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<p>Hi Paul,</p>
<p>It only appears to the logged in user when they do "My Account -> Profile" and <br />they can subscribe/unsubscribe there.<br /><br />This was a very early feature in IXPM, and it's awkward, mainly because <br />Mailman 2.x has no real sync ability or external API and therefore quite limited<br />to use external data sources. I do not recommend using this feature as-is. :(<br /><br />I found this option for IXPM caused more problems than it solved and <br />occasionally just broke, so I eventually had to switch this feature off and <br />manually maintained the Mailman lists.<br /><br /><a href="https://github.com/inex/IXP-Manager/issues/22">https://github.com/inex/IXP-Manager/issues/22</a></p>
<p>- If a user changed their email address, old address is not removed from the list.<br />- If a user was deleted, they are not removed from the list.<br /><br />Also as it's stored in the user account, there are a few downsides:<br /><br />- A user account is required.<br />- User can't have different or multiple email address subscribed to the list.<br />- Not so obvious what's going on, e.g. you can't see it in "Users -> Edit" as a user,<br /> and then IXPM doesn't allow the user to change the email address.<br />- It only appears in My Account -> Profile where it can be changed but then doesn't<br /> always work.<br />- IXP Admins can't see list subs easily without switching to each user and viewing the profile.<br />- Custadmins can't manage list subscriptions for other users/multiple addresses.</p>
<p><br />We also did not want people using the Mailman interface, but for subscriptions to be<br />managed via IXP Manager. We require at least one contact per member to be subscribed to<br />the list. Although I hacked mailman it so that the "Name" in mailman is the AS number, <br />it was fiddly.<br /><br />I believe INEX does both, i.e. subscriptions can be manually added via Mailman but also via<br />IXP Manager for some lists, and this is the reason it works the way it does. <br /><br /><br />We recently had to revisit this, as we are redoing our mail server setup anyway. <br /><br />With Python 2.6 being replaced with Python3, getting harder to maintain things<br />like Mailman2.x which has some scripts that work only on Python2.x, and Mailman2,<br />although still maintained, is no longer in Debian packages for the latest Debian<br />'bullseye'.<br /><br />I tried Mailman3, but this seems to have become a monster and split up into many <br />separate components. I tested it, but when 4G of RAM wasn't enough and it kept crashing <br />the VM with OOM for a small (~20 subscriber) list, I gave up and decided it wasn't ready <br />for production. Also several features in Mailman2 were not yet in Mailman3, <br />or didn't work properly.<br /><br />We recently migrated from Mailman to Sympa, as it's basically the only practical <br />alternative to Mailman. A lot of the big universities seem to have switched from<br />Mailman2 to Sympa having found the alternatives unsatisfactory.<br /><br />It took some time and testing to get the settings for the lists correct<br />(e.g. moderation etc.) but it works very well.<br /><br />I created contact groups in IXP Manager for each mailing list. These show up as <br />"Roles" users can set what they want. (Or you can set your own group type <br />so it's hidden from the user.)<br /><br />I wrote a one-off migration script to export the lists from Mailman and import <br />them all as contacts to IXP Manager, creating any missing contacts, and/or <br />setting the appropriate contact groups.<br /><br />Sympa allows to sync subscribers from multiple data sources, including MySQL. <br />I made a view in MySQL so that Sympa can extract a list of email addresses <br />from IXP Manager for each list based on contact groups.<br /><br />It is possible for subscriptions to exist in Sympa or IXP Manager,<br />(i.e, subscriptions <em>can</em> exist in Sympa only, independently of IXP Manager, or even <br />other data sources e.g. text files or another list) although we made a decision not <br />to do this, but to manage external lists only from IXP Manager. <br /><br />In our case, external users don't ever login to Sympa's web interface.<br /><br />Sympa has a concept of "Exclusions" where, for example, a user has unsubscribed<br />via Sympa but also appears in a data source, it will ignore it and not keep <br />re-subscribing them.<br /><br />Some users want to be subscribed as "Post only" and this is settable in Sympa, <br />however, to keep things simple, I just made another (closed) list in Sympa, but <br />subscribers of that list are allowed to post to the main list. Then it's just another<br />tickbox/Contact Group in IXP Manager and a rule in Sympa.<br /><br />Having the lists as contact groups in IXP Manager is very useful as it allows me to <br />easily find any members who do not have anyone subscribed to the mailing list. <br /><br />As well as the lists, we sometimes email contacts directly for certain things, for example <br />formal notices, meetings and events, based on contact groups (or they can opt out <br />of some or all types of communications.) These emails have a token-based URL <br />which allows contacts to set their preferences, and that now includes the mailing lists.<br />I updated our existing "Contact Preferences" tool to work with it too, as it's just <br />another contact group.<br /><br />Feel free to email me off-list if you would like any more details on our Sympa setup <br />/ config etc.</p>
<p><br /><br />Rob<br /><br /><br />On 2022-02-24 19:11, Paul Emmons via ixpmanager wrote:</p>
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<p>I'm a little lost here. We didn't have the mailinglist integration on our v5 setup. I've "Successfully" updated to 6.2. </p>
<p>I've got an existing mailman 2.1.x on another box and am comfortably with api /etc. Going thru the docs I'm confused with:</p>
<p>After Steps 1 -3 in Configuring Available Mailing Lists, where does the user select, or see, which lists they want to subscribe/ unsubscribe?</p>
<p>If I continue on and run the API I am not getting any data back as there doesn't appear to be a <span style="color: #1c7d4d; font-family: 'Roboto Mono', SFMono-Regular, Consolas, Menlo, monospace; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f5f5f5; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://portal.ninja-ix.net/api/v4/mailing-list/init/members">https://portal.ninja-ix.net/api/v4/mailing-list/init/members</a></span> file.</p>
<p>Thanks for any hints.</p>
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<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace">_______________________________________________<br /> INEX IXP Manager mailing list<br /> <a href="mailto:ixpmanager@inex.ie">ixpmanager@inex.ie</a><br /> Unsubscribe or change options here: <a href="https://www.inex.ie/mailman/listinfo/ixpmanager">https://www.inex.ie/mailman/listinfo/ixpmanager</a></div>
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<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace"><span class="sig">-- <br /> Rob Lister<br /> <a href="mailto:rob@lonap.net">rob@lonap.net</a><br /> +44 20 3137 8330<br /> </span></div>
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