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Mailing Lists 
Mailman Information

 Frequently  Asked Questions (FAQ)

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 Yellow  GNU Mailman - List Member Manual
This document describes the list member interface for GNU Mailman 2.1. It contains instructions for subscribing, unsubscribing, viewing the archives, editing user options, getting password reminders, and other subscriber-level tasks. It also answers some common questions of interest to Mailman list members.
1 Introduction

This document is intended to help the members of a Mailman 2.1 mailing list learn to use the features available to them. It covers the use of the web and email interfaces for subscribing and unsubscribing, changing member options, getting password reminders and other subscriber-level tasks. It also answers some common questions of interest to Mailman list members.

Information for list and site administrators is provided in other documents.

This document need not be read in order. If you are simply looking for an answer to a specific question, jump to the appropriate place and references to other sections will be provided if necessary or potentially helpful.

Note: For the purposes of this document, we assume that the reader is familiar with common terms related to email (eg: Subject line, body of the message) and web sites (eg: drop-down box, button) or can look them up. We also assume that the reader can already use his or her email program and web browser well enough that instructions such as "send email to this address" or "visit this web page" or "fill in the form provided" are clear. If you are not familiar with these actions, you may want to consult other documentation to learn how to do these things with your particular setup.
 

Sections of this document have been borrowed from the List Administrator Manual found in Mailman CVS, which was written by Barry A. Warsaw, and from the in-line help for Mailman 2.1.

The rest of this manual has been written by Terri Oda. Terri has been maintaining mailing lists since the year she attained voting age in Canada, although the two are not related. She currently oversees the mailing lists at Linuxchix.org, as well as several smaller servers. In the world outside of list administration, Terri is doing work with an artificial life spam detector, and is actually more of a programmer than technical writer.

Proofreading thanks go to Margaret McCarthy and Jason Walton.
1.2    What is a mailing list?

A mailing list is simply a list of addresses to which the same information is being sent. If you were a magazine publisher, you would have a list of the mailing addresses of all the subscribers to the magazine. In the case of an electronic mailing list, we use a list of email addresses from people interested in hearing about or discussing a given topic.

Two common types of email mailing lists are announcement lists and discussion lists.

Announcement lists are are used so that one person or group can send announcements to a group of people, much like a magazine publisher's mailing list is used to send out magazines. For example, a band may use a mailing list to let their fan base know about their upcoming concerts.

A discussion list is used to allow a group of people to discuss topics amongst themselves, with everyone able to send mail to the list and have it distributed to everyone in the group. This discussion may also be moderated, so only selected posts are sent on to the group as a whole, or only certain people are allowed to send to the group. For example, a group of model plane enthusiasts might use a mailing list to share tips about model construction and flying.

Some common terms:

  • A "post" typically denotes a message sent to a mailing list. (Think of posting a message on a bulletin board.)
  • People who are part of an electronic mailing list are usually called the list's "members" or "subscribers."
  • "List administrators" are the people in charge of maintaining that one list. Lists may have one or more administrators.
  • A list may also have people in charge of reading posts and deciding if they should be sent on to all subscribers. These people are called list moderators.
  • Often more than one electronic mailing list will be run using the same piece of software. The person who maintains the software which runs the lists is called the "site administrator." Often the site administrator also administrates individual lists.
    1.3 GNU Mailman

    GNU Mailman is software that lets you manage electronic mailing lists. It supports a wide range of mailing list types, such as general discussion lists and announce-only lists. Mailman has extensive features which make it good for list subscribers, such as easy subscription and unsubscription, privacy options, and the ability to temporarily stop getting posts from the list. The list member features are covered in this document.

    Mailman also has many features which make it attractive to list and site administrators. These features are covered in the list and site administrator manuals.

2 Translating from our examples to real lists

Often, it's easier to simply give an example than explain exactly how to find the address for your specific list. As such, we'll frequently give examples for a fictional list called whose list information page can be found at http://WEBSERVER/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME.

Neither of these are real addresses, but they show the form of a typical list address. The capital letters used for the list-specific parts of each address should make it easier to see what should be changed for each list. Although specific list configurations may be different, you will probably be able to just replace the words given in capital letters with the appropriate values for a real list:

LISTNAME
The name of your list.
DOMAIN
The name of the mail server which handles that list.
WEBSERVER
The name of the web server which handles the list web interface. This may be the same as DOMAIN, and often refers to the same machine, but does not have to be identical.

As a real-life example, if you are interested in the mailman-users list, you'd make the following substitutions: LISTNAME=mailman-users, DOMAIN=python.org, WEBSERVER=mail.python.org. As such, for the mailing list, the list information page can be found at the URL http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users. (These, unlike most of the examples given in this document, are real addresses.)

Most lists will have this information stored in the List-*: headers. Many mail programs will hide these by default, so you may have to choose to view full headers before you can see these informational headers.
 

  • 3 Mailman's interfaces

    Mailman has two different interfaces for the list subscriber: the web interface and the email interface. Most discussion list subscribers use the email interface, since this includes the email address you use to send mail to all the subscribers of that list.

    The interface you use for changing options is largely a matter of preference, since most (but not all) of the options which can be changed from the web interface can also be changed by email. Usually it is easier to use the web interface for changing options, since the web interface provides instructions as you go, but there are times when people may prefer the email interface, so both are provided.

3.1 The web interface

The web interface of Mailman is its selling point for many administrators, since it makes it much easier for subscribers and administrators to see which options are available, and what these options do.

Every mailing list is also accessible by a number of web pages. Note that the exact URLs are configurable by the site administrator, so they may be different than what's described below. We'll describe the most common configuration, but check with your site administrator or hosting service for details.

 

List information (listinfo) page
Member options page
  • Usually found at http://WEBSERVER/mailman/options/LISTNAME/EMAIL (For example, http://lists.example.com/mailman/options/mylist/kathy@here.com)

     

  • This page can also be accessed by going to the listinfo page and entering your email address into the box beside the button marked "Unsubscribe or Edit Options" (this is near the bottom of the page).

     

  • The member options page allows you to log in/out and change your list settings, as well as unsubscribe or get a copy of your password mailed to you.

     

  • To log in to your member options page: If you are not already logged in, there will be a box near the top for you to enter your password. (If you do not know your password, see Section 6.1 for more information on getting your password.) Enter your password in the box and press the button.

     

  • Once you are logged in, you will be able to view and change all your list settings.
List Archives
  • Usually found at http://WEBSERVER/pipermail/LISTNAME if the list is publicly archived, and http://WEBSERVER/mailman/private/LISTNAME if the list is privately archives. (For example, http://lists.example.com/pipermail/mylist or http://lists.example.com/mailman/private/mylist)

     

  • The list archive pages have copies of the posts sent to the mailing list, usually grouped by month. In each monthly group, the posts are usually indexed by author, date, thread, and subject.

     

    •
  • Note: Pipermail is the name of the default archiver that comes with Mailman. Other archive programs are available.

     

  • If the archive is private, you will need to supply your subscribed email address and your password to log in. (See Section 6.1 for more information on getting your password.)

  • 3.2 The email interface

    Every mailing list has a set of email addresses to which messages can be sent. There's always one address for posting messages to the list, one address to which bounces are sent, and addresses for processing email commands. For a fictional mailing list called , you'd find these addresses:

     

    • - this is the email address people should use for new postings to the list.

       

    • - by sending a message to this address, a new member can request subscription to the list. Both the Subject: header and body of such a message are ignored. Note that mylist-subscribe@example.com is an alias for the -join address.

       

    • - by sending a message to this address, a member can request unsubscription from the list. As with the -join address, the Subject: header and body of the message is ignored. Note that mylist-unsubscribe@example.com is an alias for the -leave address.

       

    • - This address reaches the list owner and list moderators directly. This is the address you use if you need to contact the person or people in charge.

       

    • - This address reaches a mail robot which processes email commands that can be used to set member subscription options, as well as process other commands. A list of members' email commands is provided in Appendix A.

       

    • - This address receives bounces from members whose addresses have become either temporarily or permanently inactive. The -bounces address is also a mail robot that processes bounces and automatically disables or removes members as configured in the bounce processing settings. Any bounce messages that are either unrecognized, or do not seem to contain member addresses, are forwarded to the list administrators.

       

    • - This address is another email robot, which processes confirmation messages for subscription and unsubscription requests.

    There's also an -admin address which also reaches the list administrators, but this address only exists for compatibility with older versions of Mailman.

    For changing options, we use the address (for example, ).

    Commands can appear in the subject line or the body of the message. Each command should be on a separate line. If your mail program automatically appends a signature to your messages, you may want to put the word "end" (without the quotes) on a separate line after your other commands. The end command tells Mailman not to process the email after that point.

    The most important command is probably the "help" command, since it makes Mailman return a message full of useful information about the email commands and directions to the web interface.

    Quick references to the subscriber commands have been provided in Appendices A and B. (These have been slightly adapted from the output of the help command.)

4 I need to talk to a human!

If you have any trouble with any of these commands, you can always reach the person or people in charge of a list by using the list administrator email address. The list administrators can help you figure out how to do something, subscribe/unsubscribe you, or change your settings if you are unable to change them yourself for some reason. Please remember that many mailing list administrators are volunteers who are donating their spare time to run the list, and they may be very busy people.

This list administrator email address is in the form , where LISTNAME is the name of the list (eg: mailman-users) and DOMAIN is the name of the server (eg: python.org). This email address, along with the email addresses of specific administrators, is given on the bottom of the list information pages. See Section 3.1 for more information on finding the list information page for your list

5 Subscribing and unsubscribing

Since subscribing (joining) and unsubscribing (leaving) lists are often the only things a list member needs to know, these can both be done without requiring you to know a password.

Subsections

5.1 How do I join a list? (subscribe)

There are two common ways you can subscribe to a Mailman mailing list.

Using the web interface:

  1. Go to the list information page for the list you want to join. (This will probably be something like http://WEBSERVER/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME)
  2. Look for the section marked "Subscribing to LISTNAME" and fill in the boxes. You can fill in the following:
    • You must enter your email address.
    • You may choose to supply your real name.
    • You may choose a password. If you do not choose one, Mailman will generate one for you.

      Warning: Do NOT use a valuable password, since this password may be mailed to you in plain text.

    • If the list supports more than one language, you may be able to choose your preferred language. Note: This setting does not affect posts to the list, only pre-prepared Mailman texts such as your member options page.
  3. Press the subscribe button. A new page should appear telling you that your request has been sent.

Using the email interface:

  1. Open a mail program which sends mail from the address you want to subscribe.
  2. Send a mail to the list subscription address, which will be in the form . The subject and body of the message will be ignored, so it doesn't matter what you put there.

After following one of these sets of instructions (you don't need to do both!), there are a few possible outcomes depending upon the settings for that list.

  • You may receive an email message asking for confirmation that you really want to be subscribed to the list. This is to prevent anyone from subscribing you to lists without your permission. Follow the instructions given in the message to confirm your wish to be subscribed.
  • A moderator may also need to confirm your subscription if you are subscribing to a limited list.
  • Or you may have to wait for a moderator and follow the instructions in the confirmation mail.

Once this is done, you will likely receive another message welcoming you to the list. This message contains some useful information including your list password and some quick links for changing your options, so you may want to save it for later reference.

Note: Subscribing can be done in other ways as well. See Appendix A for more advanced email subscribing commands.

5.2 How do I leave a list? (unsubscribe)

Don't want to be on a list any more? If you're just going on vacation or are too busy to read mails and want to temporarily turn them off, you may want to stop mail delivery rather than unsubscribing. This means you keep your password and other settings so you can, for example, still have access to private list archives. If this is what you'd prefer, see Section 7.1 for instructions on disabling mail delivery temporarily.

If you actually want to leave the list, there are two common ways you can unsubscribe from a Mailman mailing list.

Using the web interface:

  1. Go to the list information page for the list you want to leave. (This will probably be something like http://WEBSERVER/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME)
  2. Look for the section marked "LISTNAME subscribers" (usually found near the bottom of the page).
  3. There should be a button marked "Unsubscribe or Edit Options." Enter your email address in the box beside this button and press the button.
  4. You should be brought to a new page which has an "Unsubscribe" button. Press it to unsubscribe and follow the instructions given.

Using the email interface:

  1. Open a mail program which sends mail from the address you want to unsubscribe.
  2. Send a mail to the list unsubscribe address, which will be of the form . The subject and body of this message will be ignored, so it doesn't matter what you put there.

After following one of these sets of instructions (you don't need to do both!), you will be sent a confirmation mail and must follow the instructions given in that mail to complete the unsubscription. This is to stop people from unsubscribing you without your permission. In addition, a moderator may need to approve your unsubscription.

If you do not receive this confirmation mail with instructions, make sure that you typed your email address correctly (if you were using the web interface to unsubscribe) and that the address you tried to unsubscribe is, indeed, actually subscribed to that list. For security reasons, Mailman generates the same member options page regardless of whether the address entered is subscribed or not. This means that people cannot use this part of the web interface to find out if someone is subscribed to the list, but it also means that it's hard to tell if you just made a typo.

Once your unsubscription has been processed, you will will probably receive another message confirming your unsubscription from the list, and at that point you should stop receiving messages.

If you wish to skip the confirmation process (for example, you might be unsubscribing an address which no longer works), it is possible to bypass it by using your password instead and either logging in to your options page using it (See Section 3.1), or sending it with your email commands to LISTNAME-request (See Appendix A for advanced email unsubscription commands). See Section 6.1 for more information on getting your password.

5.2 How do I leave a list? (unsubscribe)

Don't want to be on a list any more? If you're just going on vacation or are too busy to read mails and want to temporarily turn them off, you may want to stop mail delivery rather than unsubscribing. This means you keep your password and other settings so you can, for example, still have access to private list archives. If this is what you'd prefer, see Section 7.1 for instructions on disabling mail delivery temporarily.

If you actually want to leave the list, there are two common ways you can unsubscribe from a Mailman mailing list.

Using the web interface:

  1. Go to the list information page for the list you want to leave. (This will probably be something like http://WEBSERVER/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME)
  2. Look for the section marked "LISTNAME subscribers" (usually found near the bottom of the page).
  3. There should be a button marked "Unsubscribe or Edit Options." Enter your email address in the box beside this button and press the button.
  4. You should be brought to a new page which has an "Unsubscribe" button. Press it to unsubscribe and follow the instructions given.

Using the email interface:

  1. Open a mail program which sends mail from the address you want to unsubscribe.
  2. Send a mail to the list unsubscribe address, which will be of the form . The subject and body of this message will be ignored, so it doesn't matter what you put there.

After following one of these sets of instructions (you don't need to do both!), you will be sent a confirmation mail and must follow the instructions given in that mail to complete the unsubscription. This is to stop people from unsubscribing you without your permission. In addition, a moderator may need to approve your unsubscription.

If you do not receive this confirmation mail with instructions, make sure that you typed your email address correctly (if you were using the web interface to unsubscribe) and that the address you tried to unsubscribe is, indeed, actually subscribed to that list. For security reasons, Mailman generates the same member options page regardless of whether the address entered is subscribed or not. This means that people cannot use this part of the web interface to find out if someone is subscribed to the list, but it also means that it's hard to tell if you just made a typo.

Once your unsubscription has been processed, you will will probably receive another message confirming your unsubscription from the list, and at that point you should stop receiving messages.

