[Mailman-Users] Batch member attributes

This is one way to do it, but it is insecure as it allows anyone to
post be spoofing the unmoderated user's address.

A much better way is to give these authorized posters the moderator
password for the lists and have them post using an Approved: header or
first body line. Although, if they reallty need 80 different passwords
each, I can see that would be quite a pain.


Yes. You could do it with a withlist script. You could add them too in
the same script if you want to.

The things you need to do in the withlist script would be

from Mailman import mm_cfg
from Mailman.Userdesc import Userdesc

Then to add a member

userdesc = Userdesc()
userdesc.address = <the member's email address>

See the AddMember definition in Mailman/MailList.py for other
(optional) userdesc attributes and their defaults.

Then do

mlist.ApprovedAddMember(userdesc, ack=x, admin_notif=x)

where x is True or False to add the member. The ack and admin_notif
arguments are optional and default to list settings.

To set a member's moderate flag off

mlist.setMemberOption(member, mm_cfg.Moderate, False)

where member is the members email address.

This is a question that has been bugging me for a while. If a moderator
adds an "Approved: xxxxxx" header but misspells "Approved", then their
password goes on to the list for all to see. Without setting filters
for each and every password (esp., moderator passwords which I prefer
admins to not know, and vice versa) is it a good idea to add a feature
to Mailman that would automatically hold emails that contained an admin
or moderator password in the first few lines of the email body?

-Jim P>

Well, we already accept "Approve:" and are case insensitive. Beyond
that, it might be difficult in general because we don't have a plain
text password to look for, so we would need to check every 'word'
against the admin and moderator passwords and maybe the site password
just in case someone thought it could be used here, and we still
wouldn't catch a misspelled password or one with an extra space in it.

Consider the possibility that someone had a hand shifted on the
keyboard and mistyped both Approved: and the password. It would be
fairly easy for a human to figure out what happened and decode the
password, but I don't know how to program it's detection in advance.

There are some possibilities to consider. We could hold any post with a
"header like" line in the body that wasn't Subject: or Keywords:, but
is this necessary? Presumably, if approve(d) is misspelled, the post
will be held anyway. If not, why are we putting an approved line there
in the first place?

Now that is a good thought to ponder.

Thanks Mark.

-Jim P.

Hello again,

Thanks for the support :-)

I finally have put together a set of commands which do a great job for me:

---
from Mailman import mm_cfg
from Mailman.UserDesc import UserDesc
from Mailman import MemberAdaptor
userdesc = UserDesc()
userdesc.address = "<e-mail address>"
m.ApprovedAddMember(userdesc, ack=False, admin_notif=False)
m.setMemberOption("<e-mail address>", mm_cfg.Moderate, False)
m.setMemberOption("<e-mail address>", mm_cfg.AcknowledgePosts, False)
m.setDeliveryStatus("<e-mail address>", MemberAdaptor.BYADMIN)
---

(note that I had to replace "mlist" by "m", which is the default
variable in my version, and "UserDesc" needs a capital D)

But...that still isn't a batch script. I have to enter (/paste) this
list of commands into the withlist console.

Isn't there something like a shell script for the withlist console? It
would really be cool to be able to apply those commands to all lists at
once, or, at least, to a particular list using a single command.

Best regards,

-br

FAQ 03.016 has a good example of how to use withlist like this:
http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq03.016.htp

The important bits are the 'changeuserpw.py' it uses and the 'withlist
-l -r changeuserpw $list $member $passwd' line.
Basically, wrap your commands inside a python function (subroutine?
whatever python calls 'em), and give it arguments with the withlist
commands.

And

bin/withlist --help

also gives examples of using withlist with a script file.

Applying a script that needs the list locked to all lists (with the
'-a' option to withlist) is tricky because 'withlist -a' only unlocks
the last list so the script needs to do the unlocking. See
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2006-February/049447.html>
for a sample script that works whether or not you specify '-l' to
withlist.