> The domain in the url to the `create' script!  Note that bin/newlist
> does need a domain switch, since the context can't be determined when
> run from the command line, but the create cgi doesn't have that
> problem.  E.g. if I want to create a new list on python.org, I'd visit
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/create but if I wanted to create a new
> list on zope.org (a virtual host of a shared Mailman installation),
> I'd visit http://mail.zope.org/mailman/create.

Oh... mailman *does* get that right?  Cool; missed that.

If it knows that, though, how come my mails go out with the wrong From
line?  Doesn't it set the from line to the proper virtual domain?  Or
is my configuration wrong?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 804 5015