If you wish to skip the confirmation process (for example, you might be unsubscribing an address which no longer works), it is possible to bypass it by using your password instead and either logging in to your options page using it (See Section 3.1), or sending it with your email commands to LISTNAME-request (See Appendix A for advanced email unsubscription commands). See Section 6.1 for more information on getting your password.

6 Passwords

Your password was either set by you or generated by Mailman when you subscribed. You probably got a copy of it in a welcome message sent when you joined the list, and you may also receive a reminder of it every month. It is used to verify your identity to Mailman so that only the holder of the password (you!) and the administrators can view and change your settings.

Warning: Do NOT use a valuable password for Mailman, since it can be sent in plain text to you.

  • 6.1 How do I get my password?

    If you've forgotten your password and haven't saved the welcome message or any reminder messages, you can always get a reminder through the web interface:

     

    1. Go to the list information page for the list from which you wish to get your password (This will probably be something like http://WEBSERVER/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME)
    2. Look for the section marked "LISTNAME subscribers" (this section is usually found near the bottom of the page).
    3. There should be a button marked "Unsubscribe or Edit Options." Enter your email address in the box beside this button and press the button.
    4. You should be brought to a new page which has an "Password Reminder" section. Press the "Remind" button to have your password emailed to you.

    If you do not receive the password reminder email after doing this, make sure that you typed your email address correctly and that the address you used is, indeed, actually subscribed to that list. For security reasons, Mailman generates the same member options page regardless of whether the address entered is subscribed or not. This means that people cannot use this part of the web interface to find out if someone is subscribed to the list, but it also means that it's hard to tell if you just made a typo.

    You can also get a reminder using the email interface,

    1. Send a mail to with the command password

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

      If you are not sending mail from your subscribed address, you can also specify this address by sending the command password address=$<$ADDRESS$>$.

  • 6.2 How do I change my password?

    Warning: Do NOT use a valuable password, since this password may be mailed to you in plain text.

    From the web interface:

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for instructions on how to do this.)

       

    2. Look for the password changing boxes on the right-hand side of the page and enter your new password in the appropriate boxes, then press the button marked "Change My Password."

    This can also be changed for multiple lists at the same time if you are subscribed to more than one list on the same domain. See Section 10.1 for information about changing settings globally.

    From the email interface:

    1. Send a mail to with the command password $<$OLDPASSWORD$>$ $<$NEWPASSWORD$>$.

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

      If you are not sending mail from your membership address, you can also specify this address with address=$<$ADDRESS$>$ after $<$NEWPASSWORD$>$.

      For example, if wanted to change her mylist password from zirc to miko, but she was sending mail from her work address , she could send a message to with the subject set to password zirc miko address=kathy@here.com.

  • 6.3 How do I turn password reminders on or off? (reminders option)

    If you don't wish to the reminder email including your password every month, you can disable it from the member options page. (You can always get the password mailed out when you actually want it. See Section 6.1 for instructions.)

    Using the web interface:

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for instructions on how to do this.)
    2. Look for the section marked "Get password reminder email for this list?" and change the value accordingly.

    This can also be changed for multiple lists at the same time if you are subscribed to more than one list on the same domain. See Section 10.1 for information about changing settings globally.

    Using the email interface:

    1. Send a mail to with the command set reminders on or set reminders off.

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

    2. Set it to "on" to receive reminders, and "off" to stop receiving reminders.

7 Changing mail delivery

ubsections

  • 7.1 How do I turn mail delivery on or off? (delivery option)

    You may wish to temporarily stop getting messages from the list without having to unsubscribe. If you disable mail delivery, you will no longer receive messages, but will still be a subscriber and will retain your password and other settings.

    This can be handy in a many different cases. For example, you could be going on vacation or need a break from the list because you're too busy to read any extra mail. Many mailing lists also allow only subscribers to post to the list, so if you commonly send mail from more than one address (eg, one address for at home and another for when you're travelling), you may want to have more than one subscribed account, but have only one of them actually receive mail. You can also use this as a way to read private archives even on a list which may be too busy for you to have sent directly to your mailbox. All you need to do is subscribe, disable mail delivery, and use your password and email to log in to the archives.

    To disable/enable mail delivery using the web interface:

    1. Log in to your options page. (See Section 3.1 for instructions.)
    2. Go down to the section marked "Mail delivery" and select "Disabled" to stop receiving mail, and "Enabled" to start receiving mail.

    This can also be changed for multiple lists at the same time if you are subscribed to more than one list on the same domain. See Section 10.1 for information about changing settings globally.

    To disable/enable mail delivery using the email interface:

    1. Send a mail to with the command set delivery off or set delivery on.

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

    2. Set it to "off" to stop receiving posts, and "on" to start receiving them again.

  • 7.1 How do I turn mail delivery on or off? (delivery option)

    You may wish to temporarily stop getting messages from the list without having to unsubscribe. If you disable mail delivery, you will no longer receive messages, but will still be a subscriber and will retain your password and other settings.

    This can be handy in a many different cases. For example, you could be going on vacation or need a break from the list because you're too busy to read any extra mail. Many mailing lists also allow only subscribers to post to the list, so if you commonly send mail from more than one address (eg, one address for at home and another for when you're travelling), you may want to have more than one subscribed account, but have only one of them actually receive mail. You can also use this as a way to read private archives even on a list which may be too busy for you to have sent directly to your mailbox. All you need to do is subscribe, disable mail delivery, and use your password and email to log in to the archives.

    To disable/enable mail delivery using the web interface:

    1. Log in to your options page. (See Section 3.1 for instructions.)
    2. Go down to the section marked "Mail delivery" and select "Disabled" to stop receiving mail, and "Enabled" to start receiving mail.

    This can also be changed for multiple lists at the same time if you are subscribed to more than one list on the same domain. See Section 10.1 for information about changing settings globally.

    To disable/enable mail delivery using the email interface:

    1. Send a mail to with the command set delivery off or set delivery on.

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

    2. Set it to "off" to stop receiving posts, and "on" to start receiving them again.

  • 7.3 How do I change my subscription address?

    To change your subscription address,

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.)
    2. In the section marked "Changing your LISTNAME membership information," enter your new address.
    3. If you wish to change your address for all subscriptions using the old address, select the "Change globally" box. If you have subscriptions under another address or for lists on a different domain, these will have to be done separately. See Section 10.1 for more information about changing settings globally.

    There is no special way to do this from the email interface, but you can subscribe and unsubscribe for more or less the same effect. (See Sections 5.1 and 5.2 for more information on subscribing and unsubscribing.)

  • 7.4 How do I stop or start getting copies of my own posts? (myposts option)

    By default in Mailman, you get a copy of every post you send to the list. Some people like this since it lets them know when the post has gone through and means they have a copy of their own words with the rest of a discussion, but others don't want to bother downloading copies of their own posts.

    Note: This option has no effect if you are receiving digests.

    You may also want to see Section 7.5, which discusses acknowledgement emails for posts sent to the list.

    To set this using the web interface:

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.)
    2. Look for the section marked "Receive your own posts to the list?" Set it to "Yes" to receive copies of your own posts, and "No" to avoid receiving them.

    To set this using the email interface:

    1. Send a mail to with the command set myposts on or set myposts off.

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

    2. Set it to "on" to receive copies of your own posts, and "off" to avoid receiving them.

  • 7.5 How can I get Mailman to tell me when my post has been received by the list? (ack option)

    On most lists, you will simply receive a copy of your mail when it has gone through the list software, but if this is disabled (See Section 7.4), your list mail delivery is disabled (See Section 7.1), you are not subscribed to that topic (See Section 9.2) or you simply want an extra acknowledgement from the system, this option may be useful to you.

    Note: If you are not subscribed to the list, this option cannot be used. You must either check the archives yourself (if the list has public archives), ask someone who is subscribed to the list, or subscribe to use this option.

    To set this using the web interface:

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.)
    2. Look for the section marked "Receive acknowledgement mail when you send mail to the list?" Set it to "Yes" to receive a mail letting you know your post has been received, and "No" to avoid receiving such an acknowledgement.

    To set this using the email interface:

    1. Send a mail to with the command set ack on or set ack off.

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

    2. Set it to "on" if you wish to receive mail letting you know your post has been received, and "off" to avoid receiving such an acknowledgement.

  • 7.6 I don't seem to be getting mail from the lists. What should I do?

    There are a few common reasons for this:

    • No one has sent any mail to the list(s) you're on for a little while.

      To check if this is the case, try visiting the archives of the list (assuming that the list has archives). If the list has no archives, you may have to ask another subscriber. (See Section 3.1 for help in finding the list archives.)

      Note: Generally, it is considered impolite to send test messages to the entire list. If you feel a need to test that the list is working and for some reason you cannot simply compose a regular message to the list, it is less disruptive to send a help message to the list request address (LISTNAME-request@DOMAIN) to see if that works, or to contact the list administrator (LISTNAME-owner@DOMAIN) to ask if the list is working.

       

    • You were bouncing mail and have had mail delivery (temporarily) disabled by the list software.

      If your mail provider "bounces" too many messages (that is, it tells Mailman that the message could not be delivered) Mailman eventually stops trying to send you mail. This feature allows Mailman to gracefully handle addresses which no longer exist (for example, the subscriber has found a new internet service provider and forgot to unsubscribe the old address), as well as addresses which are temporarily out-of-service (for example, the subscriber has used up all of the allotted space for his or her email account, or the subscriber's mail provider is experiencing difficulties).

      Even if you are unaware of any difficulties with your mail provider, it is a good idea to check this. Some popular webmail providers and internet servers are not as reliable as one might assume, nor is the internet as a whole. You may want to also send yourself a test message from another account or ask a friend to send you a test message to make sure your subscribed address is working.

      To check if this may be the reason you are not receiving messages, log in to the your options page (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this) and look at your options. There should be one marked "Mail Delivery" - if it is set to "Disabled," set it to "Enabled" to start receiving mail again. (For more instructions on disabling or enabling mail delivery, see Section 7.1.)

      Note: Even if you have not been disabled at the time you check, you could be bouncing messages and not have reached the threshold for your subscription to be disabled. You may need to check again.

    • There is a delay or break in the networks between you and the list server.

      No matter what many of us would like, the internet is not 100% reliable, nor is it always fast. Sometimes, messages simply take a long time to get to you. Try to be patient, especially if the server is far (in terms of networks, not geography, although often one implies the other) from your internet service provider.

      To check if this might be causing your problem, you can try pinging the list server or tracing the route between you and it. (Instructions on how to do this varies from platform to platform, so you may want to use a search engine to find those appropriate for you.)

    • The Mailman installation on the list server is not functioning or not functioning properly.

      To test if this is a case, try visiting the list's web interface and try sending a message to with the command "help" (without the quotes) in the Subject:. If neither of these works after a reasonable length of time, this may be the problem. You may wish to contact either the list or site administrator(s).

8 Digests

  • 8.1 How can I start or stop getting the list posts grouped into one big email? (digest option)

    Groups of posts are called "digests" in Mailman. Rather than get messages one at a time, you can get messages grouped together. On a moderately busy list, this typically means you get one email per day, although it may be more or less frequent depending upon the list.

    You may also want to look at Section 8.2 which discusses MIME and plain text digests.

    To turn digest mode on or off using the web interface,

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.)
    2. Look for the section marked "Set Digest Mode."

      Set it to "On" to receive messages bundled together in digests. Set it to "Off" to receive posts separately.

    To turn digest mode on or off using the email interface,

    1. Send a mail to with the command set digest plain or set digest mime or set digest off.

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

    2. Set it to "off" if you wish to receive individual posts separately, and to "plain" or "mime" to receive posts grouped into one large mail. See Section 8.2 for more information on plain versus MIME digests.

  • 8.2 What are MIME and Plain Text Digests? How do I change which one I get? (digest option)

    MIME is short for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. It is used to send things by email which are not necessarily simple plain text. (For example, MIME would be used if you were sending a picture of your dog to a friend.)

    A MIME digest has each message as an attachment inside the message, along with a summary table of contents.

    A plain text digest is a simpler form of digest, which should be readable even in mail readers which don't support MIME. The messages are simply put one after the other into one large text message.

    Most modern mail programs do support MIME, so you only need to choose plain text digests if you are having trouble reading the MIME ones.

    Note: This option has no effect if you are not receiving mail bunched as digests. (See Section 8.1 for more information on receiving mail as digests.)

    To set your digest type using the web interface:

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.)
    2. Look for the section marked "Get MIME or Plain Text Digests?."

      Set it to "MIME" to receive digests in MIME format, or "Plain text" to receive digests in plain text format.

    This can also be changed for multiple lists at the same time if you are subscribed to more than one list on the same domain. See Section 10.1 for information about changing settings globally.

    To set your digest type using the email interface,

    1. Send a mail to with the command set digest plain or set digest mime.

      Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

    2. Set it to "plain" to get posts bundled into a plain text digest, or "mime" to get posts bundled together into a MIME digest.

9 Mailing list topics

Some lists are set up so that different topics are handled by Mailman. For example, the courses list on Linuxchix.org is a discussion list for courses being run by linuxchix members, and often there are several courses being run at the same time. (eg: Networking for beginners, C programming, LaTeX document mark up.) Each of the courses being run is a separate topic on the list so that people can choose only to receive the course they want to take.

These topics must be configured by the list administrator, but it is the responsibility of each poster to make sure that their post is put with the correct topic. Usually, this means adding a tag of some type to the subject line (eg: [Networking] What type of cables do I need?) or making sure the Keywords: line has the right information. (By default, you can put a Keywords: section in the beginning of the body of your message, but this can be configured by your list administrator.) Note that these tags are case-insensitive.

  • 9.1 How do I make sure that my post has the right topic?

    When a list administrator defines a topic, he or she sets three things:

    • a topic name
    • a regular expression (regexp)
    • a description

    You can view this information by logging in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.) and clicking on the "details" link for any topic that interests you.

    To post on a given topic, you need to make sure that the Keywords: or Subject: headers in a message match the regular expression for that topic. Regular expressions can actually be fairly complex, so you may want to just ask the list administrator if you don't know how to make heads or tails of the expression given.

    Most Mailman topic expressions will be fairly simple regular expressions, so in this document we will simply give you some common examples. Regular expressions are a bit too complex to teach in a few lines here, so if you really want to understand how the regular expressions work, you should find a tutorial or reference elsewhere. (For example, DevShed has a decent tutorial at http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/Administration/RegExp/)

    Here are some examples of possible regular expressions and matching lines:

    Regular expression Matching lines
    zuff Keywords: zuff
    zuff Keywords: ZUFF
    zuff Keywords: Zuff
    zuff Keywords: amaryllis, zuff, applesauce
    zuff Subject: [zuff] Do you have the right stuff for zuff?
    zuff Subject: Do you have the right stuff for zuff?
    zuff Subject: What is zuff?
    \[zuff\] Keywords: [zuff]
    \[zuff\] Subject: [zuff] Do you have the right stuff?
    \[zuff\] Subject: Online zuff tutorials (was Re: [zuff] What is zuff?)

    A few notes:

    • The matching is case-insensitive, so if zuff matches, so will ZUFF, zuFF, and any other variations in capitalization.
    • Some characters have special meaning in a regular expression, so to match those characters specifically, they must be "escaped" with a backslash (\). As you can see in the above example, [ and ] are such characters. (Others include ".", "?", and "*"). The backslash is also used for other things (I wasn't kidding about regular expressions being complex: consult other documentation for details about other uses of the backslash character), but this is the most likely use in a topic expression.

