I noticed that Majordomo drops the second and subsequent lines of a
Subject: line in message before dispatching for some reason. It has
done this for some time; I noticed it some time ago in pgsql-es-ayuda
but I thought it may be a bug in my MUA. But I just saw it happened to
a mail from Bruce as well.
Is this fixable?

Bruce Momjian wrote:
Alvaro Herrera wrote:
I noticed that Majordomo drops the second and subsequent lines of a
Subject: line in message before dispatching for some reason. It has
done this for some time; I noticed it some time ago in pgsql-es-ayuda
but I thought it may be a bug in my MUA. But I just saw it happened to
a mail from Bruce as well.

Can you have multi-line subject lines? I didn't think that was
possible.

Yes. This is the header of a mail you sent to -patches:

From: Bruce Momjian <bruce (AT) momjian (DOT) us>
To: Zdenek Kotala <Zdenek.Kotala (AT) Sun (DOT) CM>
CC: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e (AT) gmx (DOT) net>, pgsql-patches (AT) postgresql (DOT) org
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:05:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in

Note the Subject is truncated w.r.t. the mail you were responding, which
had this:

From: Zdenek Kotala <Zdenek.Kotala (AT) Sun (DOT) CM>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e (AT) gmx (DOT) net>
Cc: pgsql-patches (AT) postgresql (DOT) org, bruce (AT) momjian (DOT) us
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:44:19 +0200
Subject: Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to -
See your sent-mail folder, you'll see that the message you actually sent
had something like this:

Subject: Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in
postgresql.conf to -

What happened with the second line? What I concluded has happened, from
observations on the other list, Majordomo removed it.

It most likely conforms strictly to <a
href="#page-21">Rfc 822</awhich is
the standard, and mostly canonical, and allows for CR and LF but not the
two together (CRLF), if I'm reading it correctly:

text = <any CHAR, including bare ; =atoms, specials,
CR & bare LF, but NT ; comments and
including CRLF; quoted-strings are
; NT recognized.

optional-field =

/ "Message-ID" ":" msg-id
/ "Resent-Message-ID" ":" msg-id
/ "In-Reply-To" ":" *(phrase / msg-id)
/ "References" ":" *(phrase / msg-id)
/ "Keywords" ":" #phrase
/ "Subject" ":" *text
/ "Comments" ":" *text
/ "Encrypted" ":" 1#2word
/ extension-field ; To be defined
/ user-defined-field ; May be pre-empted

Alvaro Herrera wrote:
Bruce Momjian wrote:

>Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>
I noticed that Majordomo drops the second and subsequent lines of a
Subject: line in message before dispatching for some reason. It has
done this for some time; I noticed it some time ago in pgsql-es-ayuda
but I thought it may be a bug in my MUA. But I just saw it happened to
a mail from Bruce as well.

>Can you have multi-line subject lines? I didn't think that was
>possible.
>
>
Yes. This is the header of a mail you sent to -patches:

From: Bruce Momjian <bruce (AT) momjian (DOT) us>
To: Zdenek Kotala <Zdenek.Kotala (AT) Sun (DOT) CM>
CC: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e (AT) gmx (DOT) net>, pgsql-patches (AT) postgresql (DOT) org
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:05:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in
--
Note the Subject is truncated w.r.t. the mail you were responding, which
had this:

From: Zdenek Kotala <Zdenek.Kotala (AT) Sun (DOT) CM>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e (AT) gmx (DOT) net>
Cc: pgsql-patches (AT) postgresql (DOT) org, bruce (AT) momjian (DOT) us
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:44:19 +0200
Subject: Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to -

See your sent-mail folder, you'll see that the message you actually sent
had something like this:

Subject: Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in
postgresql.conf to -
--
What happened with the second line? What I concluded has happened, from
observations on the other list, Majordomo removed it.

Guido Neitzer wrote:

<<<<<<
2.2.1. Unstructured Header Field Bodies

Some field bodies in this standard are defined simply as
"unstructured" (which is specified below as any US-ASCII characters,
except for CR and LF) with no further restrictions. These are
referred to as unstructured field bodies. Semantically,
unstructured
field bodies are simply to be treated as a single line of characters
with no further processing (except for header "folding" and
"unfolding" as described in section 2.2.3).

<<<<<<

So see what "folding" means. Section 2.2.3 says

2.2.3. Long Header Fields

Each header field is logically a single line of characters comprising
the field name, the colon, and the field body. For convenience
however, and to deal with the 998/78 character limitations per line,
the field body portion of a header field can be split into a multiple
line representation; this is called "folding". The general rule is
that wherever this standard allows for folding white space (not
simply WSP characters), a CRLF may be inserted before any WSP. For
example, the header field:

Subject: This is a test

can be represented as:

Subject: This
is a test

Alvaro Herrera wrote:
Bruce Momjian wrote:
>Alvaro Herrera wrote:
I noticed that Majordomo drops the second and subsequent lines of a
Subject: line in message before dispatching for some reason. It has
done this for some time; I noticed it some time ago in pgsql-es-ayuda
but I thought it may be a bug in my MUA. But I just saw it happened to
a mail from Bruce as well.
>Can you have multi-line subject lines? I didn't think that was
>possible.

