- Mailman-users - lists.mailman3.org

What is the best practice creating lists triggered by a another / second system?
by Christian Schneider June 6, 2025

June 6, 2025

Dear MM-Users, after reading a lot in the projects documentation of mailman3 I am not sure how to set up a "connection" between another system/server (running a self-service portal for our users) and the mailman3 server (venv-installation) for creating lists (giving a list owner's email address and a customized list style, given by name). On our old mailman-2.1 instance I used an ssh-tunnel and triggered the newlist-command with appropriate parameters. This seems a little bit outdated to me - nowadays... ;-) So I read about the rest api of mailman3 and thought, I might give it a go... On the other hand the rest api should not be exposed externally (localhost-only) as said here: https://lists.mailman3.org/archives/list/mailman-users@mailman3.org/thread/… Running an nginx reverse proxy (and a firewall for the complete subnet) I am able to give dedicated access to the api but nevertheless I have no good feeling going this way... So my question is: What would be the best way to trigger creation of lists using a second system? Thank you for any suggestions! Chris

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Trouble Installing Mailman3
by Henry Hartley June 6, 2025

June 6, 2025

I'm having problems installing mailman3 following the instructions on https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/install/virtualenv.html Everything goes well until I get to the Installing Mailman Core<https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/install/virtualenv.html#installing-mail…> step, which has me do the following in my venv environment: (venv)$ pip install wheel mailman psycopg2-binary Ubuntu 24.04.02 LTS Python 3.12.3 pip version 24.0 First, I was getting problems because my company firewall was blocking outbound traffic. I got that taken care of. Next, I was seeing certificate errors, saying there was a self-signed certificate: WARNING: Retrying (Retry(total=0, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: self-signed certificate in certificate chain (_ssl.c:1000)'))': /simple/wheel/ Could not fetch URL https://pypi.org/simple/wheel/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='pypi.org', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /simple/wheel/ (Caused by SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: self-signed certificate in certificate chain (_ssl.c:1000)'))) - skipping When I added --trusted-host pypi.org that error went away but I'm still unable to install anything: (venv) mailman@wz-prd-tpmd-1:~$ pip -v --trusted-host pypi.org install wheel mailman psycopg2-binary Using pip 24.0 from /opt/mailman/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pip (python 3.12) ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement wheel (from versions: none) ERROR: No matching distribution found for wheel The same error shows up if I try to install just mailman or psycopg2-binary, except the word "wheel" is replace with whichever package I've requested. I've rerun the apt install of python3-dev and python3-venv to make sure those are present and up to date. Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. -- Henry Hartley Westat

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Threads by month dropdown
by Sam Darwin June 5, 2025

June 5, 2025

Hi, After running hyperkitty_import to import thousands of emails from mailman2 (the years 2013-2025) I then ran another import for years 2004-2013 from another mbox file. It was an entirely earlier timeframe, which may be relevant. After the first import, the "Threads by month" dropdown showed 2013-2025. After the second import, the "Threads by month" dropdown showed 2013-2025. That is, 2004-2013 are missing. I have tried various things, including the mailman3-web cron maintenance tasks, waiting a day, and rebooting the server to clear memory. All messages were imported, and can be seen in "All threads". The messages are there. The only problem is the "Threads by month" dropdown. Beyond the dropdown, everything seems fine. Could it be a bug? Should I open an issue? Or, what should I try next? Is there a "refresh all threads by month" specific task? Deleting all archives and importing the older messages first... that worked correctly. It is a large destructive actions though, should that count as the official solution? Detour: While debugging it seemed to be an interesting question whether the mailman3-web periodic cron tasks had been running, and if those tasks affected the hyperkitty import. Referring to "Cron Jobs for Mailman Web" https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/install/virtualenv.html#cron-jobs-for-m… Those instructions are not dumping stdout/stderr to a log file, nor rotating the log files. What is your opinion if I sent a pull request that adds "Method 2 - Advanced", and include logging for the crons. Or maybe I am missing something. Is the output of the cron tasks getting logged in your environment?