  • 9.2 How do I subscribe to all or only some topics on a list?

    If topics have been set up by your mailing list administrator, you can choose to subscribe to only part of a list by selecting the topics you want to receive.

    If you wish to get all messages sent to the list, make sure you are not subscribed to any topics.

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.)
    2. Look for the section marked "Which topic categories would you like to subscribe to?"

      If any topics are defined, you can select those you wish. If you do not select any topics of interest, you will receive all posts sent to the list.

    You probably also want to look at Section 9.3 which discusses changing your settings for messages where no topic is set.

  • 9.3 How do I get or avoid getting messages with no topic set?

    If you wish to get all messages sent to the list, make sure you are not subscribed to any specific topic. (See Section 9.2.)

    If you are only subscribed to some topics, you can either choose to either receive or not receive messages with no topic set, much the way you can choose to subscribe only to certain topics.

    To change this setting,

    1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.)
    2. Look for the section marked "Do you want to receive message that do not match any topic filter?"

      If you wish to receive messages with no topic set, select "Yes." If you do not wish to receive such messages, choose "No."

    This setting has no effect if you are not subscribed to any topics.

10.1 Change Globally? Set Globally? What does that mean?

For some of the options given in your member options page, there is a tick-box which says "Change Globally" or "Set Globally." This means that if you change this option, you can also have the change made for all your other list subscriptions with the same address to lists on the same domain. This can be handy if, for example, you want to make sure all your passwords are the same, or you are going on vacation and want to turn off mail delivery from all the lists.
10.2 How do I change my name as Mailman knows it?

To change your subscription name,

  1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for more details on how to do this.)
  2. In the section marked "Changing your LISTNAME membership information," enter your new name in the appropriate box.

This can also be changed for multiple lists at the same time if you are subscribed to more than one list on the same domain. See Section 10.1 for information about changing settings globally.

Note: You do not need to have a subscription name set.

10.3 How do I set my preferred language?

Mailman is available with many different languages. (For a complete listing see http://mailman.sourceforge.net/i18n.html.) This means that, if your list has other languages enabled, you may be able to have the web interface, etc. in a language of your choice.

Note: This does NOT necessarily mean that all the posts sent to the list will be in the language you selected. Only the pre-prepared texts presented by Mailman will be affected by this setting. Posts are in whatever language the poster uses.

Your preferred language is set when you subscribe (see Section5.1), and can be changed later if the list supports more than one language.

To change your preferred language in Mailman,

  1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for instructions on how to do this.)
  2. Go to the section marked "What language do you prefer?" and choose the appropriate language from the drop-down list. If there is no drop-down list of languages, the list you are on probably only supports one language.

If your list does not support the language you would prefer to use, you may contact the list administrator (LISTNAME-owner@DOMAIN) to see if it can be added, but remember that this may mean some work that the list and/or site administrator(s) do not have time or the ability to do.

If your language of choice is not available because no translation exists for Mailman, please consider volunteering your time as a translator. For more information you may want to consult the mailman-i18n mailing list at http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-i18n. (i18n is a common short-hand for "internationalization" because the word starts with an i, ends with an n, and has 18 letters in between. If you mumble a bit, i18n even sounds a bit like "internationalization.")

10.4 How do I avoid having my name appear on the subscribers list? (the hide option)

If you do not want to have your email address show up on the subscriber list for any reason, you can opt to have it concealed.

Common reasons for doing this include avoiding unsolicited bulk email (spam). By default, the subscribers list is obscured to hinder spam harvesters, but if you feel this is insufficient it's easy enough to remove address from the subscriber list given in the information pages or by email request. (Note that this does not conceal your address from the list administrators.) You may wish to see Section 11.2 for more information on what Mailman can do to help avoid spam.

To change this setting using the web interface:

  1. Log in to your member options page. (See Section 3.1 for instructions on how to do this.)
  2. Go to the section marked "Conceal yourself from subscriber list?" and choose "Yes" to hide your name from the list, or "No" to allow your name to appear on the list.

To change this setting using the email interface:

  1. Send a mail to with the command set hide on or set hide off.

    Commands can appear in either the body or the subject of the message. (See Section 3.2 for more information about sending mail commands.)

  2. Set it to "on" to conceal your email address from the membership list, or "off" to stop concealing your address.

11.1 How do I view the list archives?

If the list has archives, they can be viewed by going to a web page address. This address usually linked from the list information page and can be found in the List-Archive: of every list message unless your list administrator has disabled these headers. (Many mail programs hide the List-Archive: mail header, so you may have to tell your mail program to allow you to view full headers before you will be able to see it.)

Public archives usually have addresses of the form http://WEBSERVER/pipermail/LISTNAME/ and private archives usually have addresses of the form http://WEBSERVER/mailman/private/LISTNAME.

See Section 3.1 for more information on finding the addresses of a list.
11.2 What does Mailman do to help protect me from unsolicited bulk email (spam)?

A technical list's archives may include answers to a range of different questions. Often, the people who have posted these answers would be happy to help someone who doesn't quite understand the answer, and don't mind giving their address out for that purpose. But although it would be wonderful if everyone could contact each other easily, we also want to make sure that the list and list archives are not abused by people who send spam.

To make a range of options available to list administrators, Mailman allows a variety of configurations to help protect email addresses. Many of these settings are optional to the list administrator, so your particular list may be set up in many ways. List administrators must walk a fine line between protecting subscribers and making it difficult for people to get in touch.

  • Subscriber lists
    • The list administrator can choose to have the subscriber list public, viewable only to list members, or viewable only to list administrators.
    • The subscriber list is shown with the addresses obscured to make it difficult for spam harvesters to collect your address.
    • You can choose to have your address hidden from the subscriber list. (See Section 10.4 for more information.)
    • Note: The entire subscriber list is always available to the list administrators.
  • List archives
    • The list administrator can choose for the archives to be public, viewable only to members (private), or completely unavailable.
    • The HTML archives which are created by Pipermail (the archiving program which comes default with Mailman) contain only obscured addresses. Other archiving programs are available and can do different levels of obfuscation to make addresses less readable.
    • If you wish to be more sure, you can set the mail header X-no-archive: and Mailman will not archive your posts. Warning: This does not stop other members from quoting your posts, possibly even including your email address.
  • Limited posting to the lists
    • The list administrator can choose who can post to the list. Most lists are either moderated (a moderator or administrator reviews each posting), set so only subscribers may post to the list, or allow anyone to post to the list.
    • By allowing only subscribers to post to a list, Mailman often blocks all spam and some viruses from being sent through the list. As such, this is a fairly common setting used by list administrators.
  • Anonymous lists
    • Lists can also be made fully anonymous: all identifying information about the sender is stripped from the header before the message is sent on.
    • This is not typically used for anti-spam measures (it has other uses), but it could be used in that way if desired.

Of course, many address-obscuring methods can be circumvented by determined people, so be aware that the protections used may not be enough.

12 Email commands quick reference

  • confirm $<$CONFIRMATION-STRING$>$
    • Confirm an action. The confirmation-string is required and should be supplied within a mailback confirmation notice.
  • end
    • Stop processing commands. Use this if your mail program automatically adds a signature file.
  • help
    • Receive a copy of the help message.
  • info
    • Get information about this mailing list.
  • lists
    • See a list of the public mailing lists on this GNU Mailman server.
  • password [$<$OLDPASSWORD$>$ $<$NEWPASSWORD$>$] [address=$<$ADDRESS$>$]
    • Retrieve or change your password. With no arguments, this returns your current password. With arguments $<$OLDPASSWORD$>$ and $<$NEWPASSWORD$>$ you can change your password.
  • set ...
    • Set or view your membership options.

      Use `set help' (without the quotes) to get a more detailed list of the options you can change. This list is also given in Appendix B.

      Use `set show' (without the quotes) to view your current option settings.

  • subscribe [$<$PASSWORD$>$] [digest|nodigest] [address=$<$ADDRESS$>$]
    • Subscribe to this mailing list. Your password must be given to unsubscribe or change your options, but if you omit the password, one will be generated for you. You may be periodically reminded of your password.

      The next argument may be either: `nodigest' or `digest' (no quotes!). If you wish to subscribe an address other than the address you sent this request from, you may specify `address=$<$ADDRESS$>$' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!)

  • unsubscribe [$<$PASSWORD$>$] [address=$<$ADDRESS$>$]
    • Unsubscribe from the mailing list. If given, your password must match your current password. If omitted, a confirmation email will be sent to the unsubscribing address. If you wish to unsubscribe an address other than the address you sent this request from, you may specify `address=$<$ADDRESS$>$' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!)
  • who [$<$PASSWORD$>$] [address=$<$ADDRESS$>$]
    • See everyone who is on this mailing list. The roster is limited to list members only, and you must supply your membership password to retrieve it. If you're posting from an address other than your membership address, specify your membership address with `address=$<$ADDRESS$>$' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!)

13 Member options quick reference

  • set help
    • Show this detailed help.
  • set show [address=$<$ADDRESS$>$]
    • View your current option settings. If you're posting from an address other than your membership address, specify your membership address with `address=$<$ADDRESS$>$' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!).
  • set authenticate $<$PASSWORD$>$ [address=$<$ADDRESS$>$]
    • To set any of your options, you must include this command first, along with your membership password. If you're posting from an address other than your membership address, specify your membership address with `address=$<$ADDRESS$>$' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!).
  • set ack on
    set ack off
    • When the `ack' option is turned on, you will receive an acknowledgement message whenever you post a message to the list.
  • set digest plain
    set digest mime
    set digest off
    • When the `digest' option is turned off, you will receive postings immediately when they are posted. Use `set digest plain' if instead you want to receive postings bundled into a plain text digest (i.e. RFC 1153 digest). Use `set digest mime' if instead you want to receive postings bundled together into a MIME digest.
  • set delivery on
    set delivery off
    • Turn delivery on or off. This does not unsubscribe you, but instead tells Mailman not to deliver messages to you for now. This is useful if you're going on vacation. Be sure to use `set delivery on' when you return from vacation!
  • set myposts on
    set myposts off
    • Use `set myposts off' to avoid receiving copies of messages you post to the list. This has no effect if you're receiving digests.

     

  • set hide on
    set hide off
    • Use `set hide on' to conceal your email address when people request the membership list.
  • set duplicates on
    set duplicates off
    • Use `set duplicates off' if you want Mailman not to send you messages if your address is explicitly mentioned in the To: or Cc: fields of the message. This can reduce the number of duplicate postings you will receive.
  • set reminders on
    set reminders off
    • Use `set reminders off' if you want to disable the monthly password reminder for this mailing list.

3/3 

14 GNU Mailman Documentation
Christopher Kolar
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

I am currently working on the documentation for the GNU Mailman mail list manager program. Before downloading, please note the following personal FAQ items:

  • Documents are slightly out of sync with the 2.1.x releases. Most of the items mentioned in the list manager documents are the same, but the fields have been moved inside of subheadings in the management interface.
  • I don't do this as a job, so please do not phone me at work. I will occasionally respond to reasonable questions via email, but your best bet is to post questions to the Mailman users list at list.org.
  • There are several service providers that are capable of hosting Mailman lists. I use Dreamhost as Mailman is pre-installed with all account plans. I cannot otherwise answer questions along the lines of "Can I run Mailman on [Insert Hosting Provier Name Here]?"

Copyright Information (GFDL)

Beginning with the release of the version 2 documents, these documents will be available through the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Thanks to Aurora University for their contribution of my time in writing the original documentation.

Documentation Varieties

I had originally planned three documents based on the intended audience.

  1. User documentation: information for people who are list subscribers. This document will be short, sweet, and contain only stuff that the end users need to know. In most educational institutions the intended audience for this document is the students.
  2. List manager documentation: this document will contain information for list managers (owners). It will be a plain-language explanation of all of the configuration screens and options for their list. In most educational institutions the intended audience for this document would be instructors who have mail lists for their class. This document will not assume any great technical competence or access to the shell.
    (Note: I have added a 2 page quick reference guide.  We now have about 20 "normal" people running lists and the quick reference actually takes care of every question that I have ever been asked, honest.)
  3. System administrator documentation: available at www.list.org.
User Documentation: v1.0
(11 August 1999)		 List Manager Documentation: v2.0
(22 November 2000)		 List Server Administrator Documentation


Available at www.list.org.

 

15 Mailman Features

Here's a brief description of the features in Mailman 2.1 The NEWS file contains a detailed summary of all new features.

  • Through-the-web list creation and removal (with automatic support depending on the MTA)
  • Multi-lingual support: list web pages and email notices can be in any of nearly two dozen supported language, configurable per-site, per-list, and per-user
  • "Real name" support for members
  • Much better password-less operation for simple user tasks.
  • Support for personalized deliveries and VERP-like message delivery for foolproof bounce detection
  • Emergency moderation
  • MIME-based content filtering, with demime/stripmime like options
  • Regular expression based topic filtering
  • Better membership management, including searching
  • Re-organized administrative requests pages
  • Moderated newsgroup support
  • A new architecture for the mail delivery subsystem, removing the dependence on cron, for better responsiveness and scalability
  • New moderation and privacy controls
  • Invitations
  • Autoresponse governors
  • Users can now change some of their delivery options globally, for all lists at a site, including their password, delivery status, real name, etc.
  • Much better MIME and I18n support in the archiver
  • A separate "list moderator" role has been added
  • Urgent: header support (bypasses digests to reach all users immediately).

Here is a short summary of other features in Mailman. For details, please see the on-line documentation.

  • Web based list administration for nearly all tasks, including list configuration, moderation (post approvals), management of user accounts.
  • Web based subscribing and unsubscribing, and user configuration management. Users can temporarily disable their accounts, select digest modes, hide their email addresses from other members, etc.
  • A customizable home page for each mailing list.
  • Per-list privacy features, such as closed-subscriptions, private archives, private membership rosters, and sender-based posting rules.
  • Configurable (per-list and per-user) delivery mode
    • Regular (immediate) delivery
    • MIME digest
    • Plain (RFC 1153) digests
  • Integrated bounce detection within an extensible framework. Automatic disposition of bouncing addresses (disable, unsubscribe).
  • Integrated spam filters
  • Built-in web-based archiving, with hooks for external archivers such as MHonArc.
  • Integrated Usenet gatewaying.
  • Integrated auto-replies.
  • Majordomo-style email based commands.
  • Multiple list owners and moderators are possible.
  • Support for virtual domains.
  • Runs on GNU/Linux and most Un*x-like systems, compatible with most web servers and browsers, and most SMTP servers. Requires Python 2.1.3 or newer.
  • An extensible mail delivery pipeline.
  • High-performance mail delivery, with a scalable architecture.
16 GNU Mailman: List Manager's Quick Reference Card

This document is intended to serve as a quick reference guide for mail list managers. It will briefly outline some of the more common tasks that are assigned to persons who "own" a list, normally a novice list administrator who only needs to know about a few of Mailman's features. Persons wanting a complete reference for all of Mailman's list administration functions should read the list administrator manual for complete information.

Accessing your list management screen.

When your list was created and you were designated the "owner" by the system administrator you should have received a welcome note informing you that your list was active, telling you the URL to visit for administrative functions, and informing you of your password.

