Subject: Alternative to TMDA to be deployed

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:05:18 +0100

Hi,

Last month I spent some time writing a replacement for TMDA -- well, the
functionality of TMDA that the IETF has been using.  The working name
is 'postconfirm'.

The replacement has quite different performance characteristics from TMDA;
preliminary tests indicates that with a whitelist of 16000 entries a
lookup costs about 0.01 seconds and about ~5 Mbytes for a server daemon,
in contrast whith TMDA which costs between ~10s and ~600s and ~98 Mb
*per lookup* in the configuration it was set up in front of the IETF lists.

Postconfirm can and will be pre-seeded with mailing list subscribers, as we
were doing with TMDA; the behaviour should be identical for mailing list
subscribers (unnoticeable) and very similar for first-time non-subscribed
posters.

Over the last couple of weeks it's been active in front of the RT queues
and in front of [email-masked] and [email-masked], and a few other lists.
It seems like it's time to deploy it in front of the IETF mailing lists in
general.  You should not notice any change at all, but if there is any trouble,
please let us know so we can look at it and fix or revert.

Unless I hear objections, the plan is to activate this around 16:00 GMT today,
Monday 28th July.

Best,

	Henrik

---

From: Peter Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:13:10 +0200

> please let us know so we can look at it and fix or revert.

I'd not say trouble, but it's worth noting that apparently this tool works
based on the envelope From instead of the header, which makes a difference
for some.  It blocked my posting to my wg list first time, but now should
be fine.

-Peter

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:44:14 -0400

+1

---

From: James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:18:57 +0100

-- On Monday, July 28, 2008 12:05 PM +0100 Henrik Levkowetz 
<[email-masked]> wrote regarding Alternative to TMDA to be 
deployed --

> but if there is any trouble,

I frequently use subaddresses in my email address on mailing lists, 
for example, although I don't use it on this list if I did it would 
look like this:

    [email-masked]

This seems to confuse postconfirm because I keep getting a 
confirmation request even though I am subscribed to the mailing 
list.

Jim

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:29:41 +0100

On 2008-07-29 15:18 James M Galvin said the following:
...
> confirmation request even though I am subscribed to the mailing 

Postconfirm doesn't try to guess whether an address has a sub-address
part which should be split off before looking in the whitelist.  If
you want to post from a different address than the one you're subscribed
as, you'll have to confirm it.  Or you could subscribe using the full
subaddress, then the whitelist will be updated with that address.

On the other hand, if you have confirmed the subaddress, and still
receive confirmation requests after that, then we have a bug.  If so,
let me know the details about the message in question so I can trace
it.

	Henrik

---

From: James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:50:59 +0100

-- On Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:29 PM +0100 Henrik Levkowetz 
<[email-masked]> wrote regarding Re: Alternative to TMDA to 
be deployed --

> let me know the details about the message in question so I can

I don't think I explained myself carefully enough.

For any mailing list for which I am subscribed using a subaddress, 
when I send a message from that subaddress I get a confirmation 
request message from postconfirm telling me I am not subscribed 
even though I am, in fact, subscribed.

This does not happen on lists for which I do not use a subaddress.

Jim

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:56:57 +0100

> This does not happen on lists for which I do not use a subaddress.

Ah.  I see.  Understood.  I'll investigate.

	Henrik

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:10:07 +0100

Followup:

On 2008-07-29 17:56 Henrik Levkowetz said the following:
...
> Ah.  I see.  Understood.  I'll investigate.

So I find that postconfirm has requested confirmation for a post from
<[email-masked]>.  I also find 31 different galvin+ subaddresses
in the whitelist, however no entry for <[email-masked]>.

This is the only address of yours for which a confirmation request has
issued, as far as I can see.

So I need to ask if you're sure that you're subscribed to any ietf list
with the address <[email-masked]> ?

	Henrik

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:57:56 +0900

Gavin - As far as I understand, subaddresses are purely a matter
of the receiving mailing system. This means that postconfirm has
no right to eliminate any '+' and following characters on the
left hand side, because that might be a truely different address
on some mail servers.

Regards,   Martin.

At 23:18 08/07/29, James M Galvin wrote:
>
>
>-- On Monday, July 28, 2008 12:05 PM +0100 Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]> wrote regarding Alternative to TMDA to be deployed --
>
>I frequently use subaddresses in my email address on mailing lists, for example, although I don't use it on this list if I did it would look like this:
>
>This seems to confuse postconfirm because I keep getting a confirmation request even though I am subscribed to the mailing list.
>
>Jim
>

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:22:31 +0100

-- On Tuesday, July 29, 2008 6:10 PM +0100 Henrik Levkowetz 
<[email-masked]> wrote regarding Re: Alternative to TMDA to 
be deployed --

> with the address <[email-masked]> ?

The [email-masked] mailing list.

Thanks,

Jim

---

From: James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:26:06 +0100

-- On Wednesday, July 30, 2008 11:57 AM +0900 Martin Duerst 
<[email-masked]> wrote regarding Re: Alternative to TMDA to 
be deployed --

> left hand side, because that might be a truely different address

Right.  I'm not suggesting that postconfirm should pay attention to 
subaddresses.  I point it out only because "[email-masked]" 
never got a confirmation request but the subaddress email address 
did.  So it seemed a detail worth mentioning.

Jim