Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 23:25:22 +0100 From: Szilveszter Adam <sziszi@bsd.hu> To: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Suggestions for handbook/eresources.html#ERESOURCES-MAIL Message-ID: <20020226222521.GA1145@fonix.adamsfamily.xx> In-Reply-To: <1wzo1wufz5.o1w@localhost.localdomain> References: <1wzo1wufz5.o1w@localhost.localdomain>
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Hello Gary, I very much appreciate you brought up this topic just now. It is because the whereabouts about FreeBSD as in "FreeBSD the Project" not "FreeBSD the code" are not entirely clear and it all shows just way to well to anyone who has been hanging around the lists lately. Way to much stuff is unwritten, exists only in peoples' conflicting memories or is just plain rotting away. The mailing list issue is one such topic. (The web site maintenance is another) On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 12:48:30PM -0800, Gary W. Swearingen wrote: > > 1) I've seen a couple of questions about how to get a new mailing list > created. (And another suggestion that I get one started for the > discussion of proposed PRs, which I think would get read too little.) I think so... ideally, the "front line of support" lists should be -questions, and perhaps -current (when it is specific to -CURRENT) and perhaps -stable. A PR should only be filed if it has been determined that we have a real problem at hand. (For which reason it would be fitting to rename send-pr just like OpenBSD has done: they call it sendbug, because it is just that: We are not expecting *Problem* Reports but rather Bug Reports via it) A specific maillist is not such a good idea since people should be able to report legit bugs (even if in a not yet totally analyzed state) without being subscribed to any mailing list. Any communication later can happen via the PR system. (Now even the bug-followup@freebsd.org alias exists for such communication, although I assume it is just a shorthand for gnats-submit@ since it is not obvious to many) If you are not sure it is a bug, it is better to bring it up on a frequented mailing list so that people can comment on it. > I suggest that a "C.1.4 List Creation" section be added to > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/eresources.html > but I don't know what to put in there. Maybe "Contact postmaster"? Yeah. And he will decide in his sole discretion if he will grant the request. We have seen example where a maillist that was not allowed on FreeBSD.org mailservers became successful but the opposite has also happened, more than once. Eg the freebsd-printing list is still at @bostonradio.org last I checked. But it can also be said that FreeBSD already has to many mailing lists which is also sort-of true. Just look at mailing-lists.ent recently:-) > 2) The above web page should have the list charter for freebsd-www; the > description under "Limited lists" ("Maintainers of www.FreeBSD.org") is > rather unhelpful. I thought that's what -doc was for. Yes. But the "Webmasters" hang out there. If you click the email link on the bottom of most of the www pages, the email goes to that list. > 4) Since mailing addresses like "doc@freebsd.org" are permitted, it > would be helpful to have that stated on the page. I'm not sure if it's > true for only a few lists or for all which start with "freebsd-". This is tricky. Up till very recently I was convinced that the dual addressing scheme whereby all mailing list names were valid with or without freebsd- was due to history and that it was just a "transit" measure albeit one that lasted quite long. The basis for this statement is that I saw some really old announcements from JKH, those were sent to freebsd-announce before the freebsd.org domain even existed. So at that time the freebsd- prefix was even necessary to show that this list had to do with freebsd. (As I recall the addresses were then in the .cdrom.com domain but I may be wrong.) At least -announce and -questions existed even way back then, and I think maybe even -current. Later as the freebsd.org domain came along, the prefixes are pretty much unnecessary but were retained so that (I guess) old configs and subscriptions would continue to work, and even added for new lists. Up till (I think) this summer it appeared to be the same if you subscribed to doc@ or freebsd-doc@ and posting still works to both addresses. But subscribing doesn't. If you attempt to subscribe to the address without the freebsd-, for the "Limited lists" you get an answer to try the variant with the prefix. (Eg -announce. Subscribe to announce@freebsd.org. Try it. See the error message.) This is almost OK in that you get instructions to try again. But with non-limited lists, your request (at least in my recent experience) is simply *ignored* and you get *nothing* back. This is definitely wrong. Now I am just wildly speculating from here on, since