If you did not keep this note, you should be able to find your list's administrative features by going to

http://name.of.listserver/mailman/admin/YourListName

The screen that you access will prompt you for your list administrator's password. Enter it in the blank and then click the button to access your administration screen. If you do not know the password for your list then you will need to contact the system administrator to have it reset. 
Changing maximum message size

Mailman places a limit on the size of message that it will deliver to prevent large messages from disrupting the list server of user mailboxes. In some cases the default value may not be large enough to allow messages and file attachments to pass through in a manner suitable for your list's purpose. To change the limit:

  • Access your list management screen.
  • In the General Options section, near the bottom, locate the field for "Maximum length in Kb of a message body" field. Change the limit to something suitable, or enter 0 for no size limit.
  • Click the "Submit your changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put the changes into effect.

  Removing a user from a list

Mailman allows the list manager to remove an individual from their mail list, but the method is not entirely intuitive.

  • Access your list management screen.
  • In the Membership Management section, find the line with the e-mail address of the individual that you would like to remove.
  • The check mark in the first column by their address, labeled "subscr" indicates that they are subscribed to your list. Uncheck the box by the address that you would like to remove.
  • Click the "Submit your changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put the changes into effect.

  Add a member to your list

Mailman allows a list manager to add people for their mail list, but the method is not intuitively named.

  • Access your list management screen.
  • In the Membership Management section, scroll down to the area labeled "Mass Subscribe Users."
  • Type the address of the individual that you would like to add into the text box. If you would like to add more than one person, enter each address on a separate line.
  • If you would like to send a welcome message to the new members then make sure that the "yes" button is checked. This will send the new members their password and list configuration instructions.
  • Click the "Submit your changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put the changes into effect.

Note: Network etiquette generally frowns on opt-out lists -- adding unsuspecting persons to a list and then telling them that they can leave if they want. Do not use Mailman for unconscionable activities such as sending Spam. 

Keep unwanted persons from joining

Mailman allows you to prevent persons from joining your list without explicit approval of the administrator. To activate this feature:

  • Access your list management screen.
  • In the Privacy Options section look at the second field, labeled "what steps are required for subscription."
  • Set the option to "require approval" or "confirm+approval" and click the "Submit your changes" button at the bottom of the screen.

Future subscription requests will cause Mailman to send you an e-mail message telling you that someone has tried to join your list. Go to the URL in the message and then use the on-screen form to accept or reject their request.

GNU/Mailman Documentation
� 1999, 2000 Christopher Kolar and Aurora University
ckolar@admin.aurora.edu
Modified: Tuesday, February 12, 2008  
17 GNU Mailman List Management Guide v 2.0

  Copyright (c) 1999, 2000 Aurora University, Christopher Kolar. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts specified, and with no Back-Cover Texts specified. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

This document is intended for persons who have the responsibility of managing mail lists that are being run by the GNU Mailman mail list manager. Note that this document is not intended for people who are only list members, and this document is not intended to serve as a technical document that tells system administrators about installing or managing the software. This document instead recognizes that Mailman makes it possible for normal end users to take over responsibility for management of a mail list and attempts to provide them with the information necessary to effectively use the features of Mailman to become self-sufficient in doing so.

 This document attempts to follow the layout of Mailman's management screens as seen by the list manager and are valid for version 2.0. This document is currently being maintained by Christopher Kolar (ckolar@admin.aurora.edu) and is copyright Aurora University.  Please note that an Manager's Quick Reference is available, in operation we have found that it solves about 90% of list owners' problems.  If you are a relatively experienced manager of Mailman lists, take a look at the management differences document to find out what has been changed.

 The most recent version of Mailman is available at www.list.org, where there are also instructions on how to join the highly useful user mail list.

Accessing Management Options

This document assumes that you are the owner (alternately referred to as the list manager, administrator, or moderator). When the list was created and you were assigned ownership of the list you should have received an automatically-generated message letting you know what your administrative password is, as well as directing you to the URLs needed to manage the list through your browser. This document will further assume that you have your list's manager's password, that you know the URL for the management settings, and that you have a table-capable browser (Mailman does not use any Java or JavaScript).

When you access your management settings using your list management page you will be prompted for the password. Once you authenticate to the server you will be shown the General Options page for you list and will also see a listing of the other categories of settings that are available. For all of these categories you will be able to make changes using your browser, but the changes will not go into effect until you go to the bottom of the screen and click the "Submit Your Changes" button. Changes will then be immediately put into effect -- nothing needs to be changed or restarted on the list server itself. 

The remainder of this document will talk about each of the settings as they appear in the configuration categories for your list. Note that each list server is configured with different default settings, so this document does not assume that any particular setting will be the default when you look at your own list.

After you are authenticated by the server, you will be taken into Mailman's General Options screen.  Note that at the top of each of Mailman's configuration screens you will see links to each of the configuration categories.  This document will cover all of the settings in each of the configuration categories.

 General Options

Mailman's general options allow you to specify most of the ways that your mail list will interact with the web server and how it will present itself to the users.  The text in the "setting" should match the settings that you see in v2 of Mailman.  The description content provides a brief description of each setting as well as guidelines for use when appropriate. 

Setting

Description
The public name of this list (make case-changes only). This is the name by which the list will be referred to in all automatically generated messages as well as on the listing of lists available on the server. Note that this name must match the name of the list as it was created -- you may only change the case of the name in this field.
The list admin's email address - having multiple admins/addresses (on separate lines) is ok. This field should contain the e-mail address of the list administrator. The list administrator will receive all administrative messages generated by the server as well as any requests that require approval (postings to moderated lists or requests to subscribe to non-open lists).

Note: the persons listed as administrators do not automatically receive copies of list traffic. If they want to participate in the list they must also add their address as a subscriber.
A terse phrase identifying this list. This phrase will appear in two places: on the general listinfo page showing all of the lists hosted on the server, and in the header of all messages sent through the list itself. This value is best kept short.
An introductory description - a few paragraphs - about the list. It will be included, as html, at the top of the listinfo page. Carriage returns will end a paragraph. This information will be included at the top of the listinfo page for this list. In cases where the listinfo page is used to entice people to join the list you would want to use this setting to provide a detailed description of the purpose and nature of the list.
Prefix for subject line of list postings. This value will be added to the beginning of the subject line of all list traffic in order to help members identify/filter list traffic. By default the value is the name of the list enclosed in [square brackets]. You may modify this value to something other than the name of the list.
List-specific text prepended to new-subscriber welcome message. When new users join your list, or when they are added by the list manager, they receive a note welcoming them to the list and telling them about their password and list-related URLs. Text contained in this box will be prepended to the generic technical information so that you can let them know about specific procedures or protocols related to their participation in the list.
Text sent to people leaving the list. If empty, no special text will be added to the unsubscribe message. This is your last chance to get a word in when people leave your list.

Note: in v2 of Mailman there is no way to prevent persons from leaving a list. If you are running a list where participation is mandatory (such as a course or a list of system users) you may want to include something in this area to let them know that they should not be leaving the list.
Where are replies to list messages directed?  Poster is strongly recommended for most mailing lists. When poster is selected, the reply-to line will be written by Mailman so that persons hitting reply in their mail program will send their response back to the individual who posted the note. When this value is set to "this list" the reply-to line will be rewritten so that persons hitting reply in their mail program will send their response back to the list itself.  When this value is set to "explicit address" the Reply-To header will use the value that is provided in the field below.

While the program suggests that this be set to poster, you should consider the purpose of the list in selecting this value. Lists that intend to focus on discussion are best set to "list" to encourage conversation. Lists used for announcements are best set to poster to prevent unwanted traffic and the inadvertent broadcast of replies.
Explicit Reply-To: header. If the reply-to header is set to "explicit address above," the value in this field will be used in all outgoing list messages.
(Administrivia filter) Check postings and intercept ones that seem to be administrative requests? If you activate this feature Mailman will check traffic for administrative requests that have inadvertently been sent to the list. This will prevent the classic case of a user sending a note to the entire list membership saying "unsubscribe."
Send password reminders to, eg, "-owner" address instead of directly to user. This is a setting that Mailman refers to internally as the "umbrella list" setting. If your list does not actually consist of people but instead of lists (so that messages cascade from this "umbrella" down into the constituent lists) then you want this setting to be yes. This means that the password and subscription information will not be sent to all of the members of the constituent list, but instead to the list owner alone.
Suffix for use when this list is an umbrella for other lists, according to setting of previous "umbrella_list" setting. When using your list as an umbrella list as mentioned above, this setting is what will be used to specify who the owners of the constituent lists are. While -owner is not universal, it will cover the conventions used by most of the mail list managers that are used today (and will work with Mailman lists).
Send monthly password reminders or no? Overrides the previous option. When set to yes, list members will receive an automatically generated monthly posting reminding them of their password as well as the URLs to access their list configuration options. This will save you're a lot of time as administrator as it will let users solve a lot of their own problems.
Send welcome message when people subscribe? When set to yes people who join the list or who are added by the list administrator will receive an automatically generated welcome message with information including the list address, their password, and the URLs needed to access their list preferences.
Should administrator get immediate notice of new requests, as well as daily notices about collected ones? This setting dictates the frequency with which the list administrator is told of pending administrative requests: either notes awaiting moderator approval or subscription request for controlled lists. By default the server will send a daily reminder of the pending requests. If the list owner would like more immediate notification then they should check "yes" here for immediate notice of each request.

The notification that you receive will include a URL that will take you to the pending administrative requests page detailed near the end of this document.
Should administrator get notices of subscribes/unsubscribes? Because list membership is checked easily through the web, the list manager may not feel that it is necessary to know of all of the comings and goings of list members (especially on large lists with a lot of turnover). Saying yes here will tell Mailman to send a short note to the list manager for each person that is added or removed from the list.

Note: Mailman does not currently let the list manager block persons from leaving the list. If you are running a list for something like a course or committee, where participation is mandatory, make sure to have this set this to "yes" so you will be informed of unauthorized departures.

Note: If you are migrating large lists over to Mailman, or if you are creating new lists using the mass subscribe feature, you may want to deactivate this initially so that the manager is not flooded with innumerable subscribe notices.
Send mail to poster when their posting is held for approval? Setting this option to yes will send a short "we have your message and it is awaiting approval" note to persons whose postings are being held for approval. This is a useful "courtesy" and will help people on moderated lists from wondering why their note never showed up.  This message will also be sent to non-members who attempt to post to lists that allow posting for members only.
Maximum length in Kb of a message body. Use 0 for no limit. This setting will allow you to specify the maximum size of messages allowed to be passed through the list to the subscribers. This is an important security measure as it allows you to block a malicious poster from bombing everyone's list with a large file and it prevents your server from being tied up delivering inappropriately large messages.

If you do not wish to have a limit on the size of message, set this value to 0.
Host name this list prefers. For multi-home hosts (systems that have different aliases) this would be the value that Mailman uses to identify itself. You should not attempt to modify this value without consulting your system administrator or Mailman may cease to work.
Base URL for Mailman web interface. This is the base portion of the Mailman URL that will be prepended to all of the pointers to specific web features. You should not attempt to modify this value without consulting your system administrator or Mailman may cease to work.

 Membership Management

The membership management section allows you to do two things: add/remove users from your list, or adjust custom user settings.

Adding and Removing Members

The addition and removal of members is done thought the membership management screen. When you access this screen you will be shown a table listing all of your subscribers as well as their current member settings. Through this screen Mailman allows the list manager to remove an individual from their mail list, but the method is not entirely intuitive.

Find the line with the e-mail address of the individual that you would like to remove.

  1. The check mark in the first column by the user address, labeled "subscr" indicates that user is subscribed to your list. Uncheck the box by the address that you would like to remove.
  2. Click the "Submit your changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put the changes into effect.

Mailman allows a list manager to add people for their mail list through this screen, but the method is not intuitively named.

  1. Scroll down to the area labeled "Mass Subscribe Users."
  2. Type the e-mail address of the individual that you would like to add into the text box. If you would like to add more than one person then each address should be entered on a separate line.
  3. If you would like to send a welcome message to the new members then make sure that the "yes" button is checked. This will send the new members their passwords and list configuration instructions.
  4. Click the "Submit your changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put the changes into effect.

Note: You will almost always want to send new subscribers the welcome message so that they have their password and the information necessary to customize their configuration.

Note: Network etiquette generally frowns on opt-out lists apart from their common use within an organization for official communications and notices -- adding unsuspecting persons to a list and then telling them that they can leave if they want. Do not use Mailman for unconscionable activities such as sending Spam.

Subscriber Options

In the main table each participants address is shown along with the current options for that user's list settings. As list administrator you have the capability to modify any of the options for each of your subscribers. Modifications are made by checking or unchecking the boxes for each feature on the row corresponding to the subscriber's settings that you wish to change. After making the modifications you need to click the "Submit Your Changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put them into effect.  Note that because these settings are user configurable not all users may have the same settings when you look at this page.  Do not be alarmed, it simply means that they have taken the time to modify their settings.

Setting    

Values
subscr This setting indicates whether or not the member is subscribed. If you uncheck this box and then submit the changes on this page the user will be removed from the list.
hide As a privacy feature, Mailman allows subscribers to make themselves invisible to others as part of the web-based e-mail subscriber list. A check here indicates that the person will not appear to others as a member of the list. This setting does not affect the ability of the list manager to see the subscriber on the list management page.
nomail Users may disable mail delivery if, for example, they are going to be away from their mail but do not want to unsubscribe.

Mailman's bounce feature may also set a user to nomail status if mail to their address experiences delivery problems.  See the section on bounce handling for more information.
ack Members may request that Mailman send a short acknowledgement when a they post a message to the list. Members find this useful for moderated lists so that they know that their posting was delivered to the moderator successfully.
not metoo In the event that members find their own posts annoying, they can tell Mailman not to include them in the delivery of their own postings to the list.
digest If the digest feature has been activated for the list, members may choose to receive list traffic bundled as a single large message as opposed to receiving individual messages. This setting indicates whether the member will receive individual posts or the digest.
plain When a user opts for digest delivery, this setting indicates whether the digest will be delivered as plain text or in MIME format. Most users of modern, GUI-based mail clients can handle MIME traffic with no problems. Persons using character-based mail clients should opt for plain-text digests.

  Privacy Options

Mailman was created with the privacy shortcomings of other lists in mind. There are a number of manager-configurable settings that can help in preventing spam, subscription abuse, and widespread disclosure of list traffic to non-subscribers.

Subscribing

Description

Value
Advertise this list when people ask what lists are on this machine? In general, persons in the outside world can see a list of available Mailman lists by visiting http://name.of.host/mailman/listinfo

By setting this value to "no," this list will not be included in the directory of available lists.
What steps are required for subscription? Confirm: when a subscription request is made a message will be sent back to the address being added. The new member will have to reply to the message (without having to modify anything) for their subscription to become active. This prevents someone from maliciously adding people against their will.

Require Approval: when a subscription request is made a note will be sent to the list administrator letting them know that a person is petitioning to join. The list administrator will be given a URL to follow that will then show them the request and allow them to approve or deny it via the web.

Confirm+Approval: includes both of the above.

 

Membership exposure

Description

Value
Who can view subscription list? This setting dictates access to the subscription list via the web.

Anyone: this allows anyone in the world to browse by and take a look at who the members of your list are. Never ever use this setting unless you are trying to say "I have contempt for all of my list members and hope that they get spammed out of their minds."

List members: this is the traditional setting for most lists, allowing participants to see who the other people on the list are but blocking view to the general public. This settings can be overridden by individual users who have set the "hide" option for their account.

