Announcements of new sympa release

[David Verdin <>]

Dear Sympa users,

After several months of alpha test, the 6.1 version of Sympa is now released as beta. The beta phase should last until september, when the 6.1 will be released as stable.

Download Sympa 6.1 !
Read the release notes!

So what's new?

New features

• User level messages customization. [J. Jourdan] It is now possible to customize messages content with data specific to each subscriber. The custom attributes are as parameters for TT2 tags in messages distributed. This adds notably the possibility to add authenticated unsubscribe URL to message footers. merge is controled by a list/robot parameter : merge_feature on|off
  
  
• DKIM : Sympa now supports DKIM for message diffusion and control. DKIM is a important tool for antispam but it will really become powerfull when most of the messages received in your mailboxes include a DKIM signature. That's why it is so important for MLM to support the DKIM standard. The DKIM features included in Sympa 6.1 were developped with the support of Internet2. Listmasters who want to learn more about DKIM and MLM should read the IETF draft: http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kucherawy-dkim-lists/
  
  

  Incoming messages: Authorization scenarios can now use DKIM. Turning on the dkim_feature configuration parameter will provide a new authentication level to the authorization scenarios engine. Scenario evaluation for incoming messages with a valid DKIM signature (but no S/MIME signature) will be evaluated with authentication method dkim. So rules that use authentication method "smtp" will not match.
  
  Outgoing messages: You may want to make Sympa sign outgoing messages. Almost every aspects of DKIM signature behavior can be customized via Sympa configuration parameters. Please check the DKIM parameters section for further details. Note that each parameter can also be set for a given virtual robot; and most of them are available as list parameter.
  Which messages should be signed?
  In order to configure Sympa for signing outgoing messages, you have to decide which messages Sympa should sign . This should be decided for four kind of messages:
        Services messages : these are all messages sent by Sympa itself : welcome messages, answers to mail commands, various notification such as remind message and digest messages;
        List messages : messages distributed to list members (where the initial From: header is preserved). These messages will fall is one one the following subcategory:
              - authenticated messages (using S/MIME signature, challenge or password);
              - received with a valid DKIM signature;
              - validated by one of the list editors;
              - other messages.
  

  Server parameters used with DKIM:

• dkim_feature
  
• dkim_add_signature_to
• dkim_signature_apply_on
• dkim_private_key_path
• dkim_selector
• dkim_signer_domain
• dkim_signer_identity
• dkim_header_list

        List parameters used with DKIM:

• dkim_feature
• dkim_signature_apply_on
• dkim_parameters

• private_key_path
• selector
• header_list
• signer_domain
• signer_identity

• User exclusion. [J. Jourdan] Beware, that this feature is different from the blacklist. Exclusion makes sense when a list is based on external data sources, thanks to exclusion, a user can unsubscribe (or being removed by list owner) even though he should be included via an external data source. Users get into the exclusion table, through the standard unsubscribe / delete functions. They get off the exclusion table with the standard subscribe / add functions. Adding of the table 'exclusion_table'.

• Subscription suspension [J. Jourdan] The user can suspend her subscription. She is still registered as a subscriber but won't receive the mails.Subscription can be indefinite or have a scheduled expiration date. The subscription suspension can be managed for all subscriptions in a unique web interface.

• SOAP: complexWhich service include subscribers information about bounce

• Internationalisation: Most languages have seen their translation upgraded. Among them we can remark those languages who are approximately 100 % translated:

• Polish (thanks to M. Woloszyn)
• Japanese (thanks to S. Ikeda)
• Russian (thanks to Chernysh)
• German (thanks to M. Warkus)
• French (eh...)

In addition, M. Warkus did a great deal of work on Sympa typography: all the ponctuation signs are now included in the transaltion strings, so you can adapt the typography to whatever the best practices are in your language.

• Authentication:

• Extended the format of the generic_sso paragraph in auth.conf. Two new parameters :

• http_header_list : allows to explicitely list HTTP header fields that should be cached in sympa user_table.
• http_header_value_separator : user attributes may be multi-valued (including the user email address. This parameter defines the values separator; default is ';' (adapted for Shibboleth)

Login control to avoid brute force attacks.

Changes

• spam_status message property is now evaluated from a  scenario spam_status. This scenario accept ham, spam and unsure as result. This replace the antispam_header_name antispam_tag_header_spam_regexp

• Is is now possible to enable topics when the reception mode is 'mail', 'notice', 'not_me', 'txt', 'html' or 'urlize'. AuthCAS module used to be distributed with Sympa. Since Sympa 6, it is a standalone CPAN module. The module still has the same name, therefore old installed versions of the module need to be removed
  

Bug fixes

A lot of bugs were fixed in this version, too. Check the release notes for details about bug fixing.


Enjoy!

The Sympa developpers.

-- 
David Verdin
Comité réseau des universités

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