[Mailman-Users] endlessly repeating posts

[Elaine Miller]

Hullo!

I've used majordomo in a small way before, and am new to Mailman. 

I have an awful problem.

I started a small list, and in its first day (when thankfully we had only 
about ten members) a woman whom I know to be net-savvy and who 
posts without trouble to other (non-Mailman) lists I'm on, posted an 
email that repeated to the general list. And repeated. And repeated. And 
repeated.

On a break from work, I noticed it happening, and unsubbed the 
originator of the post. Then I had to run back to work.

The post continued to repeat to the list -- *and* to the post originator 
through the list, despite unsubbing.

By the time I finished work an hour later and could get back to my 
computer, this rather lengthy post had arrived in my hapless 
subscriber's inboxes 428 times.

428 times.

<banging head on desk>

I set the other members to NOMAIL immediately, and tried for another 
hour to find a way to stop the echo, (including blocking her ISP at the 
server level) but eventually had to axe the list completely.

The offending post was 8.5K in size, was truncated despite being (at full 
size of about 15K) well under the 40K limit for the list. She uses 
mindspring.com as an isp.

I've set the list up from scratch, and subbed only myself, the other list 
wrangler, and the woman in question. 

We haven't had a repeat of the echo, but she still can't post anything 
over 8.5K, although I can, and so can my fellow listwrangler.

Can anyone give me an idea of what might have gone wrong, and how to 
make sure it never happens again? 

I do *not* wish to be lynched by folk who have been mail-bombed!

With hopeful thanks

Elaine





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              elaine at elainemiller.com   
           http://www.elainemiller.com/
 I was planning to put my entire name in this sig file, 
         but that seemed wholly redundant.
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