List admin only: only the administrator can see the list members.
Show member addrs so they're not directly recognizable as email addrs? This is a nice feature that discourages theft of lists: the membership list does not show actually addresses but instead shows participants as "username at foo.com". This should block most harvesters if they manage to get through to the listing.

18  General posting filters

Mailman allows you a good deal of control over who may and may not post to the list. Because there is a bit of good old-fashioned logic involved some people may be confused by these settings. Please see the chart following the descriptions of the settings for an illustration of how these settings work in concert.

Description

Value
Must posts be approved by an administrator? This settings defines the list as "moderated" or "unmoderated" in most people's minds. If set to yes, postings are held and the administrator is notified of their existence. They may then approve or reject postings via the web interface. If set to "no," postings to the list are immediately delivered to list membership.
Restrict posting privilege to list members? (member_posting_only) Under nearly all circumstances this should be set to "yes." This restriction will cause Mailman to hold for administrative review all posts to the list that do not originate from a list member. Setting this to yes prevents you from being spammed by people who manage to get a hold of your list address.

Note: there is a use to setting this to no, see the chart below.
Addresses of members accepted for posting to this list without implicit approval requirement. This settings can be used to designate posting privileges to persons who are not subscribers to the list. It may also be used to specify persons who are exclusively allowed to post. Please see the chart below for explanation.

19  Posting privileges explained

The posting privileges settings outlined above actually interact with one another. This chart will help to explain their use so that you can optimally configure your posting privileges. Each box shows who may post for each of the configurations.

Who is allowed to post? Posting restricted to list members?
Yes No
Are there implicitly approved people? Yes List members and individuals listed. Only listed persons may post.
No List members only. Anyone in the universe.

  Spam-specific posting filters

Value

Description
Must posts have list named in destination (to, cc) field (or be among the acceptable alias names, specified below)? This prevents the list from being used as part of a BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) spam.
Alias names (regexps) which qualify as explicit to or cc destination names for this list. Helps Mailman make allowances for mail systems that do not substitute the address for alias or for mail servers where list address receives mail from an alias with a different name.
Ceiling on acceptable number of recipients for a posting. Prevents the list from being used as part of a mass recipient spam. Also discourages use of list as recipient of office jokecast notes and bogus solicitations.
Addresses whose postings are always held for approval. Allows manager to designate special special individuals whose postings are always held for approval while when postings are otherwise allowed through.
Hold posts with header value matching a specified regexp. Allows you to filter out known addresses or domains that function primarily as spam providers.
Hide the sender of a message, replacing it with the list address (Removes From, Sender and Reply-To fields) This tells Mailman to rewrite the header so that traffic appears to be coming from the list itself instead of the original poster. Provides some added privacy for posters, but may be annoying to some list members as mailbox headers show only the list name instead of the actual poster.

20 Regular Member Options

These are options that affect the normal mail traffic that is delivered immediately and individually to list members.

Setting

Description
Can subscribers choose to receive mail immediately, rather than in batched digests? While this seems a bit silly, it is really asking about what options are available to list members. If you say no, then subscription to the list will be available only as a digest.
Header added to mail sent to regular list members. Allows you to add a uniform header to all notes passing through the list.
Footer added to mail sent to regular list members. Allows you to add a uniform footer to all notes passing through the list. The default footer shows the list name, the list address, and the URL that persons can go to in order to access the list information and change their settings.

Note: including this footer information will cut down on the number of times list users will have to contact the list administrator asking for things such as their configuration access information and the like.

 21 Digest Options

These options affect the way that the list will process messages that are to be delivered to subscribers in the form of a digest. Unlike other mail list managers, the digest feature of Mailman is built into the package and it easy to activate and configure.

Setting

Description
Can list members choose to receive list traffic bunched in digests? This setting allows you to specify whether or not users can opt to receive mail traffic to the list in the form of a digest.

Note: There are some instances, such as a list for emergency announcements, where you want mail to be delivered immediately in all cases and where you would want to disable the digest feature.
Which delivery mode is the default for new users? This setting specifies whether new users added by the list manager default to regular or digest delivery. Users adding themselves to the list via the listinfo page are given the option to choose for themselves: the options selected here is what will be chosen for them as a default.
When receiving digests, which format is default. Regular will cause Mailman to send plain text digests.  When MIME is selected, the digest message will be sent as a multipart MIME message as appropriate for the content that the message contains.
How big in Kb should a digest be before it gets sent out? Mailman will collect list traffic until this threshold is reached, then it will deliver the digest to users. This setting is useful in preventing digests from containing so many messages that the reader becomes disoriented.
Should a digest be dispatched daily when the size threshold isn't reached? When installed, Mailman is set to run a daily maintenance script. If you check yes for this option Mailman will send a digest at the specified time even though the size threshold has not been reached. This is a good idea for low traffic lists that may take some time in reaching the threshold.

Note: By default, the daily dispatch time is noon (server time). If you want to be sure of the time that your daily dispatch goes out ask the system administrator of your system.
Header added to every digest. Allows you to add a uniform header to all digests passing through the list.
Footer added to every digest. Allows you to add a uniform footer to all digests passing through the list. The default footer shows the list name, the list address, and the URL that persons can go to in order to access the list information and change their settings.

Note: including this footer information will cut down on the number of times list users will have to contact the list administrator asking for things such as their configuration access information and the like.

   22 Bounce Options

Unlike many other mail list managers, Mailman includes built-in bounce handlers to help the list manager deal with address that have delivery problems.  If you run large lists with dynamic membership then these settings may save you a lot of time in helping to weed out addresses that go bad.

Value

Description
Try to figure out error messages automatically? Tells Mailman whether or not to bother you with bounce messages. Mailman does a pretty good job of figuring out error messages generated with RFC-compliant mail agents. On large lists with a large number of subscribers coming and going, this feature will save you a lot of reading from MAILER-DAEMON.
Minimum number of days an address has been non-fatally bad before we take action. In the even that there is a problem reaching a host or domain, this setting tells Mailman how long to hold onto the delivery error messages before taking action. In practice, this is a good way of preventing persons from getting bounced just because their network is flaky and not reliably reachable.
Minimum number of posts to the list since members first bounce before we consider removing them from the list. This amounts to telling Mailman how many times to try someone before giving up.
Maximum number of messages your list gets in an hour. Mailman uses this guesstimate to help figure out some of the characteristics of the bounce notifications that it receives. Give this setting your best shot.
Action when critical or excessive bounces are detected. This setting tells Mailman what to do when one of the above conditions are met, or when a "fatal" error is recorded attempting to deliver to an address.

Do nothing: Mailman will keep attempting to deliver to the address despite the futility of the effort -- this setting in effect disable automatic bounce handling.

Disable and notify: Mailman set the problem account to "nomail" status and notifies you of the problem.

Disable and DON'T notify: sets problem account to "nomail" status but doesn't bother you with the details.

Remove and notify me: removes the problem account from the list and sends a note to the list manager.

  23 Archival Options

Unlike other mail list managers, Mailman has a built-in archival feature that is easily activated and configured by the list manager.

Value

Description
Archive messages? Setting this to "yes" will cause Mailman to store a record of all traffic sent thorough the list.
Is archive file source for public or private archival? If set to "private," then only list members are able to access the contents of the list archive. They will be prompted for their list password when the try to access the contents. Setting this to "public" will allow anyone to access the list archives through the listinfo page.

Note: think carefully about whether your list membership wants their identities and postings made available to the world at large by making the archive public.  Public access means that web spiders will be able to store and make available member's writings outside of the context of the list to which they were posted to the list.
Set date in archive to when the mail is claimed to have been sent, or to the time we resend it? Determines whether the message is stored with the time stamp of the sender when the note was sent, or the time stamp at the time it was approved by the moderator (when applicable).
How often should a new archive volume be started? The main archive screen for a list breaks down the archive content based on this setting. There is no best setting here, only what is most appropriate based on the list's function and the amount of traffic that it receives.

  24 Mail-News and News-Mail Gateway Settings

In the event that you find it useful to gate your list traffic onto USENET, you can use these settings to set up the service. Note that you may need to talk to your system or network administrator to make sure that your news server will work nicely with this list gateway.

Value

Description
The Internet address of the machine your News server is running on. This is the host name of your NNTP server. If in doubt, contact your system administrator for this setting. Make sure to use a host that you have permission to post to.
The name of the Usenet group to gateway to and/or from. Make sure that this newsgroup is available on your news server.
Should posts to the mailing list be resent to the newsgroup? Specifies whether messages sent to the list should be sent to the news group for the entire world to see.
Should newsgroup posts not sent from the list be resent to the list? Specifies whether or not messages posted by people out there in the world who are not members of the list should be gated and distributed to list members.
Should mailman perform a catchup on the newsgroup? This setting tells Mailman to begin gating the newsgroup content to the mail list beginning at the moment that the setting is evoked.  Saying yes will effectively mark all of the previous news postings are having been read, and Mailman will ignore previous postings to the group.

  25 Auto-Responder

A new feature in Mailman v2 is the inclusion of Auto-responder functionality.  This feature allows a list administrator to specify that automated responses be sent in a number of different circumstances.  The top of this screen shows a number of strings that can be inserted into the response text in order to craft responses with text that is specific to the list that is using the auto-responder. 

Value

Description
Should Mailman send an auto-response to mail list posters? If yes, then Mailman will automatically send the response text (entered below) or a specified attachment to persons sending mail to the list address.  This may be useful, for example, in sending FAQs or list participation guidelines to senders. 
Auto-response text to send to mail list posters. This field contains the text that is mailed to all posters to the list address when the auto-response feature is turned on for the list address.  If you would prefer to send a file as the automatic response, you should specify and upload the file using the field below the text box.
Should Mailman send an auto-response to email sent to the -admin and -owner addresses? This setting allows you to specify auto response actions to be taken if you would like to have replies sent to the list owner/administrator.
Auto-response text to send to -admin and -owner emails. This field contains the text that is mailed to all posters to the list address when the auto-response feature is turned on for the list -admin and -owner addresses..  If you would prefer to send a file as the automatic response, you should specify and upload the file using the field below the text box.
Should Mailman send an auto-response to emails sent to the -request address?  If you choose yes, decide whether you want Mailman to discard the original email, or forward it on to the system as a normal mail command. Version 2 of Mailman allows you to intercept mail traffic sent to a list's administrative address.  In addition to sending an automated response, you may also specify whether the system will discard the message or forward it along to the administrative command handler.  This may be useful in informing users about list use or enforcing membership rules.
Auto-response text to send to -request emails. This field contains the text that is mailed to all posters to the list address when the auto-response feature is turned on for the list -request addresses..  If you would prefer to send a file as the automatic response, you should specify and upload the file using the field below the text box.
Number of days between auto-responses to either the mailing list or -admin/-owner address from the same poster.  Set to zero (or negative) for no grace period (i.e. auto-respond to every message). This setting allows you to determine the frequency with which people will receive auto responses send to auto-responder active addresses.  Setting this value to zero means that a response will be sent for every posting to the active address, otherwise additional responses will not be sent to a given user until the number of days specified by this field have passed.

 26 Other Administrative Activities

In addition to the web-based access to list settings, Mailman provides three links at the top of each administrative page for "other" activities.

Tend to pending administrative requests.

There are primarily three instances when you will need to tend to administrative requests.  Whether the administrator is notified immediately for each request or just once per day is dictated by the switch in Mailman's general settings section.  Note that if you have multiple requests pending you can work your way down the page clicking the appropriate action for each request before submitting them all at once.  You do not need to click on the submit action on this page after answering individual requests.

1.  When a posting is held because it was posted by a non-member.  If you are running a list on which only members can post, items that are being held for review will appear in this section for your review.  As the list administrator you have four actions available on this screen.

  • Defer the posting, leaving it for a later time or for another list administrator to look at.
  • Approve the posting and forward it to list members.
  • Reject the posting: the original poster will be sent notification of the rejection along with the explanation that appears in the message box on this screen.  You may customize the message as you see fit or leave it empty.
  • Discard the message with no notification sent to the poster.  This is particularly useful for spam. 

27When choosing the action you will have two additional options:

  • Preserve message for site administrator: this will keep a copy of the message in the admin requests section even if you choose an action other than defer.
  • Additionally forward this message to: allows you to take action on the note and forward a copy of it to another person.

2.  When you operate a moderated list, you will use this feature to accept or reject postings following the same guidelines as for non-members postings above.

3.  When you operate a list where subscription requires administrator approval, user petitions to join will be listed on this page.  You should click accept or deny as appropriate.

Go to the general list information page.

Following this link takes you to the list's "public" information page.  This is the page that your subscribers use to log in and modify their settings, it is also the gateway to the list archive.

28 Edit the HTML for the public list pages.

Mailman allows you to customize the look and feel for many of the pages that are accessible by your list subscribers.  This is nice if you want to take the time to "brand" web pages.  The following pages can be customized:

  • The general list information page
  • The subscriptions results page
  • The user specific options page
  • The changing user options results page

When you follow the link to a particular page you are shown the source HTML in a browser window.  In order to make modification you will need to know how to write raw HTML code and insert it in the proper places in the page source.  It is important to note that within the source there are embedded Mailman fields that are inserter on-the-fly when the user loads the page.  You can identify the Mailman fields because they are enclosed in angle brackets and are of the form
    <MM-Field-Name>  

It is suggested that you not make modifications to the Mailman field tags unless you are an advanced user who understands the implications of modifying or removing these fields.

GNU Free Documentation License

29 GNU Mailman - List Administration Manual

Barry A. Warsaw

Release 2.1
September 12, 2007
30 Front Matter

Abstract:

This document describes the list administrator's interface for GNU Mailman 2.1. It contains information a list owner would need to configure their list, either through the web interface or through email. It also covers the moderator's interface for approving held messages and subscription notices, and the web interface for creating new mailing lists. In general, it does not cover the command line interface to Mailman, installing Mailman, or interacting with Mailman from the point of view of the user. That information is covered in other manuals.

2.4 The Membership Management Category

The Membership Management category is unlike the other administrative categories. It doesn't contain configuration variables or list settings. Instead, it presents a number of pages that allow you to manage the membership of you list. This includes pages for subscribing and unsubscribing members, and for searching for members, and for changing various member-specific settings.

More details on membership management are described in the Membership Management section.

31 1.1 A List's Email Addresses

Every mailing list has a set of email addresses that messages can be sent to. There's always one address for posting messages to the list, one address that bounces will be sent to, and addresses for processing email commands. For example, for a mailing list called mylist@example.com, you'd find these addresses:

  • mylist@example.com - this is the email address people should use for new postings to the list.
  • mylist-join@example.com - by sending a message to this address, a new member can request subscription to the list. Both the Subject: header and body of such a message are ignored. Note that mylist-subscribe@example.com is an alias for the -join address.
  • mylist-leave@example.com - by sending a message to this address, a member can request unsubscription from the list. As with the -join address, the Subject: header and body of the message is ignored. Note that mylist-unsubscribe@example.com is an alias for the -leave address.
  • mylist-owner@example.com - This address reaches the list owner and list moderators directly.
  • mylist-request@example.com - This address reaches a mail robot which processes email commands that can be used to set member subscription options, as well as process other commands.
  • mylist-bounces@example.com - This address receives bounces from members who's addresses have become either temporarily or permanently inactive. The -bounces address is also a mail robot that processes bounces and automatically disables or removes members as configured in the bounce processing settings. Any bounce messages that are either unrecognized, or do not seem to contain member addresses, are forwarded to the list administrators.
  • mylist-confirm@example.com - This address is another email robot, which processes confirmation messages for subscription and unsubscription requests.

