/dev/zero

Remind me not to begin upgrades of mailing list software at 1:00 AM.
I just finished getting an updated version of Mailman working.

Not only did I have to go through the config file carefully, and spend an hour scratching my head when it didn’t work as documented (it would be nice if the EXAMPLE showed the single quote characters it turned out it needed around a strong!), but the new version changes how it talks to it’s SMTP server.
Instead of simply re-mailing messages to list members with “RCPT to:<member@address.com>”, it goes and changes it to “RCPT to:<listname-bounces+member=address.com@list.domain.name>”.
For the longest time I thought my sendmail config was broken ’cause it appeared to be barfing all over the damn +detail email addresses. I was going through sendmail docs trying to figure out how to activate that functionality (which was never broken before), when I realized I had to create a whole new set of aliases in the /etc/aliases file for already existing lists. The old version only required 4 aliases:
listname
listname-admin
listname-bounces
listname-request

The new version adds:
listname-bounces
listname-confirm
listname-join
listname-leave
listname-subscribe
listname-unsubscribe

IE: It’s trying to be Majordomo. If I wanted all that majordomo’ish crap, I’d run majordomo. Which is crap.
Anyway, the new version adds a bunch of functionality I’ve been waiting for for nearly 2 years.
Namely the ability to strip out HTML messages, virtual domain hosting functions, and a way for non-root users to create their own mailing lists. Though I haven’t tested that out fully yet. We shall see.
Anyway, time <YAWN!> for some shuteye.