The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Geoff Mayes <address@concealed>]

Hello,

I've rewritten the majordomo2sympa.pl script in a more abstract way that 
handles just about every Majordomo setting.  I plan to add it to the Sympa 
contrib section when it's finished, which should be in the next couple weeks. 
 I've been able to map just about every Majordomo configuration setting into 
Sympa except for the 'restrict_post = <listname>.post' setting, which 
instructs Majordomo to restrict post access to an arbitrary list of email 
addresses listed in the <listname>.post file (a list of emails that is 
different from and has different access than owners, moderators, and 
subscribers).  Can someone recommend the best way to do this in Sympa?  Here 
is what I'm doing with other 'restrict_post' settings as well as some 
possible solutions.

--------
Majordomo setting  =>  Sympa setting
--------
restrict_post = <listname>  =>  Import subscribers into Sympa and set Sympa's 
"Who can send messages" to "Restricted to subscribers"
restrict_post = <listname>.moderator  =>  Import moderators into Sympa and 
set Sympa's "Who can send messages" to "Newsletter, restricted to moderators"
restrict_post = <some other listname>  =>  (1) Import "some other listname."  
(2) Create a Sympa "custom parameter" with "var name" equal to 
"restrict_post" and "var value" equal to the "some other listname".  (3) 
Create an authorization scenario called something like "send.restrictpost" 
and add "is_subscriber([custom_vars->restrict_post],[sender])..."
restrict_post = <listname>.post  =>  ???

--------
Possible ideas for solving 'restrict_post = <listname>.post'
--------
1. Create a "custom_attribute" named something like "can_post_to_list".  (It 
looks like custom_attributes are subscriber_table attributes and not 
user_table attributes, but the documentation calls them "Custom User 
Attributes".  Are they really subscriber attributes?)  By default 
"custom_attributes" are displayed on a subscriber's "Subscriber Options" 
page, but to map the usage correctly from Majordomo only listowners should be 
able to set this bit, so I would then need to hide that field from 
"Subscriber Options" and add it to the "Admin" section of the list, perhaps 
under "Manage Subscribers".
2. Use "db_additional_subscriber_fields" by setting that value in 
/etc/sympa.conf to "can_post" and then creating that column in the database 
with " alter table subscriber_table add can_post tinyint(1) after 
visibility_subscriber;".  The problem with this solution is that Sympa 
doesn't provide any CRUD functionality for that new database column, so the 
CGI files would have to be hacked and it would be ideal to not do this so 
future upgrades are a lot easier.
3. Create a hidden/closed/disabled list named "<listname>-post" that has the 
same owners/moderators as "<listname>" and create an authorization scenario 
to only allow people to post to "<listname>" if they are subscribers of 
"<listname>-post".  The drawbacks to this approach are the extra management 
and complexity costs for listowners to maintain a separate list just for 
posting access control.

Thank you very much for any assistance coming up with an elegant solution for 
this problem,

Geoff Mayes

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@concealed [mailto:address@concealed] On
> Behalf Of David Verdin
> Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 4:53 AM
> To: address@concealed
> Subject: Re: [sympa-users] Are plus sign (+) valid in lists name?
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I don't observe this behaviour with the version 6.1 of Sympa.
> Does it happen for any adminstration page or only vertain pages?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> David
> 
> Le 04/01/12 17:26, address@concealed a écrit :
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm experiencing wwsympa.pl freeze when browsing on the administration
> > pages of a list using plus signs (+) in its name.  The first
> > administration page displays correctly, but then wwsympa.pl seems to
> > enter an infinite loop (the process continues to run) and any subsequent
> request is dropped.
> >
> > It takes more than restarting the web server to recover from this
> > crash, the identification cookie on the user side needs to be deleted
> > too.  Probably the list name is still present in one session variable.
> > Renaming the list and removing all + signs solved the problem.
> >
> > But the list creation interface doesn't prevent new list to use the
> > plus sign again.  Is this a valid character to be used in list names?
> > If not, then why is not caught by the list creating interface?
> >
> > We're using the 6.0.1 Debian version of Sympa with the fastCGI module.
> > The list behaved correctly in the 5.x Sympa serie.  Do any of you have
> > experienced this behaviour?  Looking at the Changelog file, I don't
> > see any sign of a bug of this kind being solved in the newer versions, 
> > should
> I fill a bug report?
> >
> > Thanks for any help,
> >
> > Antoine.