Yes. This is the header of a mail you sent to -patches:

To further this:

RCPT T: jd (AT) lists (DOT) commandprompt.oc
m550 5.7.1 jd (AT) lists (DOT) commandprompt.oc Relaying denied. Proper
authentication required.
RCPT T: jd (AT) lists (DOT) commandprompt.com
250 2.1.5 jd (AT) lists (DOT) commandprompt.com Recipient ok
data
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
Subject: asdf
asdfasdf

hello

250 2.0.0 k7NFEHfh005371 Message accepted for delivery
RCPT T: jd (AT) lists (DOT) commandprompt.com
503 5.0.0 Need MAIL before RCPT
MAIL FRM: linuxpoet (AT) gmail (DOT) com
250 2.1.0 linuxpoet (AT) gmail (DOT) com Sender ok
RCPT T: jd (AT) lists (DOT) commandprompt.com
250 2.1.5 jd (AT) lists (DOT) commandprompt.com Recipient ok
data
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
Subject: asdfasdfasdf
asdfasdfasdfaasdffasdfasdasdf

this is a test

250 2.0.0 k7NFEHfi005371 Message accepted for delivery

Both of these came through with proper multi line subjects.

Joshua D. Drake

Guido Neitzer wrote:

So they don't contain line feeds or carriage returns and so the can't
be multi-line. If a mail client sends multi line subjects it does
something against the RFC and I assume with that, it does something wrong.

This is the theory in RFC 2822 as far as I understand it.

I think he referred to a long subject line being "folded" as per section
2.2.3 of rfc2822.

Tom Lane wrote:
Alvaro Herrera <alvherre (AT) commandprompt (DOT) comwrites:
I noticed that Majordomo drops the second and subsequent lines of a
Subject: line in message before dispatching for some reason. It has
done this for some time; I noticed it some time ago in pgsql-es-ayuda
but I thought it may be a bug in my MUA. But I just saw it happened to
a mail from Bruce as well.

Is this fixable?

Even though multi-line Subject: is theoretically legal according to the
RFCs, it's certainly an awful idea; how many MUAs do you know that
provide more than one line to display the subject in a normal view?
So I don't really care if Majordomo truncates the subject I wouldn't
see the rest of it anyway.

Huh, but the MUA auto-unfolds it for view. Both mutt and Elm do that
fine -- the folding and unfolding. I would think exmh is pretty
thoroughly broken if it didn't.

We can do an experiment and send you a Cc'ed message through the list
and a copy to you directly. The direct copy should have the full
subject, and the list one would be truncated.

Tom Lane wrote:
Alvaro Herrera <alvherre (AT) commandprompt (DOT) comwrites:
Tom Lane wrote:
>Even though multi-line Subject: is theoretically legal according to the
>RFCs, it's certainly an awful idea; how many MUAs do you know that
>provide more than one line to display the subject in a normal view?
>So I don't really care if Majordomo truncates the subject I wouldn't
>see the rest of it anyway.

Huh, but the MUA auto-unfolds it for view. Both mutt and Elm do that
fine -- the folding and unfolding. I would think exmh is pretty
thoroughly broken if it didn't.

Well, if I actually choose to read the message, sure I'll see all of it.
The point here is that you've got one line (and only about 50 characters
at that) to get my attention, and so I'm perfectly fine with list
software that, erm, strongly encourages brevity of Subject: headers.
If you're composing a paragraph it ought to be in the message body,
not the subject.

Have a look at how mutt displays the message index:

69 L Aug 23 Zdenek Kotala ( 37) Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to -
70 L Aug 23 Bruce Momjian ( 52) ->Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in

Note that the rest of the second subject line could still use the same
space as the line above it.

I mostly don't use 80-line terminals to read mail anymore because
there's so much stuff that's too wide. Subjects have already less space
available because of those [FBAR] stuff that's prepended to it. (I
noticed a couple of days ago that you strip those. Maybe I should do
that too.)

In any case I don't see any reason to let the broken software continue
to be broken. Surely there must be an updated version which corrects
this bug? A patch at least? I mean, I can't be the only one
complaining about it.

Even though multi-line Subject: is theoretically legal according to the
RFCs, it's certainly an awful idea; how many MUAs do you know that
provide more than one line to display the subject in a normal view?
So I don't really care if Majordomo truncates the subject I wouldn't
see the rest of it anyway.

