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Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165133] Sun, 01 May 2011 19:30 Go to next message
grepnold is currently offline  grepnold
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I've set up a mailing list rule. Messages sent to my forum 'fred' are going to the address 'fred(at)fred(dot)com'. That's working fine, and if I configured 'fred(at)fred(dot)com' to be a mailing list the messages would go out to all subscribers. So far so good.

I set up mailing lists in two ways. For a small list I can set up a redirect in exim4, like the /etc/aliases type but domain-specific. For large lists I pipe to my own script.

Now, to get replies from subscribers to show in the web forum I understand that I can pipe them to maillist.php.

Where I'm baffled is that there seems to be only one e-mail address associated with a forum by the mailing list rule. So a new forum message will arrive at 'fred(at)fred(dot)com' to be reflected out to my mailing list subscribers. If they want to reply, presumably they reply to 'fred(at)fred(dot)com'.

How can mail to the SAME address go to my mailing list when it originates from the forum, and be piped to maillist.php to be added to the forum when it's a reply from a mail-based user? Yes, I could do this by piping to my own script, but other people are able to send out mew messages to a mailing list and have mailed replied go back to the forum.

I can see I'm missing something here and maybe I'll kick myself when I'm told.

This post fudforum.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=19896&
which I can get to by Google but can't find here seems to suggest the outward messages can be sent out by adding the mailing list address as a dummy user. That would work - except that that user would have to be set up to receive mails for that one forum only. I can't find a way to do this, and in any case the mailing list rule is doing the sending of forum posts already.




Re: Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165134 is a reply to message #165133] Mon, 02 May 2011 00:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
The Witcher is currently offline  The Witcher   United States
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Color me confused, since I don't know that much about mail lists or how too use them, but I have always been under the impression that a mailing list needed a separate email address assigned to a privileged user for that purpose.

However I can tell you that FUDforum allows two forum e-mails (which are the same by default)
"Administrator E-mail: Email address of the forum administrator. And Notify From: The email address that all of the forum-generated email, such as notifications and welcome messages, should be sent as. This MUST be a valid email address that you have access to."

Though I doubt that will help you much, as for the message you said you couldn't get to from here its at
http://fudforum.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=3573&goto=17220&#m sg_17220

Good luck!


"I'm a Witcher, I solve human problems; not always using a sword!"
Re: Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165137 is a reply to message #165134] Mon, 02 May 2011 17:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
naudefj is currently offline  naudefj   South Africa
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If a user replies, the "Reply-To:" address will be your list (i.e. fred(at)fred(dot)com).
The "To:" header will indicate the recipients.
Maillist.php will use the "To:" header to match the the replies back to the forum's users.
Re: Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165139 is a reply to message #165137] Mon, 02 May 2011 18:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
grepnold is currently offline  grepnold
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Thanks both.

I'm a little less confused. Do you mean that my mailing list should change the headers when it sends out mails received at fred(at)fred(dot)com. It should set a Reply-To which is a different address, and replies to this different address can be piped to maillist.php?

Whether or not that's what you mean, I see that that would solve the problem. Thanks again.
Re: Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165140 is a reply to message #165139] Mon, 02 May 2011 21:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
The Witcher is currently offline  The Witcher   United States
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I read it as the "To" being the user, as in "The Witcher", "naudefj", or "grepnold".

"I'm a Witcher, I solve human problems; not always using a sword!"
Re: Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165141 is a reply to message #165140] Tue, 03 May 2011 03:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
naudefj is currently offline  naudefj   South Africa
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Exactly, the ML will sort it out for you.

PS: I hope that we can eliminate this ML dependency in future versions. Any help would obviously be greatly appreciated.
Re: Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165280 is a reply to message #165141] Fri, 20 May 2011 12:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
grepnold is currently offline  grepnold   United Kingdom
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I think it's OK now. The mailing list address sends out mails 'From' a different user, and replies to that user get piped to maillist.php.

I'm a bit concerned that any mail sent to that address gets posted to the forum, either with an Anonymous user or even creating the user on the fly! To test maillist I manually piped random spam to it, to find that Huanebango Patel, InstantOEM and all their friends had become forum members! I'm going to have to add a check that sender addresses are in the mailing list unless there's another way to do it.
Re: Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165283 is a reply to message #165280] Fri, 20 May 2011 13:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
grepnold is currently offline  grepnold   United Kingdom
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Oh sorry, I see there is an option to discard messages that can't be matched to a registered user.
Re: Mailing lists - desperately confused [message #165293 is a reply to message #165283] Sat, 21 May 2011 15:06 Go to previous message
grepnold is currently offline  grepnold
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OK I've just about worked out why I was so confused. I used to use a different method with phpBB and was thinking along those lines.

This may help anyone else who is also confused.

To be clear, let's use mailing list address for the address that you mail to to have the mail sent out to all members of the mailing list.

And posting address for the address that the mailserver pipes to a script (maillist.php in the case of FUDforum) to have the mail appear on the web forum.

phpBB way:
This used a sort of 'new post notify' mailout that could be set up to contain the entire text of the post. I set the mailing list address to get these mails.
So EVERY post to forum, whether sent by mail or from the web forum, went out to the mailing list address.

Therefore the Reply-To on the mailing list mails is set to the posting address.

In other words, replying by mail goes through one big loop: sent mail -> web posting -> notify mail -> mailing list script -> mailing list subscribers

FUDforum way:
posts on the web forum appear there AND are sent to the mailing list address

posts to the forum by mail appear on the web forum BUT DON'T get sent to the mailing list address.

Therefore the Reply-To must be the mailing list address as this is the only way that it will get to the mailing list subscribers.

BUT ALSO, the posting address must be added to the mailing list addresses, so that replies by mail go to the web forum.

So replying by mail uses two separate loops. The reply goes to mail subscribers just like a mailing list that is unconnected to a web forum. The posting address is a mailing list recipient so replies by mail go to the web forum, and replies on the web forum are sent to the mailing list address by FUDforum's mailing list setting.

Sorry for this long post but it might help others who have the same confusion as I did.
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