There's also an -admin address which also reaches the list administrators, but this address only exists for compatibility with older versions of Mailman.

32  1.3 A List's Web Pages

Every mailing list is also accessible by a number of web pages. Note that the exact urls is configurable by the site administrator, so they may be different than what's described below. We'll describe the most common default configuration, but check with your site administrator or hosting service for details.

Mailman provides a set of web pages that list members use to get information about the list, or manage their membership options. There are also list archive pages, for browsing an online web-based archive of the list traffic. These are described in more detail in the GNU Mailman user's manual.

Mailman also provides a set of pages for configuring an individual list, as well as a set of pages for disposing of posting and subscription requests.

For a mailing list called mylist hosted at the domain lists.example.com, you would typically access the administrative pages by going to http://lists.example.com/mailman/admin/mylist. The first time you visit this page, you will be presented with a login page, asking for the list owner's password. When you enter the password, Mailman will store a session cookie in your browser, so you don't have to re-authenticate for every action you want to take. This cookie is stored only until you exit your browser.

To access the administrative requests page, you'd visit http://lists.example.com/mailman/admindb/mylist (note the admindb url as opposed to the admin url). Again, the first time you visit this page, you'll be presented with a login page, on which you can enter either the list moderator password or the list owner password. Again, a session cookie is dropped in your browser. Note also that if you've previously logged in as the list owner, you do not need to re-login to access the administrative requests page.

33   1.4 Basic Architectural Overview

This section will outline the basic architecture of GNU Mailman, such as how messages are processed by the sytem. Without going into lots of detail, this information will help you understand how the configuration options control Mailman's functionality.

When mail enters the system from your mail server, it is dropped into one of several Mailman queues depending on the address the message was sent to. For example, if your system has a mailing list named mylist and your domain is example.com, people can post messages to your list by sending them to mylist@example.com. These messages will be dropped into the incoming queue, which is also colloquially called the moderate-and-munge queue. The incoming queue is where most of the approval process occurs, and it's also where the message is prepared for sending out to the list membership.

There are separate queues for the built-in archiver, the bounce processor, the email command processor, as well as the outgoing email and news queues. There's also a queue for messages generated by the Mailman system. Each of these queues typically has one queue runner (or ``qrunner'') that processes messages in the queue. The qrunners are idle when there are no messages to process.

Every message in the queues are represented by two files, a message file and a metadata file. Both of these files share the same base name, which is a combination of a unique hash and the Unix time that the message was received. The metadata file has a suffix of .db and the message file has a suffix of either .msg if stored in plain text, or .pck if stored in a more efficient internal representation1.

As a message moves through the incoming queue, it performs various checks on the message, such as whether it matches one of the moderation criteria, or contains disallowed MIME types. Once a message is approved for sending to the list membership, the message is prepared for sending by deleting, adding, or changing message headers, adding footers, etc. Messages in the incoming queue may also be stored for appending to digests. 

34  1.4 Basic Architectural Overview

This section will outline the basic architecture of GNU Mailman, such as how messages are processed by the sytem. Without going into lots of detail, this information will help you understand how the configuration options control Mailman's functionality.

When mail enters the system from your mail server, it is dropped into one of several Mailman queues depending on the address the message was sent to. For example, if your system has a mailing list named mylist and your domain is example.com, people can post messages to your list by sending them to mylist@example.com. These messages will be dropped into the incoming queue, which is also colloquially called the moderate-and-munge queue. The incoming queue is where most of the approval process occurs, and it's also where the message is prepared for sending out to the list membership.

There are separate queues for the built-in archiver, the bounce processor, the email command processor, as well as the outgoing email and news queues. There's also a queue for messages generated by the Mailman system. Each of these queues typically has one queue runner (or ``qrunner'') that processes messages in the queue. The qrunners are idle when there are no messages to process.

Every message in the queues are represented by two files, a message file and a metadata file. Both of these files share the same base name, which is a combination of a unique hash and the Unix time that the message was received. The metadata file has a suffix of .db and the message file has a suffix of either .msg if stored in plain text, or .pck if stored in a more efficient internal representation1.

As a message moves through the incoming queue, it performs various checks on the message, such as whether it matches one of the moderation criteria, or contains disallowed MIME types. Once a message is approved for sending to the list membership, the message is prepared for sending by deleting, adding, or changing message headers, adding footers, etc. Messages in the incoming queue may also be stored for appending to digests.

SCAN DOWN FOR 2.1 The General Options Category and Beyond.

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35    2.1 The General Options Category

The General Options category is where you can set a variety of variables that affect basic behavior and public information. In the descriptions that follow, the variable name is given first, along with an overview and a description of what that variable controls.

Subsections

  • 2.1.1 General list personality

    These variables, grouped under the general list personality section, control some public information about the mailing list.

    real_name
    Every mailing list has both a posting name and a real name. The posting name shows up in urls and in email addresses, e.g. the mylist in mylist@example.com. The posting name is always presented in lower case, with alphanumeric characters and no spaces. The list's real name is used in some public information and email responses, such as in the general list overview. The real name can differ from the posting name by case only. For example, if the posting name is mylist, the real name can be Posting.
    owner
    This variable contains a list of email addresses, one address per line, of the list owners. These addresses are used whenever the list owners need to be contacted, either by the system or by end users. Often, these addresses are used in combination with the moderator addresses (see below).
    moderator
    This variable contains a list of email addresses, one address per line, of the list moderators. These addresses are often used in combination with the owner addresses. For example, when you email mylist-owner@example.com, both the owner and moderator addresses will receive a copy of the message.
    description
    In the general list overview page, which shows you every available mailing list, each list is displayed with a short description. The contents of this variable is that description. Note that in emails from the mailing list, this description is also used in the comment section of the To: address. This text should be relatively short and no longer than one line.
    info
    This variable contains a longer description of the mailing list. It is included at the top of the list's information page, and it can contain HTML. However, blank lines will be automatically converted into paragraph breaks. Preview your HTML though, because unclosed or invalid HTML can prevent display of parts of the list information page.
    subject_prefix
    This is a string that will be prepended to the Subject: header of any message posted to the list. For example, if a message is posted to the list with a Subject: like: 
        Subject: This is a message

    and the subject_prefix is [My List] (note the trailing space!), then the message will be received like so: 

        Subject: [My List] This is a message

    If you leave subject_prefix empty, no prefix will be added to the Subject:. Mailman is careful not to add a prefix when the header already has one, as is the case in replies for example. The prefix can also contain characters in the list's preferred language. In this case, because of vagarities of the email standards, you may or may not want to add a trailing space.

    anonymous_list
    This variable allows you to turn on some simple anonymizing features of Mailman. When you set this option to Yes, Mailman will remove or replace the From:, Sender:, and Reply-To: fields of any message posted to the list.

    Note that this option is simply an aid for anonymization, it doesn't guarantee it. For example, a poster's identity could be evident in their signature, or in other mail headers, or even in the style of the content of the message. There's little Mailman can do about this kind of identity leakage.

  • 2.1.2 Reply-To header munging

    This section controls what happens to the Reply-To: headers of messages posted through your list.

    Beware! Reply-To: munging is considered a religious issue and the policies you set here can ignite some of the most heated off-topic flame wars on your mailing lists. We'll try to stay as agnostic as possible, but our biases may still peak through.

    Reply-To: is a header that is commonly used to redirect replies to messages. Exactly what happens when your uses reply to such a message depends on the mail readers your users use, and what functions they provide. Usually, there is both a ``reply to sender'' button and a ``reply to all'' button. If people use these buttons correctly, you will probably never need to munge Reply-To:, so the default values should be fine.

    Since an informed decision is always best, here are links to two articles that discuss the opposing viewpoints in great detail:

    The three options in this section work together to provide enough flexibility to do whatever Reply-To: munging you might (misguidingly :) feel you need to do.

    first_strip_reply_to
    This variable controls whether any Reply-To: header already present in the posted message should get removed before any other munging occurs. Stripping this header will be done regardless of whether or not Mailman will add its own Reply-To: header to the message.

    If this option is set to No, then any existing Reply-To: header will be retained in the posted message. If Mailman adds its own header, it will contain addresses which are the union of the original header and the Mailman added addresses. The mail standards specify that a message may only have one Reply-To: header, but that that header may contain multiple addresses.

    reply_goes_to_list
    This variable controls whether Mailman will add its own Reply-To: header, and if so, what the value of that header will be (not counting original header stripping - see above).

    When you set this variable to Poster, no additional Reply-To: header will be added by Mailman. This setting is strongly recommended.

    When you set this variable to This list, a Reply-To: header pointing back to your list's posting address will be added.

    When you set this variable to Explicit address, the value of the variable reply_to_address (see below) will be added. Note that this is one situation where Reply-To: munging may have a legitimate purpose. Say you have two lists at your site, an announce list and a discussion list. The announce list might allow postings only from a small number of approved users; the general list membership probably can't post to this list. But you want to allow comments on announcements to be posted to the general discussion list by any list member. In this case, you can set the Reply-To: header for the announce list to point to the discussion list's posting address.

    reply_to_address
    This is the address that will be added in the Reply-To: header if reply_goes_to_list is set to Explicit address.

  • 2.1.3 Umbrella list settings

    TBD. Note that umbrella lists are deprecated and will be replace with a better mechanism for Mailman 3.0.

  • 2.1.4 Notifications

    Mailman sends notifications to the list administrators or list members under a number of different circumstances. Most of these notifications can be configured in this section, but see the Bounce Processing and Auto-responder categories for other notifications that Mailman can send.

    send_reminders
    By default Mailman sends all list members a monthly password reminder. This notice serves two purposes. First, it reminds people about all the lists they may be subscribed to on this domain, including the lists where their subscription may be disabled. Second, it reminds people about their passwords for these lists, as well as the url for their personal options pages, so that they can more easily configure their subscription options.

    Some people get annoyed with these monthly reminders, and they can disable the reminders via their subscription options page. For some lists, the monthly reminders aren't appropriate for any of the members, so you can disable them list-wide by setting the send_reminders variable to No.

    welcome_msg
    When new members are subscribed to the list, either by their own action, or the action of a list administrator, a welcome message can be sent to them. The welcome message contains some common boilerplate information, such as the name of the list, instructions for posting to the list, and the member's subscription password. You can add additional information to the welcome message by typing the text into the welcome_msg text box. Note that because this text is sent as part of an email, it should not contain HTML.
    send_welcome_msg
    This flag controls whether or not the welcome message is sent to new subscribers.
    goodbye_msg
    Like the welcome_msg, a ``goodbye'' message can be sent to members when they unsubscribe from the list. Unlike the welcome message, there's no boilerplate for the goodbye message. Enter the entire goodbye message you'd like unsubscribing members to receive into the goodbye_msg text box.
    send_goodbye_msg
    This flag controls whether or not the goodbye message is sent to unsubscribing members.
    admin_immed_notify
    List moderators get notifications of pending administrative actions, such as subscription or unsubscription requests that require moderator approval, or posted messages that are being held for moderator approval. List moderators will always get a daily summary of such pending requests, but they can also get immediate notifications when such a request is made. The admin_immed_notify variable controls whether these immediate notifications are sent or not. It's generally a good idea to leave this set to Yes.
    admin_notify_mchanges
    This variable controls whether the list administrators should get notifications when members join or leave the list.
    respond_to_post_requests
    This variable controls whether the original sender of a posting gets a notice when their message is held for moderator approval.

  • 2.1.5 Additional settings

    This section contains some miscellaneous settings for your mailing list.

    emergency
    When this option is enabled, all list traffic is emergency moderated, i.e. held for moderation. Turn this option on when your list is experiencing a flamewar and you want a cooling off period.
    new_member_options
    Each member has a set of subscription options which they can use to control how they receive messages and otherwise interact with the list. While the members can change these settings by logging into their personal options page, you might want to set the default for a number of the member options. You can do that with this variable, but see also the other categories for other member defaults you can set.

    This variable presents a set of checkboxes which control the defaults for some of the member options. Conceal the member's address specifies whether or not the address is displayed in the list roster. Acknowledge the member's posting controls whether or not Mailman sends an acknowledgement to a member when they post a message to the list. Do not send a copy of a member's own post specifies whether a member posting to the list will get a copy of their own posting. Filter out duplicate messages to list members (if possible) specifies whether members who are explicitly listed as a recipient of a message (e.g. via the Cc: header) will also get a copy from Mailman.

    Of course, members can always override these defaults by making changes on their membership options page.

    administrivia
    This option specifies whether Mailman will search posted messages for admimistrivia, in other words, email commands which usually should be posted to the -request address for the list. Setting this to Yes helps prevent such things as unsubscribe messages getting erroneously posted to the list. If a message seems to contain administrivia, it is held for moderator approval.
    max_message_size
    This option specifies a maximum message size, in kilobytes, over which the message will be held for moderator approval.
    host_name
    This option specifies the host name part of email addresses used by this list. For example, this is the example.com part of the posting address mylist@example.com.

    It's generally not a good idea to change this value, since its default value is specified when the mailing list is created. Changing this to an incorrect value could make it difficult to contact your mailing list. Also not that the url used to visit the list's pages is not configurable through the web interface. This is because if you messed it up, you'd have to have the site administrator fix it.

     

    include_rfc2369_headers
    RFC 2369 is an internet standard that describes a bunch of headers that mailing list managers should add to messages to make it easier for people to interact with the list. Mail reading programs which support this standard may provide buttons for easy access to the list's archives, or for subscribing and unsubscribing to the list. It's generally a good idea to enable these headers as it provides for an improved user experience. These headers are often called the List-* headers.

    However, not all mail readers are standards compliant yet, and if you have a large number of members who are using non-compliant mail readers, they may be annoyed at these headers. You should first try to educate your members as to why these headers exist, and how to hide them in their mail clients. As a last resort you can disable these headers, but this is not recommended.

    include_list_post_header
    The List-Post: header is one of the headers recommended by RFC 2369. However for some announce-only mailing lists, only a very select group of people are allowed to post to the list; the general membership is usually not allowed to post to such lists. For lists of this nature, the List-Post: header is misleading. Select No to disable the inclusion of this header. (This does not affect the inclusion of the other List-* headers.)

36    2.2 The Passwords Category

As mentioned above, there are two primary administrative roles for mailing lists. In this category you can specify the password for these roles.

The list owner has total control over the configuration of their mailing list (within some bounds as specified by the site administrator). Note that on this page, for historical reasons, the list owner role is described here as the list administrator. You can set the list owner's password by entering it in the password field on the left. You must type it twice for confirmation. Note that if you forget this password, the only way for you to get back into your list's administrative pages is to ask the site administrator to reset it for you (there's no password reminders for list owners).

If you want to delegate list moderation to someone else, you can enter a different moderator password in the field on the right (typed twice for confirmation). Note that if you aren't going to delegate moderation, and the same people are going to both configure the list and moderate postings to the list, don't enter anything into the moderator password fields. If you do enter a separate moderator password, be sure to fill in the moderator variable in the General options category page.

37   2.4 The Membership Management Category

The Membership Management category is unlike the other administrative categories. It doesn't contain configuration variables or list settings. Instead, it presents a number of pages that allow you to manage the membership of you list. This includes pages for subscribing and unsubscribing members, and for searching for members, and for changing various member-specific settings.