Well my MUA actually reads the new line and makes it a single line.

Joshua D. Drake

regards, tom lane

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Marc G. Fournier wrote:
Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

>In any case I don't see any reason to let the broken software continue
>to be broken. Surely there must be an updated version which corrects
>this bug? A patch at least? I mean, I can't be the only one
>complaining about it.

Based on this thread, and the fact that you are the first to have ever
noticed/commented about it ya, you are the only one complaining
about it :)

Honestly, it may be time we start looking at mailman.

Joshua D. Drake

Marc G. Fournier H Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy (AT) hub (DOT) org MSN . scrappy (AT) hub (DOT) org
Yahoo . yscrappy Skype: hub.org ICQ . 7615664

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Joshua D. Drake wrote:
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>
>>In any case I don't see any reason to let the broken software continue
>>to be broken. Surely there must be an updated version which corrects
>>this bug? A patch at least? I mean, I can't be the only one
>>complaining about it.
>
>Based on this thread, and the fact that you are the first to have ever
>noticed/commented about it ya, you are the only one complaining
>about it :)

Honestly, it may be time we start looking at mailman.

Please don't, unless Majordomo is really broken and unfixed (i.e. there
isn't a newer version with the bug fixed). What version are we running?
May I assume we are running a rather obsolete version? Like the version
we are running of CVS, which doesn't support the usage of

KeywordExpand=iPostgreSQL

in CVSRT/config

which replaces the old, unsupported, broken hack of putting

tag=PostgreSQL=CVSHeader

in CVSRT/options. I've been wanting to propose an upgrade to that as
well.

Alvaro Herrera wrote:
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>Marc G. Fournier wrote:
Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

In any case I don't see any reason to let the broken software continue
to be broken. Surely there must be an updated version which corrects
this bug? A patch at least? I mean, I can't be the only one
complaining about it.
Based on this thread, and the fact that you are the first to have ever
noticed/commented about it ya, you are the only one complaining
about it :)
>Honestly, it may be time we start looking at mailman.

Please don't, unless Majordomo is really broken and unfixed (i.e. there
isn't a newer version with the bug fixed). What version are we running?

From what I can tell Majordomo isn't even supported any longer.
Secondly we get some better management (not great but better) interfaces
with mailman.

Mailman is a supported, large, active, FSS community project that is
battle tested in the current field much more so then Majordomo. Holding
on with a dying breaths to old software is silly.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>Marc G. Fournier wrote:
Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

In any case I don't see any reason to let the broken software continue
to be broken. Surely there must be an updated version which corrects
this bug? A patch at least? I mean, I can't be the only one
complaining about it.
Based on this thread, and the fact that you are the first to have ever
noticed/commented about it ya, you are the only one complaining
about it :)
>>Honestly, it may be time we start looking at mailman.
>
>Please don't, unless Majordomo is really broken and unfixed (i.e. there
>isn't a newer version with the bug fixed). What version are we running?

From what I can tell Majordomo isn't even supported any longer.
Secondly we get some better management (not great but better) interfaces
with mailman.

Mailman is a supported, large, active, FSS community project that is
battle tested in the current field much more so then Majordomo. Holding
on with a dying breaths to old software is silly.

Can Mailman do moderation over email? If it can do that, then I'm all
for it. If it can't, which was the case last time I checked (more than
a year ago or two, I admit), then I repeat my plea that it's not done.
Moderation over www is a PITA. My MUA allows me to accept/reject a
message in a single keystroke. If I had to fetch a webpage any time I
wanted to approve a post I'd abandon the job pretty quickly.

>>
>Mailman is a supported, large, active, FSS community project that is
>battle tested in the current field much more so then Majordomo. Holding
>on with a dying breaths to old software is silly.

Can Mailman do moderation over email? If it can do that, then I'm all
for it. If it can't, which was the case last time I checked (more than
a year ago or two, I admit), then I repeat my plea that it's not done.
Moderation over www is a PITA. My MUA allows me to accept/reject a

this is a little silly. This constant old school, we have to be
able to administer things from email is counter-productive. Email is
dead, long live www! ;)

Seriously though, from a list administrator point of view, someone who
has to manage many, many lists moderation over email is the PITA. It is
much nicer to just view a nice long list in a web brower, select a
couple that I want to keep -- and submit. The rest get thrown away.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

Seriously, I think that's the first time anybody said anything good
about the mailman interfaces Just the stuff I have to do for the
pgFoundry lists (of which I have only *two*) is just so much pain. (who
came up with such a brilliant thing as
It's just god-awful if you
have more than one list)

You don't have to have a different password for everything you do. Could
you elaborate as to what you are talking about?