mailing list management is not in the least "open" on FreeBSD.org, you can only learn about the configuration by tripping up some traps and learning as you go. So. I assume that for some lists (most notably announce and security-announce) a duplicate subscription policy was instituted so as to allow subscribing in "read-only" mode but at the same time keep a separate list of people who may also post. This *may* have happened in response to a series of pranks that were committed AFAIR last spring or even before that (and also happened to announce@openbsd.org) and which involved sending out fake Security Advisories (without PGP signature, of course) by forging the From: to some allowed address (and maybe then some, details are fuzzy). These "SAs"did not have flattering content about FreeBSD's security. This configuration change may have been an attempt to stop that from happening and now probably even authorized people can only post to these lists from within a trusted domain and may be using the address without the freebsd-. Now, why this change involved changing every list's config is beyond me, but I never had to manage majordomo, soooo... So the short story is: while posting apparently still works to both address variants, now the freebsd- versions should be preferred for subscription etc. (Except the only list which never had this prefix: cvs-all) > P.S. I found the discussion of "Limited lists" a bit nebulous, like > maybe it was trying to not be open about some things. Is subscription > screened? Is it really about "audiences" and "interest" (many of the > technical lists should then qualify) or really about limiting discussion > to important contributors (quite reasonably, eg, to keep "noise" down)? > Are they segregated just because they refuse to publish guidelines? Why > is -install not under "Technical lists"? While I do not know the answer to this question above, I would like to point out that -install is one of the lists, that are actually dead. Look over the archives, you will see that eg -install has not had a single message sent to it for more than two years now. (May be more, was just too lazy to look) These lists are easy to spot, the weekly archives will have a constant and small size like "3k" all the time. And while we are on topic, it would also be nice to add that there are actually rather strict requirements for *posting* (as opposed to subscribing) to FreeBSD.org mailing lists. Again, you may never find out, but who knows. Nowadays, when it is not the usual thing to have your very own leased line and IP space to play your own ISP, you are entirely at the mercy of your provider. So. FreeBSD.org lets you subscribe from just about anywhere, so far so good. But if you want to post, it appears that: The mail server that will try to connect to hub.freebsd.org (which will probably be your ISP's) must meet the following requirements: 1) It must have a reverse-resolvable IP. It is unclear if it is required that the forward and reverse resolve match, too, but maybe. 2) It must use HELO with its fully qualified domain name. Only using its hostname is guaranteed to fail, only using its IP is possible to fail. 3) I am not sure if the string in the HELO is actually checked against the result of the reverse-resolve, it may be. But for sure it must be reverse-resolvable. Otherwise your message will be kept in limbo until the sending MTA eventually gives up. (The error returned by hub is a Transient Failure, although it already knows that it is not going to accept your message, ever.) Although quite some people have been bitten by this (including me, I had to find about the "using only the hostname in the HELO" thing the hard way) the Postmaster and some hard-core users (in particular Ted Mittelstaedt, who, surprise, is an ISP himself) have always refused to do something about this or even discuss it. They will only tell you to fix things on your end, as if that was possible with a large ISP of which you are just a customer. Up till now these "requirements" are fully undocumented, although even OpenBSD does set a better example in this regard. (Oh, and of course the alleged spam-killer effect is far from 100% with this setup, in fact I get the most spam from FreeBSD.org lists. Just ironic.) I hope that you will be able to get some discussion going about Project interna, because quite unlike some "old hands" I do feel that, once this is a public effort where everyone's effort is solicited, it is only fair to treat everybody as equals, not as first-rate (core and some alumni) second-rate (committers) and the rest ("just" users, testers, bug fixers etc) and this involves making the "house rules" public knowledge, even if that means that a debate might start about them. It is just the right thing to do. -- Regards: Szilveszter ADAM Szombathely Hungary To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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