Controlling backscatter spam in Mailman

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By default, Mailman -- which is installed by default in Virtualmin as your mailing list manager, exhibits some nasty behavior, being open to sending "backscatter" spam. This means that the Bad Guys send fraudulent messages "from" the email address they actually want to send spam to; Mailman rejects those messages, basically sending a bounce message to the victim.

The mechanism the spammers use is left over from the days before web interfaces. Nowadays, your subscribers interact with Mailman almost exclusively via its HTTP interface. Other than actual postings from subscribed members, and messages to the list owner, there is little or no reason to keep the vestigial email aliases.

To disable the vulnerable aliases:

With Virtualmin, go into the Webmin interface, under Servers; Postfix Mail Server; and click on the Aliases icon. You should see, for example, defined among the email addresses:

yourlist-example.com    Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post yourlist
<strong>yourlist-admin-example.com      Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin yourlist</strong>
yourlist-bounces-example.com    Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces yourlist
<strong>yourlist-confirm-example.com    Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm yourlist
yourlist-join-example.com       Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join yourlist
yourlist-leave-example.com      Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave yourlist
</strong>yourlist-owner-example.com     Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner yourlist
<strong>yourlist-request-example.com    Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request yourlist
yourlist-subscribe-example.com  Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe yourlist
yourlist-unsubscribe-example.com        Program /usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe yourlist</strong>

for "yourlist@example.com" ... I recommend you disable these aliases shown in bold above:

-admin-, -confirm-, -join-, -leave-, -request-, -subscribe-, -unsubscribe-.

You also need to edit /etc/postfix/virtual -- or in Webmin, open "Servers" and click on "Postfix Mail Server" then click on the "Virtual Domains" icon:

and delete the virtual mappings for all the addresses you just removed.

You will want to do this for each mailing list on your system.

Setting up Zonet 2102 print server on Ubuntu Linux

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For setup of the Zonet ZPS2102:

The default IP is 192.168.0.10 ... in the Add Printer dialogs, choose Network Printer, then enter the IP address, the queue (default is: LP1) and choose the model.

The Device URI, when you are done, looks like:

lpd://192.168.0.10/LP1

Anti-virus and anti-spyware recommendations

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Here are our currently recommended software packages:

Subversion 1.6 on Debian (Lenny)

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See the instructions at http://backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=instructions

Grace Hopper Quote

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A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question. — Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper