mailman/README.md

mailman

The site-wide antispam defaults are deliberately empty:

mailman_antispam_header_checks: []
mailman_antispam_chain_behaviour: discard

Mailing-list owners can manage list-specific header matches and select their action (accept, discard, hold, or reject) from Postorius. The global chain is used only when a matching rule has no explicit action.

Existing lists without any header matches can be initialized through the Mailman database model by enabling the optional seed operation:

mailman_seed_empty_list_header_matches: true
mailman_empty_list_header_matches:
  - header: 'X-Spam-Flag'
    pattern: '^YES$'
    action: 'discard'

The operation is idempotent. A list is modified only when its header-match collection is empty; lists with one or more existing rules are left untouched.

Verified weekly restart

The optional weekly restart performs separate stop and start operations. It waits for systemd, mailman status, and the configured LMTP listener to confirm that Mailman has stopped before starting it. It then requires the master and the LMTP port to become available before considering startup successful:

mailman_enable_weekly_verified_restart: true
mailman_weekly_verified_restart_on_calendar: 'Sun *-*-* 04:00:00'
mailman_service_stop_timeout: 30
mailman_weekly_verified_restart_stop_timeout: 120
mailman_weekly_verified_restart_start_timeout: 120

The timer is deliberately not persistent, so a missed run is not executed immediately after a server boot. Failures are recorded by systemd in the mailman-verified-restart.service journal.

The managed mailman.service uses KillMode=control-group and an explicit TimeoutStopSec. If Mailman’s own stop command hangs, systemd terminates the whole service cgroup and removes a stale master PID file. The weekly job still verifies the real stopped state and does not start a second instance until the master and LMTP listener are gone. The normal role execution also waits for the configured LMTP port and fails if the listener does not become available after starting or restarting Mailman.

Legacy HyperKitty compatibility fixes

The optional compatibility patcher addresses three failures observed with the legacy Python 3.6 web stack: malformed From/Subject headers, nested message/rfc822 parts without Content-Transfer-Encoding, and unreadable gettext catalogs. Enable it only for the known package versions:

mailman_enable_legacy_hyperkitty_compatibility_patches: true
mailman_legacy_hyperkitty_version: '1.3.3'
mailman_legacy_django_mailman3_version: '1.3.4'

The Python source patches are idempotent, compiled before any file is replaced, and installed atomically. The task fails without changing either source file if the installed versions or expected source fragments do not match. Invalid django_extensions .mo files are preserved beside the original name with a .disabled-by-ansible suffix, allowing Django to fall back to another locale. The uWSGI service is restarted only when a source file or catalog actually changes.

Disable this option before upgrading HyperKitty or django-mailman3, then review whether the compatibility patches are still needed with the new versions.