[Mailman-Users] Newbie questions

[Mark Sapiro]

Peter C.S. Adams wrote:

>Thus spake Tom Wolfe <twolfe at sawback.com>, circa 5/26/2006 1:05 PM:
>> 2. You can use email commands to retrieve the list of members by doing
>> To: listname-request at domain.com
>> From: (a subscriber's email address, pref. admin)
>> Subject: who password [address=<address>]
>
>This doesn't appear to work if there is a space in the password.


You are correct. I'd say it's a bug. We could probably be more
sophisticated in parsing the command and its args (currently we just
split on whitespace). We might support quoting, but then someone will
come up with a password containing pairs of quotes.


>By the way, does anyone else feel uneasy sending their password in cleartext
>through email (especially in the subject line)?


You don't have to send email commands in the subject. The body is
processed too, but to answer your question, I don't feel uneasy about
sending a list member password. They are mailed in reminders and we
say not to use a valuable password. Although password reminders are
going away in Mailman 2.2 in favor of a reset scheme.

I am less cavalier about the list admin password. I am not bothered by
the idea of sending it, but whenever I do send it in an email command
or an Approved: header, I am extra careful about how the mail is
addressed.


>Perhaps in a future version of mailman, commands could be authenticated in
>the same way as subscription requests -- with a return email asking for
>confirmation.


Interesting suggestion. Please submit a feature request at
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=103&atid=350103> or as a
comment at <http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Mailman+2.2>.

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