FAQ and instructions?

FAQ and instructions?

[Richard Torrens]

Search as I may, I find not a lot on how to run lists on mlmmj: all notes
seem to be about how to set it up.

So are there any manager type instructions or FAQs? Is this the right
place to ask quesrions?


I own several domains and have recently transferred server on
torrens.org.uk. New server has mlmmj installed and from what have seen,
it's vastly more friendly to me than was Mailman.

My preferred method of maintenance is not via SSH and the command line,
but via FTP. But how safe is it to delete or alter files in archive,
bounce, incoming, moderation and queue?

Exactly what is the flow thought these? Some are obvious, some not.

I ask because curently there's a mail stuck in moderation - it has
.sending appended - but has not been sent!

Re: FAQ and instructions?

[Morten K. Poulsen]

Hi Richard,

On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 13:35 +0000, Richard Torrens wrote:
> Search as I may, I find not a lot on how to run lists on mlmmj: all notes
> seem to be about how to set it up.

Well, the lists run them self once they are set up.

> So are there any manager type instructions or FAQs?

What kind of instructions are you looking for? I am not sure I
understand exactly what you are looking for...

> Is this the right place to ask quesrions?

It sure is :-)

> I own several domains and have recently transferred server on
> torrens.org.uk. New server has mlmmj installed and from what have seen,
> it's vastly more friendly to me than was Mailman.

Hehe, that was part of the original plan.

> My preferred method of maintenance is not via SSH and the command line,
> but via FTP. But how safe is it to delete or alter files in archive,
> bounce, incoming, moderation and queue?

Well, it is safe, but why would you want to do that?

> Exactly what is the flow thought these? Some are obvious, some not.

mlmmj-recieve (sic) writes the incoming mail to LISTDIR/incoming/ and
executes mlmmj-process.

mlmmj-process moves the mail to LISTDIR/queue/, processes it, and moves
it to LISTDIR/moderation/ for moderation or executes mlmmj-send.

mlmmj-send distributes the mail and moves it to LISTDIR/archive/.

mlmmj-bounce records the fact that a given address is bouncing in
LISTDIR/bounce/.

> I ask because curently there's a mail stuck in moderation - it has
> .sending appended - but has not been sent!

A mail is renamed from COOKIE to COOKIE.sending when moderation has been
accepted. Then mlmmj-send is executed. It should have been moved to
LISTDIR/archive/ by mlmmj-send. You may have hit some unknown bug?

You can safely rename it back to COOKIE and resend your moderation
email.

Morten

Re: FAQ and instructions?

[Richard Torrens]

In article <1201262984.6564.19.camel@mopo-laptop>,
   Morten K. Poulsen <morten@afdelingp.dk> wrote:
> Hi Richard,

[Snip]

> What kind of instructions are you looking for? I am not sure I
> understand exactly what you are looking for...

I don't have admin access: I buy space on arachsys.com, a shell account.
So I'm not installing from scratch, therefore many of the instructions are
not quite relevant. I have a mlmmj-create script which sets up the new
list.

I don't work from Unix, but from RISC OS, so knowing which instructions
were not relevant was not immediately obvious. I'm still learning!

[Snip]

> > My preferred method of maintenance is not via SSH and the command line,
> > but via FTP. But how safe is it to delete or alter files in archive,
> > bounce, incoming, moderation and queue?

> Well, it is safe, but why would you want to do that?

Because in general RISC OS has better script editing and user interface
than Linux... And I'm used to it!

Coming at this from probably not the usual direction (not a new list, but
moving an existing one) I was trying to determine how far I could make
punter's life easier by automating the process. Water under the bridge now!

It's a genealogy list, so populated by windows users [spit]. So much top
posting, excess quoting, htlm etc. Sure you know the scene.

But they are newbies, although mlmmj makes rules easy to implement, I
don't want to be too draconian in enforcing them initially, so will
probably edit some of the /moderate files as an example. Nice to have it
confirmed that editing files in /moderate is safe.

[clear flow explanation snipped, thanks]

> > I ask because currently there's a mail stuck in moderation - it has
> > .sending appended - but has not been sent!

We have traced what happened here. In experimenting with subscribers, I
added a subscriber's email address to one of the subscribers.d files.
however, the file then did not have a \n terminator. So mlmmj appended the
next email address, getting a concatenated line with two @ in it.

mlmmj promptly seized up! Including causing about 10 emails to evaporate.

