Frequently Asked Questions (Admin)

Frequently asked questions by Mailman 3 administrators.

1. Confirmation emails to Users has wrong domain name (example.com!)

This happens when your reverse (SSL) proxy isn’t setting up the correct headers when proxying requests. Fix this by setting the right proxy_set_header directives:

# For Nginx.
location / {
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
    proxy_pass http://localhost:8000/;
}

Appropriate headers for different web servers needs to be set if something other than Nginx is being used.

2. The domain name displayed in Hyperkitty shows example.com or something else.

The name of the domain comes from the SITE_ID which should be to set to the domain you want to display. If you have Postorius >= 1.3.3 The Domains view will show you the SITE_ID for the domain and has an Edit link to the Django admin UI entry for that site.

Otherwise, you can go to the Django admin Sites view (/admin or /<prefix>/admin) and see the DOMAIN NAME and DISPLAY NAME for each defined site, and you can edit the domain name.

Note that setting SITE_ID = 0 in Django’s settings will cause HyperKitty to display the DISPLAY NAME for the domain whose DOMAIN NAME matches the accessing domain. However, do not set SITE_ID = 0 in a new installation without any existing Sites as this will cause an issue in applying migrations. Only set SITE_ID = 0 after there are domains defined in the Django admin Sites view.

3. How to enable debug logging in Mailman Core?

There are a couple of loggers in Mailman Core which can be individually cofigured with log levels. Available loggers are:

archiver – All archiver output
bounce – All bounce processing logs go here
config – Configuration issues
database – Database logging (SQLAlchemy and Alembic)
debug – Only used for development
error – All exceptions go to this log
fromusenet – Information related to the Usenet to Mailman gateway
http – Internal wsgi-based web interface
locks – Lock state changes
mischief – Various types of hostile activity
plugins – Plugin logs
runner – Runner process start/stops
smtp – SMTP activity
subscribe – Information about leaves/joins
vette – Message vetting information

You can set their log levels by adding the following to your mailman.cfg:

[logging.http]
level: DEBUG

4. How to print logs to standard out instead of regular files in Mailman Core?

For each of the available loggers (listed in FAQ #3), you can set the path for each logger separately in mailman.cfg:

[logging.root]
path: /dev/stdout

5. What is Mailman-web?

Mailman web is basically a set of configuration files for deploying Mailman’s web frontend packaged in a single Python package. It provides a command line, mailman-web which can be used to run administrative commands.

If you are familiar with Django, or have seen older versions of this documentation, mailman-web command is equivalent of running django-admin --pythonpath /etc/mailman3/ --settings settings. It just makes it simpler to run administrative commands and simplify user documentation.

See documentation for Mailman-web.

6. How to disable signup?

To disable signup/registartion for new users, while continuing to allow signed up users to login, you can add the following to your settings.py:

# /etc/mailman3/settings.py
ACCOUNT_ADAPTER = 'django_mailman3.views.user_adapter.DisableSignupAdapter'

To disable only social account signups, but keep the signups open, you can add the following to your settings.py:

# /etc/mailman3/settings.py
SOCIALACCOUNT_ADAPTER = 'django_mailman3.views.user_adapter.DisableSocialSignupAdapter'

You would need django-mailman3 >= 1.3.6 for these settings to work.

7. How to run `mailman-web` / `mailman` from the CLI easily without any parameters or paths?

If you exactly followed the instructions on the virtualenv page, such that all the following items are correct, then running mailman-web or mailman is as simple as typing the command into the prompt. The requirements are:

you have logged in or switched to the mailman user account
the mailman user manages both web and core
source /opt/mailman/venv/bin/activate was added to the .bashrc file
the web settings file exists at /etc/mailman3/settings.py

However, customizations to the mailman environment that affect one or any combination of those steps can interfere with CLI command invocation for a variety of reasons. Perhaps mailman-web won’t be in the PATH. Or the right user account isn’t calling the command. For these cases you may optionally create and run wrapper scripts instead.

/usr/local/bin/mailman-wrapper:

#!/bin/sh

# for example MAILMAN_CORE_USER="mailman"
MAILMAN_CORE_USER="_set this value_"
# for example MAILMAN_CORE_EXECUTABLE="/opt/mailman/venv/bin/mailman"
MAILMAN_CORE_EXECUTABLE="_set this value_"

sudo -u ${MAILMAN_CORE_USER} ${MAILMAN_CORE_EXECUTABLE} "$@"

/usr/local/bin/mailman-web-wrapper:

#!/bin/sh

# for example MAILMAN_WEB_USER="mailman"
MAILMAN_WEB_USER="_set this value_"
# for example MAILMAN_WEB_EXECUTABLE="/opt/mailman3/venv/bin/mailman-web"
MAILMAN_WEB_EXECUTABLE="_set this value_"
# for example MAILMAN_WEB_CONFIG="/etc/mailman3/settings.py"
MAILMAN_WEB_CONFIG="_set this value_"

sudo -u ${MAILMAN_WEB_USER} MAILMAN_WEB_CONFIG=${MAILMAN_WEB_CONFIG} ${MAILMAN_WEB_EXECUTABLE} "$@"

Now, just run the commands mailman-wrapper or mailman-web-wrapper.

8. Where are messages stored on the server?

Archived messages 

To the extent messages are kept on the server at all, they are most often stored as ‘archives’. Archives depend on which plugins you have configured. Typically Hyperkitty is used as the archiver with Mailman3 and that stores its messages in the hyperkitty_email database table. If the database is colocated on the same machine as mailman itself, then it will consume disk space there. Otherwise when connecting to a dedicated database server across the network, the storage of the email table will accrue on the database server.

The hyperkitty_email table only includes the main message body. All other MIME parts, if any, are stored either in the hyperkitty_attachment table in the database or in the HYPERKITTY_ATTACHMENT_FOLDER if configured.

The next most common archiver is prototype, enabled via mailman.cfg:

[archiver.prototype]
enable: yes

The prototype archiver stores messages in Maildir format per list in a directory archives/prototype/list@example.com/ in Mailman’s var/ directory. Note that the Maildir format will result in potentially thousands of separate files, one per email.

Less frequently, the Mail-Archive.com archiver or the MHonArc archiver are used. You may consult their documentation directly.