[Axiom-developer] subscribing axiom-developer to MathAction

[Bill Page]

Martin,

On Friday, December 17, 2004 1:36 PM you wrote:
 
> maybe this is the point where we could subscribe axiom-developer
> to mathaction, i.e., any time mathaction is changed, a note 
> is sent to address@hidden

Ok, *I think* I have set this up. It was a bit awkward to do it
because of the "email reply required" type of authentication
that is used by mailman. In order to post a message to axiom-
developer the email address of the sender has to be subscribed
to the email list. So I first have to subscribe mathaction to
axiom-developer. Mailman sends an email to the address that you
specify (in this case address@hidden) and it
expects the receiver of the message to do something to confirm
the address. Normally email sent to address@hidden
will be appended to a page on the MathAction website. To confirm
the mathaction email address as a subscriber to axiom-developer
I first had to temporily re-direct the mathaction email address
on axiom-developer.org to my own email address. Then I could
confirm the request and have (apparently) managed to get mathaction
subscribed.

But there is a potential problem. If the mathaction email address
is also subscribed to the MathAction wiki - what we really want
to do - then that could create a nasty email loop since anything
sent to the axiom-developer email list by the MathAction website
would be echoed back to MathAction and trigger another outgoing
email.

It turns out there are some options that I can specify for
subscriptions to the axiom-developer list, one of these is to
disable echoing of emails to the original sender. This would
prevent the loop but it would result in every message to the
axiom-developer email list to be duplicated since a posting
would be sent to MathAction who would update some webpage on
the site and then send the changes to the site subscribers
one of which is mathaction on the axiom-developer email list.

I have instead choosen to disable all emails to the mathaction
address (on permantent vacation :) but the address remains
subscribed.

So this is what I have set up:

1) A user with the name Relay from MathAction is subscribed
to the axiom-developer email list using the email address
address@hidden Email delivery to that address
is disabled. (I hope that this does not also disable posting
of messages by that address!)

2) A user named axiom-developer is subscribed to the MathAction
website using the email address address@hidden

What I expect to happen:

1) If a change or comment is made to the MathAction web site
by someone, that will generate an email to the subscribers to
MathAction, one of which will go to address@hidden
It should be recognized by mailman as coming from a subscriber
with email address address@hidden

2) The email from MathAction will in turn be distributed by the
email server (mailman) at nongnu.org to all the other subscribers
on the axiom-developer email list.

However...

I have just made a test change on MathAction. I received a notice
of the change at my own email address since I am a subscriber
(you must of received it too), but since I am also a subscriber
to axiom-developer, I expected to see the notice again a short
time later echoed from that list. But so far it has not shown
up. Sometimes postings do seem to take a long time, so I
will continue to wait. In the meantime I am sending this message
to axiom-developer only and I will see which of these messages
arrives back in my inbasket first.

As Tim always say: There is no such thing as a simple job ... :)

Regards,
Bill Page.