[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#369915: mailman: VERP bounce probes active where they shouldn't

[Marc SCHAEFER]

Package: mailman
Version: 2.1.5-8sarge2
Severity: minor


I am running a Mailman from Debian stable (2.1.5-8sarge2), and I
experimented the following issue:

  - even if disabled in Defaults.py and not enabled in mm_cfg.py,
    VERP seems to be activated from time to time. I am guessing it is
    activated only when something already bounced on a user (?).
    Most mail sent out don't have the VERP (user=host+id) stuff at all
    as Sender:, and when they have something it's a cookie:

   gull-annonces-bounces+4ae5d0b7d6547f114afac76d551c9dfbbc3f212e at lists.alphanet.ch

Mark SAPIRO answered that in 2.1.5, VERP *bounce probes* cannot be
disabled.

Fixing the bug implies applying the patch:

   Modify Mailman/Bouncer.py to either implement mm_cfg.VERP_PROBES or
   just remove VERP probes all together. See
   <http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/mailman/branches/Release_2_1-maint/mailman/Mailman/Bouncer.py?r1=7147&r2=7190>

The bug will only show itself if the local MDA is unable to send to
Mailman when the address contains a +. Most modern MDA will see a + as
a subaddress and thus the bug won't be seen.

In my config, + cannot be used for that purpose. My work-around was to
modify this in mm_cfg.py:

   VERP_PROBE_FORMAT = '%(bounces)s=%(token)s'
   VERP_PROBE_REGEXP = r'^(?P<bounces>[^+]+?)\=(?P<token>[^@]+)@.*$'

and use = as subaddress separator






-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.33-pre2shakotay+2.4.33pre2+patch+route+vserver+vs1.2.10
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=fr_CH (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  apache [httpd]        1.3.33-6sarge1     versatile, high-performance HTTP s
ii  cron                  3.0pl1-86          management of regular background p
ii  debconf               1.4.30.13          Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                 2.3.2.ds1-22sarge3 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  logrotate             3.7-5              Log rotation utility
ii  postfix [mail-transpo 2.1.5-9            A high-performance mail transport 
ii  pwgen                 2.03-1             Automatic Password generation
ii  python                2.3.5-2            An interactive high-level object-o
ii  ucf                   1.17               Update Configuration File: preserv

-- debconf information:
* mailman/site_languages: fr, en
* mailman/used_languages: en fr
* mailman/create_site_list:
* mailman/queue_files_present:
* mailman/default_server_language: en
  mailman/gate_news: false