[Mailman-Users] one line command to change generic_nonmember_action

[Steff Watkins]

> -----Original Message-----
> On Behalf Of Syn, Joonho
> Sent: Friday, October 15, 2010 7:53 PM
> To: mailman-users at python.org
> Subject: [Mailman-Users] one line command to change 
> generic_nonmember_action
> 
> I'm writing a simplified mailman dashboard page for my 
> company's internal use and one of the functions we want is to 
> be able to toggle the generic_nonmember_action for any given 
> list.  Has anyone out there devised a one line command which 
> will allow this?

Hi,

 I'm not sure if there is a direct command that can do this but I've
been doing something similar lately. I had a setup of 20+ mailing lists
which had to be identical in a specialised configuration. Doing that by
the web interface filled me with dread so I started looking around and
found the mailman utility 'bin/config_list'.

This brilliant (imnsho!) utility allows you to either dump out a list's
configuration in plain text or read in a list's configuration, again in
plain text.

Let's see you have a list called SomeList. You can dump out the entire
configuration (not the members list, just the list's functional
settings) by typing:

  > cd ~mailman
  > bin/config_list -o - SomeList

This will dump to screen ( -o - ) the configuration of SomeList.

It's just a minor logical step to do

    bin/config_list -o /usr/tmp/somelist-conf.txt SomeList

Which dumps the config into a file /usr/tmp/somelist-conf.txt

If you were to look at that file you'd find a section like this:

======
# When a post from a non-member is received, the message's sender is
# matched against the list of explicitly <a
# href="?VARHELP=privacy/sender/accept_these_nonmembers" >accepted,
# held, <a href="?VARHELP=privacy/sender/reject_these_nonmembers"
# >rejected (bounced), and <a
# href="?VARHELP=privacy/sender/discard_these_nonmembers" >discarded
# addresses.  If no match is found, then this action is taken.
#
# legal values are:
#    0 = "Accept"
#    1 = "Hold"
#    2 = "Reject"
#    3 = "Discard"
generic_nonmember_action = 1
=====

You could either replace the value at the end of the line, or just swap
in a whole new line.

Then save the text file and read the configuration BACK to the list:

bin/config_list -i /usr/tmp/somelist-conf.txt SomeList

Note the change from '-o' (output) to '-i' (input).

It would be easily possible to pipe these commands together, maybe using
sed as the output=>input parser.

So something like,

    bin/config_list -o - SomeList | /usr/bin/sed -f swapscript - |
bin/config_list -i - SomeList

Where 'swapscript' is a simple script to detect the
"generic_nonmember_action = 1" line and change it as you want.

Of course there's probably a simpler/better way of doing this but it
should work.

Regards,
S Watkins

---------------
Steff Watkins				Natural History Museum, Cromwell
Road, London, SW7 5BD
Systems programmer			Email: s.watkins at nhm.ac.uk 
Systems Team				Phone: +44 (0)20 7942 6000 opt 2
========
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