If we're changing anyway, I think we should seriously consider Sympa,

Well no one said we were changing, I just made the suggestion. I have
never seen or even of heard of Sympa for that matter. Unless it has a
very large, active, supported community -- I am not interested in the least.

Joshua D. Drake

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>
>>Mailman is a supported, large, active, FSS community project that is
>>battle tested in the current field much more so then Majordomo. Holding
>>on with a dying breaths to old software is silly.
>
>Can Mailman do moderation over email? If it can do that, then I'm all
>for it. If it can't, which was the case last time I checked (more than
>a year ago or two, I admit), then I repeat my plea that it's not done.
>Moderation over www is a PITA. My MUA allows me to accept/reject a

this is a little silly. This constant old school, we have to be
able to administer things from email is counter-productive. Email is
dead, long live www! ;)

Seriously though, from a list administrator point of view, someone who
has to manage many, many lists moderation over email is the PITA. It is
much nicer to just view a nice long list in a web brower, select a
couple that I want to keep -- and submit. The rest get thrown away.

For each moderation request I get, I press a single key. Either "A" or
"R" (yes, I wrote a script for this and set up a mutt macro. Does you
MUA allow you to bind keys to macros?). And I get to see the message to
check if it's actual spam or not. These condensed lists of yours are a
mess because you can't readily tell without looking at the content, thus
leading to opening new windows or tabs. Plus, I get the moderation
requests on the regular inbox, so they get handled right away and
discarded (the single key macro I wrote takes care of deleting the mail
as well).

I don't see how the web stuff can be any simpler.

Same goes as a user of mailman lists.

What I want is to log in to "lists.postgresql.org", and get an interface
that wil show me everything about the lists i'm subscribed to
(capability to change my flags etc) and everything about the ones I'm
admin for (which I'm not for any on pgsql.org, but in principle - admin
requests, moderation requests etc).

from list to list yes you are correct. Hmmm I wonder how they
handle the token (decides to take a look after the class he is
teaching today).

Joshua D. Drake

I don't see how the web stuff can be any simpler.

I view a single page, select the items I wish to keep, hit a single
button, I am done and I don't have to clutter my inbox.

This discussion is all about how people work. Most people *D NT* work
from email the way Alvaro and and some of the other hackers do.

I do not use email for todo lists, sending commands to servers,
moderating lists. I use it for email, which is to say I communicate with
people with it. I receive attachments of contracts I need to sign and
requests for work.

When I open my email it is bad enough I have some spam to deal with, I
don't want a bunch of emails that have nothing to do with my actual
email cluttering my inbox. Administrative commands, for me -- belong in
an interface that is separate from my business medium.

Joshua D. Drake

Hello,
the P is using mutt like me and I have never seen mutt,
breaking the Subject in multiple lines. If I send mails,
with such subjects, the are always bandworms
Greetings
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant

Am 2006-09-07 06:15:15, schrieb Joshua D. Drake:

>>Honestly, it may be time we start looking at mailman.

From what I can tell Majordomo isn't even supported any longer.
Secondly we get some better management (not great but better) interfaces
with mailman.

Mailman is a supported, large, active, FSS community project that is
battle tested in the current field much more so then Majordomo. Holding
on with a dying breaths to old software is silly.

When do you want to migrate?

I have this question, because mailman can set to "nomail" if someone
is subscribe (I am subscribed with two E-Mails an get ALL messages
twice) but I need it to write from different locations or preventing
to get messages bounced, because a worm hit my linux4michelle Mailbox
(currently I get over 14.000 Spams and Viruses per day) which has
only 500 MBytes

Greetings
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant

Michelle Konzack wrote:
Hello,

the P is using mutt like me and I have never seen mutt,
breaking the Subject in multiple lines. If I send mails,
with such subjects, the are always bandworms

I don't know what the conditions are, but mutt frequently produces
multiline Subjects on my messages, even when I'm answering mail whose
Subject was not multiline. Maybe the usage of non-ASCII chars has
something to do with it. If you search the archives of pgsql-es-ayuda
you can find plenty of examples of this, where threads have changing
subjects -- some of the mails from me have the truncated subject on the
archives, while other mails on the same thread have the non-truncated
subject.

Hello Marc,

Am 2006-09-09 12:50:36, schrieb Marc G. Fournier:

And I missed this one from Joshua but, we aren't running Majordomo
from GreatCircle, we are running Majordomo2 (http://www.mj2.org) which is
very much being actively support

I have seen

Majordomo2 support a nomail option as well

I know, since some Mailinglist I am on are migrated to Majordomo2.
Afaik does Mailman not support the "nomail"

Same for ezmlm, sympha, and smartlist.

Greetings
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant