[Mailman-Users] Some requirements questions

[Mark Sapiro]

Scott Balmos wrote:
>
>Some of my questions about using Mailman have already been answered in 
>the FAQ. Others, I have here. Let's see what can be answered. :)

First, I have know knowledge of or experience with any LDAP
MemberAdaptor or how it might change my answers so beware.

>1) Can a list be set to refuse any subscribing/unsubscribing action? I 
>intend to use the LDAP adapter, so subscribing/unsubscribing actions are 
>both unnecessary, but also undesirable.

Lists can be set so subscription requires owner approval, but then the
owner has to reject them, but the owner can supply an informative
message.

There is a ban_list of addresses prevented from subscribing. An entry
in this list can be a pattern such as ^.*$ which prevents anyone from
subscribing, but you may or may not like the reject message.

>2) Say I have a list mixed with some subscribers who should, and some 
>subscriber who should not, have posting access to the list. I am 
>assuming this means the only way I can do this is to have all of the 
>can-post subscribers be explicitly listed in the posting rights 
>preferences?

That's one way to do it. Perhaps a better way is to moderate all
members except those allowed to post and either reject or discard
posts from moderated members. I *guess* the moderation bit would have
to be part of the LDAP directory and be returned by the LDAP
MemberAdaptor. That solves the issue below.

Yet another way to do this is moderate everyone and allow only posts
with an Approved: "header" as discussed in FAQ articles 3.11 and 3.34.

>In this case, if/when one of those can-post subscribers 
>changes their email address in the LDAP directory, do I have to also 
>manually go into all the lists that they're members of, and somehow 
>manually (through human intervention, or extra code in my LDAP manager 
>web-app) change their email addresses in there too, or does Mailman 
>somehow "realize" that it's still the same person, but with an updated 
>address.
>
>3) Since my native mail server is Cyrus, many of my users use the 
>username+folder at blah extended address syntax in order to directly 
>deliver mailing list posts to a specific folder in their IMAP store. 
>Messages coming from this user, obviously, will look like they're from 
>username at blah, *not* username+folder at blah as stored in the subscriber 
>list. Is there any way to get Mailman to recognize this (maybe by 
>stripping off the extended username after the + sign)? Whereabouts in 
>the code would I look for this?

Only with full personalization enabled are posts addressed To: the
member. Otherwise, the To: header is unchanged and may have the list
and other addresses in it. So if you're not going to enable full
personalization, there's no need to have username+folder addresses in
the member list. If you want this addressing, you have to enable full
personalization which has performance considerations.

There may be other conflicts with the "+" addressing. Mailman sends
bounce probes with VERP like sender addresses that look like
listname-bounces+user=user.domain at list.domain (user=user.domain is the
members e-mail with "@" changed to"="). Mailman can also be configured
to send other messages with VERP like senders.

>4) Can an umbrella list have its own set of explicit posters?

Yes.

>Say I have 
>lists A, B, and C, which have explicit posting rights given to some of 
>their subscribers. Now I have umbrella list Foo, containing those three 
>lists. The only person who should have posting rights to this umbrella 
>is Joe Blow, who is not a subscriber of A, B, or C. Actually, more 
>generally, can the umbrella list have a combination of both individual 
>subscribers, and other lists, and then one of those umbrella subscribers 
>be given explicit posting access?

Yes. This is true whether posting rights are conferred by Approved:
"header", or lack of moderation. Also, specific non-members can be
given posting rights.

>5) Can Mailman pull list subscriber data from multiple sources? In my 
>setup, I have the normal subscribers, who should have posting access, in 
>LDAP, and then a set of "observer" can't-post subscribers in an SQL 
>table. Is it possible to combine LDAP & SQL subscriber lists for a 
>single mailing list like this?

This is up to the MemberAdaptor and whatever it can do.

--
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan