Developers of Sympa

[Sylvain Amrani <address@concealed>]

Hi,

Thomas Berry a écrit :

Sympa 5.3b.5

Current configuration:
1. Automatic list creation enabled.
2. Family configured to obtain list members from LDAP directory
3. Each list has a corresponding LDAP directory entry. As an LDAP directory entry is added, it is expected to be available as a mailing list.
4. Some of the list settings are stored in the corresponding LDAP group entry; A TT2 Plugin has been developed to obtain the some of the list's settings from its corresponding LDAP directory entry.  The list settings are obtained when the list is instantiated.  Sympa has been modified to also update the list for each new message sent to the list.

   How would you suggest I remove the family list entry if its corresponding LDAP directory entry has been removed?   Does this method prevent the list entry from being removed if the LDAP directory is unavailable?

I would script that in perl, this way :

1. Use soap to get your lists from sympa and compute the difference with your ldap directory. Now you know the lists you have to close
2. Be sure to examine the return code of every perl ldap function call, and the $mesg->code (see Net::LDAP), so you are sure to prevent any trouble if the ldap directory is unavailable.
   
3. Suspend your smtp traffic for the automatic family you are working on (using postfix, just add the transport name of your family to defer_transports and refresh)
4. Be sure there is no more message for your nearly closed lists or wait
5. close your dead lists invoking sympa.pl with the --close_list switch
6. remove the expl/closedlistname directory
7. un-suspend your smtp traffic for this family (remove your familyname from defer_transports and refresh)
   
8. If a new message for a just-closed list has arrived and was suspended during our work, your automatic list creation process will handle it like a message for an unknown list, so there's no mess for sympa.

We use many cron jobs like this and it's very robust. For many lists we don't want to archive, we put them in a family that we 'close' every night (--close_family). This way every used list is recreated at next message, and it's cost-less for sympa.

Sylvain