[Mailman-Users] MailMan & External Archiver

[Richard Barrett]

On Thursday, July 17, 2003, at 06:10 PM, Olivier Carmona wrote:

>
> I am using MailMan 2.1.2 and Python 2.2.3 under Redhat 6.2 . I do not  
> think that the kind of external archiver I use matters.
>
> When using external archiver options, I found that if the command  
> stdout is not redirected then the archiver returns status OK and on  
> stderr a SIGPIPE signal caught.
>
> PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER = '/path/to/myarchiver >/tmp/myarchiver.log'  
> -> WORKS
> PRIVATE_EXTERNAL_ARCHIVER = '/path/to/myarchiver >/tmp/myarchiver.log'  
> -> DO NOT WORK
>
> I am not a python expert so it might that the following recommendation  
> in Default.py, implicitly warns about it, and if this is the case, it  
> would be very much appreciable to write it down explicitly.
>
> ># being archived will be substituted for this.  Please note that  
> os.popen() is
> ># used.
>

Mailman simply run the external archiver command you supply using  
os.popen() with a single pipe connected to the STDIN of the that  
process through which MM pushes the message to be archived before  
closing the pipe. It doesn't come any more basic than that.

The behaviour of the command you supply and its desires or needs for  
its STDOUT or STDERR to be handled in some particular way are not  
determined by either Mailman or Python except that, from a practical  
standpoint, neither can be assumed to provide an intelligent  
termination of the subprocess output file descriptors.

When you choose an external archiver you take on the responsibility for  
understanding how to use it and, if it is going to generate output to  
STDOUT and/or STDERR, deciding what to do with that; > /dev/null 2>&1  
comes to mind.

> By the way, it would be great to mention in INSTALL that Default.py  
> can be changed but that any change to Default.py imply to restart  
> mailman init script in order for the changes to be taken into account.
>

Also you should not make changes in Defaults.py but in mm_cfg.py,  
unless you want to lose your site specific changes the next time you do  
an upgrade. It is worth reading all of the comments in Defaults.py

As for commenting on the need to restart a server daemon after changing  
its configuration file; it would be quicker to list the number of  
server programs that do _not_ have to be restarted under these  
circumstances! Try changing httpd.conf without restarting Apache and  
see how far it gets you.

> Best regards,
>
> --  
> Olivier
>
>
>
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