Dunno whether you consider that a bug, or even worth fixing. It's fairly
nasty, but is anyone else likely to hit it?

Problems with files with or without \n are vague in my memory: RISC OS
uses the same line terminators as Unix, and we used to have programs that
did funny things if \n was absent. But that's so long gone, I suppose I
had assumed Linux also would not need care taken here!

Thanks for some carefully conceived software, Morten and Mads.

Re: FAQ and instructions?

[Mads Martin Joergensen]

* Richard Torrens <Richard@Torrens.org.uk> [Jan 25. 2008 16:17]:
> > > I ask because currently there's a mail stuck in moderation - it has
> > > .sending appended - but has not been sent!
> 
> We have traced what happened here. In experimenting with subscribers, I
> added a subscriber's email address to one of the subscribers.d files.
> however, the file then did not have a \n terminator. So mlmmj appended the
> next email address, getting a concatenated line with two @ in it.

Was there only \r, or was there one emailaddress in the file without a
newline at the end?

> mlmmj promptly seized up! Including causing about 10 emails to evaporate.

Yikes ...

> Dunno whether you consider that a bug, or even worth fixing. It's fairly
> nasty, but is anyone else likely to hit it?

It's definately worth fixing.

> Problems with files with or without \n are vague in my memory: RISC OS
> uses the same line terminators as Unix, and we used to have programs that
> did funny things if \n was absent. But that's so long gone, I suppose I
> had assumed Linux also would not need care taken here!

I never encountered it, I developed mlmmj mainly on FreeBSD with Linux
testing as well.

> Thanks for some carefully conceived software, Morten and Mads.

You're most welcome! Let's fix that bug though :)

What version of mlmmj are you running on what version of RISC OS. I
think you're our first report that it works on RISC OS.

Regards,
-- 
Mads Martin Joergensen, http://mmj.dk
"Why make things difficult, when it is possible to make them cryptic
 and totally illogical, with just a little bit more effort?"
                                 -- A. P. J.

Re: FAQ and instructions?

[Richard Torrens]

In article <20080204105915.GO84525@mmj.dk>,
   Mads Martin Joergensen <mmj@mmj.dk> wrote:
> * Richard Torrens <Richard@Torrens.org.uk> [Jan 25. 2008 16:17]:
> > > > I ask because currently there's a mail stuck in moderation - it has
> > > > .sending appended - but has not been sent!
> > 
> > We have traced what happened here. In experimenting with subscribers,
> > I added a subscriber's email address to one of the subscribers.d
> > files. however, the file then did not have a \n terminator. So mlmmj
> > appended the next email address, getting a concatenated line with two
> > @ in it.

> Was there only \r, or was there one emailaddress in the file without a
> newline at the end?

Several email adresses. Last line did not have \n character

> > mlmmj promptly seized up! Including causing about 10 emails to
> > evaporate.

> Yikes ...

> > Dunno whether you consider that a bug, or even worth fixing. It's
> > fairly nasty, but is anyone else likely to hit it?

> It's definately worth fixing.

Then the check would be that the last char in the existing file is \n and
not an alpha!

> > Problems with files with or without \n are vague in my memory: RISC OS
> > uses the same line terminators as Unix, and we used to have programs
> > that did funny things if \n was absent. But that's so long gone, I
> > suppose I had assumed Linux also would not need care taken here!

> I never encountered it, I developed mlmmj mainly on FreeBSD with Linux
> testing as well.

RISC OS is slightly irrelevant to this: the teminal I use runs RISC OS,
connecting to the server via ssh or ftp. Server runs linux. Lots on the
www about RISC OS.

It's less mousing/keyboarding for me to download a subscriber file by ftp,
drag and drop an email address into it and upload it again. In this case 
it was only an email address, not a whole line, hence the problem!

Re: FAQ and instructions?

[Mads Martin Joergensen]

* Richard Torrens <Richard@Torrens.org.uk> [Feb 04. 2008 16:34]:
> It's less mousing/keyboarding for me to download a subscriber file by ftp,
> drag and drop an email address into it and upload it again. In this case 
> it was only an email address, not a whole line, hence the problem!

What mlmmj version was this?

-- 
Mads Martin Joergensen, http://mmj.dk
"Why make things difficult, when it is possible to make them cryptic
 and totally illogical, with just a little bit more effort?"
                                 -- A. P. J.