mailmech

Administration of mailman lists on the command line or embedded into other software projects. Gnu mailman before version 3.0 didn't offer an API to let you manage subscriptions and list info, so this ruby program offers you command line access to manager your lists.

mailmech has two parts: mailmech.rb is the library, which is used by the frontend lists.rb

Current list of options

Usage: lists.rb [options]

    -a, --add a,b,c                  Subscribe list or FILE (csv: email,company)
    -c, --company STRING             Company
    -F, --configuration STRING       Configuration file
    -d, --debug                      Output more information
    -D, --delete a,b,c               Delete subscribers    
        --delete-external            Delete external subscribers
    -n, --dry-run                    Dry run
        --edit-goodbye-msg           Edit goodbye message
        --edit-welcome-msg           Edit welcome message
        --get-goodbye-msg            Get goodbye message
        --get-welcome-msg            Get welcome message
    -s, --show                       Show subscriber list
    -m, --message STRING             Message to be logged
    -v, --no-verify                  Do not verify subscription
    -V, --verbose                    Verbose output for debugging
    -l, --list a,b,c                 Select list by ALIAS
    -x, --stats                      Print statistics
    -X, --xstats                     Print extended statistics

Installation

You need to have ruby installed on your system and then install missing gems, for example you will need the "mechanize" gem:

  gem install mechanize

Modify the example configuration in mailmech.yaml to your needs.

Notes:

• There are currently at least two potential security risks
  • SSL certificates are currently not checked
  • Passwords are currently saved as clear text
• mailmech works with different mailman versions, but is a bit picky regarding the setting for the server. As of today (2013-11-14) I have
  • mailman 2.1.9: http://...
  • mailman 2.1.14: http://...
  • mailman 2.1.16: https://...

Examples

• Statistics overview:

    lists.rb -x
  
    Statistics:
                    List |       Alias|       Total|        int.|        ext.|Domains ext.|             Comment
    ---------------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+--------------------
               vym-forum |       forum|          88|           1|          87|          53|  General Discussion
               vym-devel |       devel|          43|           1|          42|          23|          Developers
         vym-translation |       trans|          17|           2|          15|           9|         Translators
  

• Find external domains of subscribers for three lists:

    lists.rb -l devel,trans,forum -s | grep domext
  

• Count mails in your own mailarchive:

    lists.rb -X -l trans
    Processing 203 mails...
    Extended stats for "vym-translation":
      * Mails by internal senders (21):
          21 XXX@XXX.de                       
  
      * Mails by external senders (182):
          60 XXX@XXX.de                       
          15 XXX@XXX.cz                     
           9 XXX@XXX.info                      
           8 XXX@XXX.fr                         
           7 XXX@XXX.com.ar
           ...
  

Todo

• Add documentation
• Add error handling
• Gemify mailmech
• Implement more of the mailman interface in mailmech