More details on membership management are described in the Membership Management section.

38   2.5 The Non-digest Options Category

Mailman delivers messages to users via two modes. List members can elect to receive postings in bundles call digests one or a few times a day, or they can receive messages immediately whenever the message is posted to the list. This latter delivery mode is also called non-digest delivery. There are two administrative categories available for separately controlling digest and non-digest delivery. You can even disable one or the other forms of delivery (but not both).

Both kinds of delivery can have list-specific headers and footers added to them which can contain other useful information you want your list members to see. For example, you can include instructions for unsubscribing, or a url to the lists digest, or any other information.

Non-digest deliveries can also be personalized which means certain parts of the message can contain information tailored to the member receiving the message. For example, the To: header will contain the address of the member when deliveries are personalized. Footers and headers can contain personalized information as well, such as a link to the individual user's options page.

In addition, personalized messages will contain extra information that Mailman can use to unambiguously track bounces from members. Ordinarily, Mailman does some pattern recognition on bounce messages to determine list members whose addresses are no longer valid, but because of the vagaries of mail systems, and the countless forwards people can put in place, it's often the case that bounce messages don't contain any useful information in them. Personalized messages avoid this problem by encoding information in certain headers that unambiguously identify the recipient of a message. If that message bounces, Mailman will know exactly which member it was intended for.

Note that because personalization requires extra system resources, it must be enabled by the site administrator before you can choose it. Here are the variables which control non-digest delivery:

nondigestable
This option controls whether members can receive immediate delivery or not. If not, they will be forced to receive messages in digests. You can't disable non-digest delivery if digests are already disabled.
personalize
This option turns on message personalization.
msg_header
This text box lets you enter information that will be included in the header of every non-digest message sent through the list. See below for more information on what can go in the headers and footers. If you leave this text box empty, no header will be added.
msg_footer
Just like with the header, you can add a footer to every message. The same rules apply to footers as apply to headers.

Headers and footers can contain any text you want. For non-English lists, the headers and footers can contain any character in the character set of the list's preferred language. The headers and footers can also contain substitution variables which Mailman will fill in with information taken from the mailing list. These substitutions are in Python string interpolation format, where something like %(list_name)s is substituted with he name of the mailing list. Note that the trailing "s" is required2.

For example, a footer containing the following text: 

This is the \%(list_name)s mailing list
Description: \%(description)s

might get attached to postings like so: 

This is the Example mailing list
Description: An example of Mailman mailing lists

Here is the list of substitution variables available for your headers and footers:

real_name
This is the value of the real_name configuration variable in the General options category.
list_name
This is the canonical name of the mailing list. In other words it's the posting address of the list3.
host_name
This is the domain name part of the email address for this list.
web_page_url
This is the base url for contacting the list via the web. It can be appended with listinfo/%(list_name)s to yield the general list information page for the mailing list.
description
The brief description of the mailing list.
info
This is the full description of the mailing list.
cgiext
This is the extension added to CGI scripts. It might be the empty string, .cgi, or something else depending on how your site is configured.

Note that real_name, host_name, description, and info substitution variables take their values from the list configuration variables of the same name.

When personalization is enabled, the following substitution variables are also available:

user_address
The address of the recipient of the message, coerced to lower case.
user_delivered_to
The case-preserved address that the user subscribed to the mailing list with4.
user_password
The user's password, in clear text.
user_name
The user's full name.
user_optionsurl
The url to the user's personal options page.

Footnotes

... required2
The site administrator can configure lists to use a simpler interpolation format, where $list_name or ${list_name} would be substituted with the mailing list's name. Ask your site administrator if the've configured your list this way.
... list3
For backward compatibility, the variable _internal_name is equivalent.
... with4
Usually it makes no difference which of user_address and user_delivered_to is used, but it's important to remember that they can be different. When they're different, Mailman always uses the lower case address as the key to the member's subscription information, but it always delivers messages to the case-preserved version.

39   2.5 The Non-digest Options Category

Mailman delivers messages to users via two modes. List members can elect to receive postings in bundles call digests one or a few times a day, or they can receive messages immediately whenever the message is posted to the list. This latter delivery mode is also called non-digest delivery. There are two administrative categories available for separately controlling digest and non-digest delivery. You can even disable one or the other forms of delivery (but not both).

Both kinds of delivery can have list-specific headers and footers added to them which can contain other useful information you want your list members to see. For example, you can include instructions for unsubscribing, or a url to the lists digest, or any other information.

Non-digest deliveries can also be personalized which means certain parts of the message can contain information tailored to the member receiving the message. For example, the To: header will contain the address of the member when deliveries are personalized. Footers and headers can contain personalized information as well, such as a link to the individual user's options page.

In addition, personalized messages will contain extra information that Mailman can use to unambiguously track bounces from members. Ordinarily, Mailman does some pattern recognition on bounce messages to determine list members whose addresses are no longer valid, but because of the vagaries of mail systems, and the countless forwards people can put in place, it's often the case that bounce messages don't contain any useful information in them. Personalized messages avoid this problem by encoding information in certain headers that unambiguously identify the recipient of a message. If that message bounces, Mailman will know exactly which member it was intended for.

Note that because personalization requires extra system resources, it must be enabled by the site administrator before you can choose it.

Here are the variables which control non-digest delivery:

nondigestable
This option controls whether members can receive immediate delivery or not. If not, they will be forced to receive messages in digests. You can't disable non-digest delivery if digests are already disabled.
personalize
This option turns on message personalization.
msg_header
This text box lets you enter information that will be included in the header of every non-digest message sent through the list. See below for more information on what can go in the headers and footers. If you leave this text box empty, no header will be added.
msg_footer
Just like with the header, you can add a footer to every message. The same rules apply to footers as apply to headers.

Headers and footers can contain any text you want. For non-English lists, the headers and footers can contain any character in the character set of the list's preferred language. The headers and footers can also contain substitution variables which Mailman will fill in with information taken from the mailing list. These substitutions are in Python string interpolation format, where something like %(list_name)s is substituted with he name of the mailing list. Note that the trailing "s" is required2.

40 For example, a footer containing the following text: 

This is the \%(list_name)s mailing list
Description: \%(description)s

might get attached to postings like so: 

This is the Example mailing list
Description: An example of Mailman mailing lists

Here is the list of substitution variables available for your headers and footers:

real_name
This is the value of the real_name configuration variable in the General options category.
list_name
This is the canonical name of the mailing list. In other words it's the posting address of the list3
host_name
This is the domain name part of the email address for this list.
web_page_url
This is the base url for contacting the list via the web. It can be appended with listinfo/%(list_name)s to yield the general list information page for the mailing list.
description
The brief description of the mailing list.
info
This is the full description of the mailing list.
cgiext
This is the extension added to CGI scripts. It might be the empty string, .cgi, or something else depending on how your site is configured.

Note that real_name, host_name, description, and info substitution variables take their values from the list configuration variables of the same name. When personalization is enabled, the following substitution variables are also available:

user_address
The address of the recipient of the message, coerced to lower case.
user_delivered_to
The case-preserved address that the user subscribed to the mailing list with4.
user_password
The user's password, in clear text.
user_name
The user's full name.
user_optionsurl
The url to the user's personal options page.

Footnotes

... required2
The site administrator can configure lists to use a simpler interpolation format, where $list_name or ${list_name} would be substituted with the mailing list's name. Ask your site administrator if the've configured your list this way.
... list3
For backward compatibility, the variable _internal_name is equivalent.
... with4
Usually it makes no difference which of user_address and user_delivered_to is used, but it's important to remember that they can be different. When they're different, Mailman always uses the lower case address as the key to the member's subscription information, but it always delivers messages to the case-preserved version.

41  2.7 The Privacy Options Category

The Privacy category lets you control how much of the list's information is public, as well as who can send messages to your list. It also contains some spam detection filters. Note that this section is not used to control whether your list's archives are public or private; for that, use the category.

There are four sub-categories:

  • Subscription rules - i.e. the rules for joining and leaving your mailing list
  • Sender filters - the rules for who may post messages to your list
  • Recipient filters - moderation rules based on the recipient of the message
  • Spam filters - some regular expression based rules for header matching

The sender, recipient, and spam filtering rules are part of the general list moderation features of Mailman. When a message is posted to the list, it is matched against a number of criteria, the outcome of which determines whether the message is reflected to the membership or not. In general, the outcome is one of four states:

  • Approved or Accepted - the message may be sent on to the members of the mailing list.
  • Hold - the message will be held for moderator approval. The list owners and moderators will then have to explicitly approve the message before the list members will see it.
  • Reject - the message is bounced back to the original sender, often with a notice containing the reason the message was rejected. The list members never see rejected messages.
  • Discard - the message is simply thrown away without further processing.

Many of the fields in this section are text boxes accepting addresses, one per line. Unless otherwise noted, these also accept regular expressions which will be matched against an address, if the line begins with a (caret) character.

Subsections

  • 2.7.1 Subscription rules
    This subcategory controls the rules for exposing the existance of this list, and for what new members must do in order to subscribe to the list.

    advertised
    This option controls whether this list will show up in the list overview for the site. Normally, an overview contains the name and short description of every mailing list in the virtual domain. By setting this variable to No, it will not show up in this overview, nor will it show up in the administrative overview. The only way then to find the list is to guess (or know!) its name.
    subscribe_policy
    This option controls the steps that a new member must take to join the list. The available options may differ based on some defaults that the site administrator chooses. They are:
    • None - No verification is done on the subscribing member. This is also called open subscriptions and is generally disabled by default. The site administrator must allow list admins to choose this option; if not, this option will not be presented to you.
    • Confirm - An email confirmation step is required before the address is added to the list. When a member requests subscription, either via the web page or by sending a message to yourlist-join@example.com, Mailman will send a confirmation message to the requesting address. This mail-back confirmation contains a unique identifier, which the requester can present to Mailman in order to confirm their subscription. This can be done either by replying to the mail-back, or by visiting the url in the mail-back message. The url points to a page that lets the user either discard or confirm their request.
    • Require approval - All subscription requests are held for approval of the list moderator. No mail-back confirmation is sent, but the list admins will receive a message indicating that approval is pending.
    • Confirm and approve - Here, a mail-back notice must first be confirmed by the requester. Once confirmed, the list moderator must then approve the request. This is the most secure method for users to subscribe since it both verifies the requesting address, and forces the list moderators to approve the request.
    unsubscribe_policy
    Specifies whether the list moderator's approval is required for unsubscription requests. No is highly recommended, since it is exceedingly impolite to not allow people to leave a mailing list whenever they want (i.e. opt-out). Yes is useful in some specialized contexts; e.g. you may not want to allow employees to unsubscribe from the company newsletter.
    ban_list
    This contains a list of addresses (or regular expressiosn), one per line, that are banned from ever subscribing to your mailing list. If a match occurs during the subscription process, the request will be automatically rejected, and the requester will get a rejection notice. You can use this to permanently ban troublesome posters to a members-only list.
    private_roster
    This specifies who is allowed to view the roster of member addresses. If you choose Anyone, then the list membership is completely public. You can limit exposure of the roster to just list members, or just to the list administrators. In the former case, a user must enter a valid member's address and password before they can view the roster. In the latter case, a list administrator's password must be enter; if a matching admin password is entered, address field is ignored.
    obscure_addresses
    Controls whether some simple obfuscation of addresses is used when member addresses are included on web pages. This should reduce the opportunity for email address harvesting by spammers, although it probably doesn't eliminate it.

  • 2.7.2 Sender filters
    When a message is posted to the list, a series of moderation criteria are applied to determine the disposition of the message. This section contains the modeation controls for postings from both members and non-members.

    default_member_moderation
    Member postings are held for moderation if their moderation flag is turned on. Note that only the list administrators can change the value of a member's moderation flag.

    You can control whether new members get their moderation flag turned on or off by default when they subscribe to the list. By turning this flag off by default, postings by members will be allowed without further intervention (barring other restrictions such as size or implicit recipient lists - see below). By turning the flag on, you can quarantine new member postings to make sure that they meet your criteria for netiquette, topicality, etc. Once you determine that the new member understands the community's posting rules, you can turn off their moderation flag and let their postings go through unstopped.

    E-newsletter style lists can also be set up by using the moderation flag. By setting the member_moderation_action to Reject, and by turning off the moderation flag for just the few approved senders, your list will operate in essentially a one-way direction. Note that you'd also need to reject or discard postings from non-members.

    member_moderation_action
    This is the action to take for postings from a member who's moderation flag is set. For typical discussion lists, you'll likely set this to Hold so that the list moderator will get a chance to manually approve, reject, or discard the message. For e-newsletter and announcement lists, you might want to set this to Reject or Discard.

    Note that when a moderated member posts to your list, and the member_moderation_action is set to Hold, the message will appear on the administrative requests page. When you dispose of the message, you will be given an opportunity to clear the moderation flag at the same time. If you're quarantining new posts, this makes it very convenient to both approve a new member's post and de-moderate them at the same time.

    member_moderation_notice
    When a member's moderation flag is turned on and member_moderation_action is Reject, this variable contains the text sent in the rejection notice.

    The next batch of variables controls what happens when non-members post messages to the list. Each of these accepts one email address per line; regular expressions are allowed if the line starts with the (caret) character. These address lists are always consulted in the order in which they're presented on this page (i.e. accepts first, followed by holds, rejections, and discards).

    accept_these_nonmembers
    Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are accepted, barring other list restrictions due to size, implicit recipients, etc. You might want to add alternative addresses of approved posters to this list.
    hold_these_nonmembers
    Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are held for moderator approval.
    reject_these_nonmembers
    Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are rejected, i.e. bounced back to the original sender. There currently is no way to add additional text to the rejection message.
    discard_these_nonmembers
    Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are discarded, with no bounce back message. You might want to add the addresses of known spammers to this list.
    generic_nonmember_action
    This variable controls what happens to non-member posts when the address of the sender doesn't match any of the above four lists. If you set this to Hold, the posting will appear on the administrative requests page, and you will be given an opportunity to add the non-member to one of the above four lists at the same time you dispose of the held message.
    forward_auto_discards
    When messages from non-members are discarded, either because the sender address matched discard_these_nonmembers, or because generic_nonmember_action is Discard, you can choose whether such messages are forwarded to the lsit administrators or not.

  • 2.7.3 Recipient Filters
    The variables in this section control various filters based on the recipient of the message.

    require_explicit_destination
    This controls whether the mailing list posting address must be explicitly named in the To: or Cc: recipient lists. The main reason why it wouldn't is if the message was blind-carbon-copied (i.e. Bcc:'d) to the list. Spammers like to do this, but sometimes legitimate messages are forwarded to the list this way.
    If the list is not explicitly addressed and this setting is turned on, the message will be held for moderator approval.
    acceptable_aliases
    This is the list of alternative addresses that are acceptable as a list posting address when require_explicit_destination is enabled. This is useful for when there aliases for the main posting address (e.g. help@example.com may be an alias for help-list@example.com).
    max_num_recipients
    This is the maximum number of explicit recipients that are allowed on the posted message. Spammers sometimes send messages with lots of explicit recipients, so setting this number to a reasonable value may cut down on spam.

