[Mailman-Users] a few questions about the NNTP gateway

[Manlio Perillo]

Brad Knowles ha scritto:
> On 8/6/07, Manlio Perillo wrote:
> 
>>  I'm using Mailman 2.1.5.
> 
> BTW, the most recent version of Mailman is 2.1.9, which has a number of 
> new features and some fixes for certain security holes.  I'd strongly 
> encourage you to upgrade.
> 

Mailman runs on a Debian Sarge server, so this can be a problem without 
an upgrade to Etch (but security problems are not a problem, with Debian).

>>  I have enabled the NNTP Gateway but there are some problems.
>>
>>  1) The messages from the newsgroup are not sent on the mailing list.
>>     I don't know why, there is nothing in the error log
> 
> Go to the web admin page for your list, then go to the sub-page for 
> "Mail<->News gateways".  
 > Is the news server hostname filled in?
Yes

> Is the newsgroup name filled in?  
Yes

> Is the moderation policy set correctly?  
The mailing list is not moderated (but requires subscription), the 
newsgroup is not moderated, so I have set the value "None"


> Do you have the radio buttons set correctly for passing traffic both ways?
Yes

> 
> In your mm_cfg.py file, do you have the correct definitions for the 
> username and password you need to use when logging into the news server 
> to retrieve and post articles?
> 

The NNTP server requires no password

>>  2) When sending a message to the newsgroup, Mailman does not obscure the
>>     email address
>>     (there is an obscure_addresses, but it only works for the web
>>     archiver)
> 
> Correct.  Mailman does not attempt to obscure addresses when posting 
> mail messages to a newsgroup.
> 

Ok.

>>  I would like to know if 2) has been implemented in recent Mailman 
>> releases.
> 
> Not so far as I know, but it shouldn't be hard to add.  However, one 
> problem you'll have is that many news servers will reject your articles, 
> if you use an address obfuscation scheme that they don't support.
> 

Not sure.
As an example I always use an obsured email address on usenet, without 
problems.
But, indeed, I see that on comp.lang.python many people use their real 
email address.

> So, your choices are to not do any obfuscation at all for news articles 
> (which is what Mailman does today), or see if there is some common 
> format of obfuscation that virtually all news servers are known to support.
> 
> Of course, if they support it then the spammers probably already know 
> about it as well, and anything you can do they are likely to be able to 
> un-do.
> 

Yes, this is true, unfortunately.

>>  One last thing.
>>  What happens when Mailman have to send an email message with a broken
>>  Subject header (R: instead of Re) to the newsgroup?
> 
> I think what happens is that the subject header will get treated as a 
> normal subject, and may have additional things tacked onto the front of 
> the subject line, whereas normally Mailman would have recognized the 
> "Re:" portion and potentially tacked those things on between the "Re:" 
> string(s) and the rest of the subject.
> 

It would be nice if mailman can apply a filter to the subject, and to 
fix it.


> But one of the core Mailman developers would be more likely to know the 
> answer to that question, and they're also on this list. Hopefully 
> they'll be able to respond to you within a few days.
> 


Thanks and regards  Manlio Perillo