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Recently active discussions - Hyperkitty
by Sam Darwin June 5, 2025

June 5, 2025

Hi, Sometimes not sure if it's preferable to open a gitlab issue, or chat on the mailing list. I have run a large archive import into mailman3/hyperkitty. After that's done, waited a day, for scheduled cron jobs to complete. In "All Threads", all the email archives are present. The import worked. In "RECENTLY ACTIVE DISCUSSIONS" on the main page, it says: RECENTLY ACTIVE DISCUSSIONS No discussions this month (yet). Nothing there. That means if I direct users to visit the site, the page, it appears empty. That's too bad. :-) It should display recent emails. What would affect this feature during an archive import? Is it a problem with the import script itself, or with a scheduled cron job, or something else? Would you expect "Recently active discussions" be empty when very recent archives do exist? Thanks, Sam

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Join a Mailman 3 list?
by Cathryn McGuire June 3, 2025

June 3, 2025

Hi, We’re currently hosted by EMWD who upgraded the Mailman 2 cPanel/Python and have been unable to resolve the issues we’re experiencing. We would like to join a Mailman 3 list to see how it all looks and works. Do you have any recommendation? Best, Cathryn McGuire

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CPU usage when idle
by roughnecks May 29, 2025

May 29, 2025

Hello, if you look at this graph you'll notice how my VPS "reacted" after mailman3 install. It's a Debian stable host, and I installed packages via apt. I mean, isn't this a bit too much for a software that is idle, because no lists are currently in use? RED is my VPS, the other colors are other machines. Thanks -- roughnecks ___________________________________________ Mailman's content filtering has removed the following MIME parts from this message. Content-Type: image/jpeg Name: raw (1).jpg

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Unable to update templates
by Mark May 29, 2025

May 29, 2025

Hi, I'm unable to update the custom welcome template (list:user:notice:welcome) after it's initial creation. When the custom welcome template is created (in Postorius), and a user then subscribed by the list-owner (using mass subscribe), the welcome message is received as expected. However when I update the template, the databases are updated correctly but the Welcome message is still sent with the old template content. mailman.templates mailmanweb.postorius_emailtemplate Additionally, if I delete the template and create a new one the old content still gets sent. I cannot find where this content is written or is being cached. Any clues on tracking this bugbear down gratefully received. Regards, Mark $ mailman info GNU Mailman 3.3.9 (Tom Sawyer) Python 3.11.2 (main, Mar 13 2023, 12:18:29) [GCC 12.2.0] config file: /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg db url: postgresql://******:******@localhost/mailman devmode: DISABLED REST root url: http://localhost:8001/3.1/ -- Installed with venv. ===================== Query to DB - mailman ===================== SELECT URI FROM TEMPLATE WHERE NAME = 'list:user:notice:welcome' AND context = 'testlist.example.com'; ====================== Result (all directories and file owned by 'mailman' with '765' permissions) ====================== file:///templates/list/testlist.example.com/list:user:notice:welcome ====================== Content of above Welcome file ====================== This is the second test Welcome message. ====================== Text of the welcome message actually received. (It's the content of the first custom template.) ====================== This is the first test message to Welcome new members.

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Re: MM broken after proxy migration (Nginx -> Caddy)
by Andreas Kemper May 28, 2025

