[Mailman-Users] "Bounce action notification" emails for subscribes/unsubscribes

[Mark Sapiro]

On 10/23/2017 10:21 PM, Terry . wrote:
> 
> cPanel responded with the following 2 emails:
> 
> 
> Response #1:
> 
> ====================================
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Unfortunately though, as I mentioned previously this is a result of an upstream design choice from Mailman not from cPanel, we had an open inquiry for our development team as I mentioned previously as well which addressed this. This isn't a modification we made in the behavior.


In fact it is a modification that cPanel made to require sender-verify.


> In response to point a) A default address is created for every account on the server automatically, I did suggest in my previous response that it is a bad idea to utilize this as a resolution.
> 
> In regard to the rest of the points I think it is useful to stress the following:
> 
> This isn't an issue that cPanel created, this is an issue that is present due to the utilization of two incompatible configurations in conjunction with each other, sender-verify cannot verify a sender that does not exist, mailman does not create an alias for mailman-bounces, so essentially unless one of the two is changed (which sender verify cannot) the solution is either to disable sender verify or create an alias/forwarder/account so the user does exist. My suggestion to prevent this from occurring would be to disable sender-verify in this instance since the way that mailman works is incompatible with the configuration.


This is simply misleading at best. As Steve points out, Mailman doesn't
create aliases period except for the special case of MTA = 'Postfix'
which does not apply to cPanel because their installations use Exim.

The issue is in cPanel's exim router for Mailman addresses. There is
good documentation for creating an Exim configuration for Mailman at
<https://www.exim.org/howto/mailman21.html> and in particular, a Mailman
router at <https://www.exim.org/howto/mailman21.html#roconf> and
transport at <https://www.exim.org/howto/mailman21.html#taconf>.

The problem is cPanel's Exim router and transport is different because
in a 'normal' Mailman install, mail to list at example.com is piped to
'the_mail_wrapper post list' and mail to, e.g., list-bounces at example.com
is piped to 'the_mail_wrapper bounces list', but in cPanel, mail to
list at example.com is piped to 'the_mail_wrapper post list_example.com'
and mail to, e.g., list-bounces at example.com is piped to
'the_mail_wrapper bounces list_example.com'

Now in cPanel as in all Mailman. there is a 'mailman' list so mail to
all the mailman(-*) addresses should be delivered to that list, but
cPanel has not programmed their Exim router/transport to know that
'mailman(-*)@example.com is a special case for which the list name is
(probably I think) 'mailman' and not mailman_example.com.

If spmeone from cPanel (Lauren N or anyone) would contact me about this,
I would be willing to work with them to figure out a solution, but it is
not an issue in upstream Mailman, it is an issue in cPanel's Exim
configuration for Mailman lists that doesn't take into account the fact
the due to their changes, the 'mailman' site list is different from
other lists.


...
> So response #1 makes it look as if it's Mailman's fault, not cPanel's, so cPanel don't need to fix it, which begs the question: how was all this working fine until earlier this year, and what's changed that broke it?

Requiring sender-verify in Exim.


> I don't know if a new version of Mailman was installed on the server in that time, but even if it were, it doesn't sound to me as if it would have changed in this department.
> And I think the webhost probably has had sender_verify turned on for years now, but I'm checking that with them.

If so, then I don't know.


> Then response #2 makes it look as if cPanel *may* be willing to deal with the issue, despite the above.


If they would open a dialog with me, we could fix this.

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