Thanks Steve. Yeah, indeed, it was a stupid configuration error.
So, while investigating malformed-url errors (https://lists.mailman3.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/LRGWS77SBCVCHBQGHCXZBVXQBXU62MTD/)[*], I had set mistakenly in `/etc/mailman3/mailman-web.py`:
EMAIL_HOST = ''Of course, then how can Postorius contact my SMTP!? Bah, tweaking stuff uncritically is always Bad Thing (TM), dumb me.
Everything looks OK now. The workflow is clear: the new user can get their password via the reset page and then go through with e-mail verification, etc.
[*] I had meanwhile disabled unused apps to reduce attack surface and noise. Cheers, -- Marco On 2025-08-29 19:42, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
^m'e via Mailman-users writes:
> I migrated form MM2.1 to MM3.3.10 on Debian Trixie (mariadb
> backend) -- I know that's a bit unorthodox to ask here for help on
> a non venv-based installation,
We appreciate your courtesy, but this is inaccurate. If you install
a distro-packaged Mailman and it doesn't do the basic stuff such as
"start" or "respond to web requests" out of the box, that's a distro
problem. (That includes any features missing because of the
inevitable lag in distro packaging.)
On the other hand, if you have a misconception (see Issue #1) or if
Mailman is basically working but doing a particular weird thing (in
your opinion, and that's Issue #2), asking here is the right thing to
do. Distro maintainers are frequently experts in packaging but
ordinary users of their package without expertise in troubleshooting
the package, and usually zero interest in educating users. That is
what we are here for!
And, obviously, "real" bugs may manifest first in a distro package.
> but hopefully I'll first gain a bit of insight of MM3 in order to
> formulate a more precise request to Debian maintainers.
I don't think these are Mailman issues, and quite likely they're not
Debian issues.
> ## Issue #1.
>
> A newly invited (from Postorius mass subscription page) and
> confirmed user doesn't get any password in their invitation/welcome
> e-mail.
The invitation/welcome emails usually don't know if the user is
verified, and they are otherwise not personalized, so sending a
one-time password (OTP) at that time would be a lot more complicated
than it's worth. Also, many users may prefer to NOT set a password at
all. For example, if you configure the Gmail socialauth plugin, a
Gmail user can log in without doing the OTP dance. (I think we still
require the dance to verify the address, because socialauth is hard
and the burden is small. And if 'confirm' is set in the list
preferences, you have to either log in to Postorius to subscribe, or
do the dance for an email subscription.)
Because Mailman 3 has a model of a user with multiple addresses and
subscriptions, the burden of using the reset password dance for the
initial setting of a password is considered very small (it usually is
done once during the user's association with the Mailman instance, if
at all). So that's the way we do it.
> ## Issue #2
>
> Anyway, if that new user asks for a password reset on Postorius they get
>
> "Server error
> An error occurred while processing your request."
This appears to be an MTA misconfiguration, either in Mailman or
possibly in the MTA:
> File "/usr/lib/python3.13/smtplib.py", line 861, in sendmail
> self.ehlo_or_helo_if_needed()
Mailman tried to connect to a mail server.
> File "/usr/lib/python3.13/smtplib.py", line 365, in send
> raise SMTPServerDisconnected('please run connect() first')
> smtplib.SMTPServerDisconnected: please run connect() first
It failed.
Twp possibilities off hand: (1) The server expects authenticated
and/or encrypted email (SASL and TLS), but Mailman is not configured
to do that. (2) A typo in the server IP or hostname.
There are all sorts of other reasons why a server might refuse a
connection, but we'd need a lot more information to diagnose.
Steve
OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
___________________________________________
Mailman's content filtering has removed the
following MIME parts from this message.
Content-Type: application/pgp-keys
Name: OpenPGP_0xC366FCF67CDBD9F9.asc
_______________________________________________ Mailman-users mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] https://lists.mailman3.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.mailman3.org/ Archived at: https://lists.mailman3.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/GBD6SMPDM5GK7TBRWCKWYANAEK66KYNX/ This message sent to [email protected]
