Mailing lists are very useful communication and coordination tool. FSCI provides mailing lists to Free Libre Open Source (FLOSS) groups and non profit organizations. If you want to open a new public list, please drop a mail at postmaster(at)lists.fsci.org.in.

Environment

Machine Summary

We are on scaleway virtual cloud server.

* Cores	: 2 x86 cores
* Memory	: 2GB
* Disk	: 50GB
* OS	: Debian GNU/Linux
* Web Server	: Nginx
* List manager	: Mailman3
* Host name	: lists.fsci.org.in

Coordination

Hangout with us in our Matrix room #mailman:poddery.com
issue tracker - we use this to track progress of tasks

Admins

Abhijith PA, Prinz Piuz, Balasankar C

Admin Documentation

Generate DKIM for new domains

We use 'opendkim'[1] to implement DKIM. To generate DKIM keys, use opendkim-genkey -b 4096 -h rsa-sha256 -r -s <selector_name> -d <domain_name_of_this_list> -v`
We don't have any format on selector naming. Pick something related to this list(for eg: the selector for the domain lists.fsci.org.in is lists what we used). After generating the DKIM keys, we will get two files.

<selector_name>.private - which contains the private signing key.
<selector_name>.txt - which contains the DKIM TXT DNS record for that domain.

Now, create a folder under /etc/opendkim/keys/<domain_name_for_this_list>/ and move the above file to that location.
Create an entry for the newly created domain in /etc/opendkim/KeyTable as well as /etc/opendkim/SigningTable <be /> On /etc/opendkim/KeyTable

<selector_name._domainkey.<domain_name_of_this_list> <domain_name_of_this_list>:<selector_name>:/etc/opendkim/keys/<domain_name_of_this_list>/<selector_name>.private
eg: lists._domainkey.lists.fsci.org.in lists.fsci.org.in:lists:/etc/opendkim/lists.private

On /etc/opendkim/SigningTable

<domain_name_of_this_list> <selector_name>._domainkey.<domain_name_of_this_list>
eg: lists.fsci.org.in lists._domainkey.lists.fsci.org.in

More on DKIM keys, formating etc: [DomainKeys Identified Mail], Setup DKIM with OpenDKIM on Debian: [How To Install and Configure DKIM with Postfix on Debian]

Verify DKIM and other settings for new domains

Create a text file, dkim-test.txt (replace To address with random address generated by https://dkimvalidator.com or https://www.mail-tester.com/)

From: "Test" <test-dkim@mm.gnu.org.in>
To: <random-address>@dkimvalidator.com
Subject: Testing DKIM and other settings for this domain
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

This email is to test email settings for a domain is correct

and use sendmail command to send it

/usr/sbin/sendmail -t < dkim-test.txt

Remove spam confirmation requests

Too many pending subscription requests can slow down[2] list index. Updating postorius is how to fix this. But in case there's no other way, and removing those requests through frontend [3] is impossible, this can be done (GNU Mailman 3.2.2 (La Villa Strangiato)):

$ sudo mailman shell -l listname.lists.fsci.org.in
Welcome to the GNU Mailman shell
The variable 'm' is the listname@lists.fsci.org.in mailing list
>>> from zope.component import getUtility
>>> from mailman.interfaces.pending import IPendings
>>> pendings = getUtility(IPendings)
>>> plist = []
>>> for p in pendings.find(m):
...   plist.append(p)
... 
>>> len(plist)
2047
>>> # Let us save the spammer email and when they signed up for analysis
>>> import csv
>>> with open('spam.csv', 'w', newline=) as csvfile:
...     spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=',')
...     for p in plist:
...         spammer = p[1]
...         spamwriter.writerow([spammer.get('email'), spammer.get('when'), spammer.get('display_name')])
...
>>> # Now on to actually removing spam
>>> from mailman.interfaces.workflow import IWorkflowStateManager
>>> workflow = getUtility(IWorkflowStateManager)
>>> for p in plist:
...     token = p[0]
...     pendings.confirm(token)
...     workflow.discard(token)
...
>>> # Now, we have to commit this transaction to database
>>> from mailman.config import config
>>> config.db.commit()