    2.7.4 Spam Filters
    This section provides some adjuncts to spam fighting tools; it doesn't replace dedicated anti-spam tools such as SpamAssassin or Spambayes.

    bounce_matching_headers
    This variable contains header regular expressions, one per line, and if any of a message's headers matches one of these patterns, it will be held for moderation. The format is a colon separated header and value, where the header is case insensitive and the value is any valid Python regular expression. Lines that start with # are ignored.

    This variable can be used to catch known spammers by writing regexps that match against To: or Cc: lines, or known-bad Message-ID:s. Perhaps more useful though are patterns that match headers added by spam detection tools higher up in the tool chain. For example, you might configure SpamAssassin to add an X-Spam-Score: header with between zero and 5 stars depending on the spam score. Then you can add a line to this variable like: 

        X-Spam-Score: [*]{3,5}

    This line will match from 3 to 5 stars in the value of this field.

42 2.8 The Bounce Processing Category

These policies control the automatic bounce processing system in Mailman. Here's an overview of how it works:

When a bounce is received, Mailman tries to extract two pieces of information from the message: the address of the member the message was intended for, and the severity of the problem causing the bounce. The severity can be either hard for fatal errors, or soft for transient errors. When in doubt, a hard severity is used.

If no member address can be extracted from the bounce, then the bounce message is usually discarded. Every member has a bounce score, initialized at zero, and every time we encounter a bounce from a member we increment that member's score. Hard bounces increment by 1 while soft bounces increment by 0.5. We only increment the bounce score once per day, so even if we receive ten hard bounces from a member per day, their score will increase by only 1 for that day.

When a member's bounce score is greater than the bounce score threshold (see below), the member's subscription is disabled. Once disabled, the member will not receive any postings from the list until their membership is explicitly re-enabled, either by the list administrator or the user. However, they will receive occasional reminders that their membership has been disabled, and these reminders will include information about how to re-enable their membership. You can control both the number of reminders the member will receive and the frequency with which these reminders are sent.

There is one other important configuration variable; after a certain period of time - during which no bounces from the member are received - the bounce information is considered stale and discarded. Thus by adjusting this value, and the score threshold, you can control how quickly bouncing members are disabled. You should tune both of these to the frequency and traffic volume of your list.

bounce_processing
Specifies whether or not this list should do automatic bounce processing.
bounce_score_threshold
This is the bounce score above which a member's subscription will be automatically disabled. When the subscription is re-enabled, their bounce score will be reset to zero. This value can be a floating point number.
bounce_info_stale_after
Thenumber of days after which a member's bounce information is considered stale. If no new bounces have been received in the interrim, the bounce score is reset to zero. This value must be an integer.
bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings
The number of notices a disabled member will receive before their address is removed from the mailing list's roster. Set this to 0 to immediately remove an address from the list once their bounce score exceeds the threshold. This value must be an integer.
bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings_interval
The number of days between each disabled notification.
bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner
This variable controls whether unrecognized bounces are discarded, or forwarded on the list administrator. The bounce detector isn't perfect, although personalization can make it much more accurate. The list owner may want to receive unrecognized bounces so that they can manually disable or remove such members.
bounce_notify_owner_on_disable
This option controls whether or not the list owner is notified when a member's subscription is automatically disabled due to their bounce threshold being reached.
bounce_notify_owner_on_removal
This option controls whether or not the list owner is notified when a member is removed from the list after their disabled notifications have been exhausted.

43    2.9 The Archiving Options Category

Mailman comes with a built-in web-based archiver called Pipermail, although it can be configured to use external, third party archivers.

archive
This option tells Mailman whether to archive messages it receives or not, regardless of whether Pipermail or a third party archiver is used. Turn this off if you don't want to archive messages.
Note that senders can control whether their own posts are archived, on an individual per-message basis. If the posted message has a X-No-Archive: header (regardless of value), or a X-Archive: header with a value of No (case insensitive), then the message will not be archived, although it will be treated as normal in all other ways.
archive_private
Controls whether Pipermail archives are private or public. Private archives require a valid member address and password, or a list administrator password in order to access them. This option has no effect when a third party archiver is used.
archive_volume_frequency
Controls how Pipermail splits messages in the archive. The most common option is Monthly meaning a new archive volume is started every month. Very high volume lists may want a shorter frequency (e.g. Weekly or Daily) where as lower volume lists may want a longer frequency (e.g. Yearly). This option has no effect when a third party archiver is used.

44    2.10 The Mail/News Gateway Category

Mailman has a sophisticated mail-to-news gateway feature. It can independently gate messages from news to mail and vice versa, and can even be used to manage moderated newsgroups.
45 NO data 2.11 The Auto-responder Category 

The GNU Mailman - List administrator's Manual by Terri Oda is available, but not yet complete. This is also available in PDF format (approx. 84k), PS format (approx. 121k), and plain text format (approx. 65k).

46 No Data  2.13 The Topics Category
47 No Data  3 Membership Management
48 No Data  5 Editing the Public HTML Pages
49 No Data  6 Deleting the Mailing List

50 1 This is an Appendix

To create an appendix in a Python HOWTO document, use markup like this: 

\appendix
\section{This is an Appendix}
To create an appendix in a Python HOWTO document, ....
\section{This is another}
Just add another \section{}, but don't say \appendix again.
51  END  GNU Mailman Documentation

 

 

 

 

 

Blue 52 Front Matter  GNU Mailman - Installation Manual

Abstract:

This document describes how to install GNU Mailman on a POSIX-based system such as Unix, MacOSX, or GNU/Linux. It will cover basic installation instructions, as well as guidelines for integrating Mailman with your web and mail servers.

The GNU Mailman website is at http://www.list.org

Subsections

53    1 Installation Requirements

Please note that the information on this page may be out of date. Check for the latest installation information on the Mailman wiki.

GNU Mailman works on most POSIX-based systems such as Unix, MacOSX, or GNU/Linux. It does not currently work on Windows. You must have a mail server that you can send messages to, and a web server that supports the CGI/1.1 API. Apache makes a fine choice for web server, and mail servers such as Postfix, Exim, Sendmail, and qmail should work just fine.

To install Mailman from source, you will need an ANSI C compiler to build Mailman's security wrappers. The GNU C compiler gcc works well.

You must have the Python interpreter installed somewhere on your system. As of this writing, Python 2.4.4 is recommended, but see the wiki page above for the latest information.

54   2 Set up your system

Before installing Mailman, you need to prepare your system by adding certain users and groups. You will need to have root privileges to perform the steps in this section.

  • 2.1 Add the group and user

    Mailman requires a unique user and group name which will own its files, and under which its processes will run. Mailman's basic security is based on group ownership permissions, so it's important to get this step right1. Typically, you will add a new user and a new group, both called mailman. The mailman user must be a member of the mailman group. Mailman will be installed under the mailman user and group, with the set-group-id (setgid) bit enabled.

    If these names are already in use, you can choose different user and group names, as long as you remember these when you run configure. If you choose a different unique user name, you will have to specify this with configure's --with-username option, and if you choose a different group name, you will have to specify this with configure's --with-groupname option.

    On Linux systems, you can use the following commands to create these accounts. Check your system's manual pages for details: 

        % groupadd mailman
    % useradd -c''GNU Mailman'' -s /no/shell -d /no/home -g mailman mailman

    Footnotes

    ... right1
    You will be able to check and repair your permissions after installation is complete.

  • 2.2 Create the installation directory

    Typically, Mailman is installed into a single directory, which includes both the Mailman source code and the run-time list and archive data. It is possible to split the static program files from the variable data files and install them in separate directories. This section will describe the available options.

    The default is to install all of Mailman to /usr/local/mailman2. You can change this base installation directory (referred to here as $prefix) by specifying the directory with the --prefix configure option. If you're upgrading from a previous version of Mailman, you may want to use the --prefix option unless you move your mailing lists.

    Warning: You cannot install Mailman on a filesystem that is mounted with the nosuid option. This will break Mailman, which relies on setgid programs for its security. If this describes your environment, simply install Mailman in a location that allows setgid programs.

    Make sure the installation directory is set to group mailman (or whatever you're going to specify with --with-groupname) and has the setgid bit set3. You probably also want to guarantee that this directory is readable and executable by everyone. For example, these shell commands will accomplish this: 

        % cd $prefix
    % chgrp mailman .
    % chmod a+rx,g+ws .

    You are now ready to configure and install the Mailman software.

    Footnotes

    .../usr/local/mailman2
    This is the default for Mailman 2.1. Earlier versions of Mailman installed everything under /home/mailman by default.
    ... set3
    BSD users should see the 15.2 section for additional information.

55   3 Build and install Mailman

  • 3.1 Run configure

    Before you can install Mailman, you must run configure to set various installation options your system might need.

    Note: Take special note of the --with-mail-gid and --with-cgi-gid options below. You will probably need to use these.

    You should not be root while performing the steps in this section. Do them under your own login, or whatever account you typically use to install software. You do not need to do these steps as user mailman, but you could. However, make sure that the login used is a member of the mailman group as that that group has write permissions to the $prefix directory made in the previous step. You must also have permission to create a setgid file in the file system where it resides (NFS and other mounts can be configured to inhibit setgid settings).

    If you've installed other GNU software, you should be familiar with the configure script. Usually you can just cd to the directory you unpacked the Mailman source tarball into, and run configure with no arguments: 

      % cd mailman-<version>
  % ./configure
  % make install

    The following options allow you to customize your Mailman installation.

    --prefix=dir
    Standard GNU configure option which changes the base directory that Mailman is installed into. By default $prefix is /usr/local/mailman. This directory must already exist, and be set up as described in 2.2.
    --exec-prefix=dir
    Standard GNU configure option which lets you specify a different installation directory for architecture dependent binaries.
    --with-var-prefix=dir
    Store mutable data under dir instead of under the $prefix or $exec_prefix. Examples of such data include the list archives and list settings database.
    --with-python=/path/to/python
    Specify an alternative Python interpreter to use for the wrapper programs. The default is to use the interpreter found first on your shell's $PATH.
    --with-username=username-or-uid
    Specify a different username than mailman. The value of this option can be an integer user id or a user name. Be sure your $prefix directory is owned by this user.
    --with-groupname=groupname-or-gid
    Specify a different groupname than mailman. The value of this option can be an integer group id or a group name. Be sure your $prefix directory is group-owned by this group.
    --with-mail-gid=group-or-groups
    Specify an alternative group for running scripts via the mail wrapper. group-or-groups can be a list of one or more integer group ids or symbolic group names. The first value in the list that resolves to an existing group is used. By default, the value is the list mailman, other, mail, and daemon.
    Note: This is highly system dependent and you must get this right, because the group id is compiled into the mail wrapper program for added security. On systems using sendmail, the sendmail.cf configuration file designates the group id of sendmail processes using the DefaultUser option. (If commented out, it still may be indicating the default...)

    Check your mail server's documentation and configuration files to find the right value for this switch.

    --with-cgi-gid=group-or-groups
    Specify an alternative group for running scripts via the CGI wrapper. group-or-groups can be a list of one or more integer group ids or symbolic group names. The first value in the list that resolves to an existing group is used. By default, the value is the the list www, www-data, and nobody.
    Note: The proper value for this is dependent on your web server configuration. You must get this right, because the group id is compiled into the CGI wrapper program for added security, and no Mailman CGI scripts will run if this is incorrect.

    If you're using Apache, check the values for the Group option in your httpd.conf file.

    --with-cgi-ext=extension
    Specify an extension for cgi-bin programs. The CGI wrappers placed in $prefix/cgi-bin will have this extension (some web servers require an extension). extension must include the leading dot.
    --with-mailhost=hostname
    Specify the fully qualified host name part for outgoing email. After the installation is complete, this value can be overriden in $prefix/Mailman/mm_cfg.py.
    --with-urlhost=hostname
    Specify the fully qualified host name part of urls. After the installation is complete, this value can be overriden in $prefix/Mailman/mm_cfg.py.
    --with-gcc=no
    Don't use gcc, even if it is found. In this case, cc must be found on your $PATH.

  • 3.2 Make and install

    Once you've run configure, you can simply run make, then make install to build and install Mailman.

56   4 Check your installation

After you've run make install, you should check that your installation has all the correct permissions and group ownerships by running the check_perms script. First change to the installation (i.e. $prefix) directory, then run the bin/check_perms program. Don't try to run bin/check_perms from the source directory; it will only run from the installation directory.

If this reports no problems, then it's very likely <wink> that your installation is set up correctly. If it reports problems, then you can either fix them manually, re-run the installation, or use bin/check_perms to fix the problems (probably the easiest solution):

  • You need to become the user that did the installation, and that owns all the files in $prefix, or root.
  • Run bin/check_perms -f
  • Repeat previous step until no more errors are reported!
Warning: If you're running Mailman on a shared multiuser system, and you have mailing lists with private archives, you may want to hide the private archive directory from other users on your system. In that case, you should drop the other execute permission (o-x) from the archives/private directory. However, the web server process must be able to follow the symbolic link in public directory, otherwise your public Pipermail archives will not work. To set this up, become root and run the following commands: 
# cd <prefix>/archives
# chown <web-server-user> private
# chmod o-x private

You need to know what user your web server runs as. It may be www, apache, httpd or nobody, depending on your server's configuration.

57    5 Set up your web server

Congratulations! You've installed the Mailman software. To get everything running you need to hook Mailman up to both your web server and your mail system.

If you plan on running your mail and web servers on different machines, sharing Mailman installations via NFS, be sure that the clocks on those two machines are synchronized closely. You might take a look at the file Mailman/LockFile.py; the constant CLOCK_SLOP helps the locking mechanism compensate for clock skew in this type of environment.

This section describes some of the things you need to do to connect Mailman's web interface to your web server. The instructions here are somewhat geared toward the Apache web server, so you should consult your web server documentation for details.

You must configure your web server to enable CGI script permission in the $prefix/cgi-bin to run CGI scripts. The line you should add might look something like the following, with the real absolute directory substituted for $prefix, of course: 

    Exec        /mailman/*      $prefix/cgi-bin/*

    ScriptAlias /mailman/       $prefix/cgi-bin/
Warning: You want to be very sure that the user id under which your CGI scripts run is not in the mailman group you created above, otherwise private archives will be accessible to anyone.

Copy the Mailman, Python, and GNU logos to a location accessible to your web server. E.g. with Apache, you've usually got an icons directory that you can drop the images into. For example: 

    % cp $prefix/icons/*.{jpg,png} /path/to/apache/icons

You then want to add a line to your $prefix/Mailman/mm_cfg.py file which sets the base URL for the logos. For example: 

  IMAGE_LOGOS = '/images/'

The default value for IMAGE_LOGOS is /icons/. Read the comment in Defaults.py.in for details.

Configure your web server to point to the Pipermail public mailing list archives. For example, in Apache: 

    Alias   /pipermail/     $varprefix/archives/public/

where $varprefix is usually $prefix unless you've used the --with-var-prefix option to configure. Also be sure to configure your web server to follow symbolic links in this directory, otherwise public Pipermail archives won't be accessible. For Apache users, consult the FollowSymLinks option.

If you're going to be supporting internationalized public archives, you will probably want to turn off any default charset directive for the Pipermail directory, otherwise your multilingual archive pages won't show up correctly. Here's an example for Apache, based on the standard installation directories: 

    <Directory "/usr/local/mailman/archives/public/">
        AddDefaultCharset Off
    </Directory>

Now restart your web server.

58    6 Set up your mail server

This section describes some of the things you need to do to connect Mailman's email interface to your mail server. The instructions here are different for each mail server; if your mail server is not described in the fo