May 28, 2025

Hi Stephen, thanks for the comprehensive explanations and sorry for initially not answering to the list (I expected this to be the default behaviour). Afterall it turned out that my mailman.db was somehow broken, even though I couldn't find any fishy / strange things in Postorius. Since anyhow just a few lists are hosted on the server and subscriptions for most of them being managed fron another program, I decided to remove MM3 completely and start with a fresh configuration. BR Andreas Am 28.05.2025 um 18:16 schrieb Stephen J. Turnbull: > Hi Andreas > > Andreas Kemper writes: > > > thanks for the quick response. > > Please reply to list (personal mail doesn't get read any faster) or to > all (I don't mind getting the duplicate). The odds are quite good > that somebody else will be able to reply before I do (I live in Japan, > normally I wouldn't be up now ;-). > > > Agree there, even though I haven't found any "settings.py" file in > > my Debian 12 installation yet. > > Normally the override settings.py is in /etc/mailman3/settings.py. If > you have no overrides, I don't know where Debian would put it. There > are actually several in the distribution where the highest levels are > normally in site-packages/mailman_web/settings/*.py (*not* named > "settings.py", I think they are "base.py" and "mailman.py"). Come to > think of it, I'm not sure whether Debian would put mailman and > mailman_web in site-packages or somewhere else. :-( (I'm a Debian > user since 1997, but my mission-critical applications are installed > from source.) > > > Hmm, executing > > > > sudo -u list mailman stop followed by > > sudo -u list mailman start > > > > first deletes and afterwards recreates the lock files, > > That is the expected behavior if Mailman is running normally. Are you > sure there's actually a recurring problem? Or did Mailman just crash > once, and the problem was the stale master lockfile? > > > where both of them are dated in the future, > > Also expected. I forget exactly what expiration of the lock file > triggers, but there's some regularly scheduled cleanup that happens > then. > > > plus mailman.log has a duplicate line in the end, > > It's a duplicate because the default is for there to be two processes > serving the REST API. This is configurable. See more comments at the > end. > > > even though I couldn't seen any mailman-related process (ps auxw | > > grep mailman) after stopping it. > > If the process is named by the full path to the executable, then you > will see "mailman", but if I recall correctly on Debian the Mailman > processes run under the users "list" for Mailman core, and "www-data" > for the web UIs. The various components run under different names: > master, nntp, lmtp, command, rest, etc. I forget what process names > you would see for the Django processes. > > > In doubt I will simply redirect the specific paths, mainly > > /accounts/fedora, > > That makes sense as the earlier you reject a connection the less > resources are used by your server, and the less information can leak > to an attacker. > > > small addition to my previous post. "ps auxw" shows in total three > > process for MM's rest component, i. e. > > > python3 /usr/lib/mailman3/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=rest:0:1 > > > To serve ports 8000 and 8001, I would have expected two processes, > > but to see three of them surprises me somewhat. > > It's not uncommon for moderators to go AWOL, or for somebody to spam > the server with either posts or subscription activity, and end up with > hundreds or thousands of entries in the pending requests table. > Serving those queries can take a long timemany seconds or even time > out. Mailman core deals with it in the least complex, most robust way > imaginable: it runs more REST API server processes. (3 total by > default. One is the "master" that handles requests from the Django > apps and communication with Mailman core and starts new workers when > old ones exit or crash. Two are "workers" that actually handle a > certain number of requests then exit.) By default Mailman is > configured to use up to four when really busy, but normally there are > only two. > > Django runs only one -- it deals with concurrent requests in a > different way. > > Steve >

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Hyperkitty archive: date format in thread overview of list does not honor DATETIME_FORMAT of settings.py
by Christian Schneider May 28, 2025

May 28, 2025

Dear mailman community, with the help of you I was able to set up a new mailman3 environment (a big THANK YOU!!! :-)): OS: Ubuntu 24.04-LTS mailman: GNU Mailman 3.3.10 (Tom Sawyer) Python: 3.12.3 (main, Feb 4 2025, 14:48:35) [GCC 13.3.0] Method: Python Virtual Environment Installation My configuration files are placed in the following directory: /etc/mailman3 - gunicorn.py - mailman.cfg - settings.py The environment is up and running: A list for testing is set up and mails are transfered (and archived) using the test-list - successfully... :-) Looking at the thread overview of the list (in Hyperkitty archives) I realized that the shown date format is unusual (for Germany), like: Do Mai 22, 3:57 nachm. (meaning: Thu May 22, 3:57 p.m.) I would prefer a format like: 22-05-2025 15:57:24 So I tried to reconfigure this setting in settings.py according to this URL: https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/config-web.html#configure-postorius-hyp… In settings.py I set DATETIME_FORMAT to 'd-m-Y H:i:s' but the format did not change. (After changing settings.py I initiated a restart of mailman3 and mailmanweb) I also set USE_L10N to False as suggested in Django-Docs: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/ref/settings/#std:setting-DATETIME_FO… My /etc/mailman3/settings.py is parsed - as far as I can say because changing USE_I18N to false (in /etc/mailman3/settings.py) switches date to English as this is my locales-setting on Ubuntu... Nevertheless the format stays the same (in this case: Thu May 22, 3:57 p.m.) How can I adjust the date format (in the discussion boxes) at the thread overview page (url: https://my-domain.de/archives/list/test-list@lists.my-domain.de/)? Any hint is appreciated! Thank you very much and kind regards Christian

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Place holders
by Mark May 28, 2025

May 28, 2025

Hi, The place holders listed as available on the "Add new template" page are: $hyperkitty_url $listname $list_id: $display_name $short_listname: $domain $info $request_email $owner_email $site_email $language The only one that seems to sort of work on my template is $list_id - which displays as "testlist". (I was expecting to see "testlist(a)example.com"). The others just get displayed as a variable. Eg. $owner_email Have I missed a setting somewhere? Regards, Mark GNU Mailman 3.3.9 (Tom Sawyer) Python 3.11.2 (main, Mar 13 2023, 12:18:29) [GCC 12.2.0]

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