Mailing Lists

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Mailing List Membership

The GnuCash mailing lists are a useful way to communicate with developers and users. It is customary to join (subscribe) to the mailing list. Posts from non-members wait in a queue to be approved.

There is alternate access to the Gnucash mailing lists through Nabble and Gmane. Being able to post to those sites does not subscribe you to the mailing list, so your posts will still wait in the queue to be approved, until you actually subscribe to the list.

Mailing List Management

The GnuCash mailing lists are served by a mailman server which allows users to subscribe, unsubscribe, and otherwise manage their subscriptions to the various lists available. For example, you can configure your settings to be subscribed, so you can post to the list, but not receive any emails from the list. These settings can be configured via the web interface or commands to a separate address constructed by appending -request to the list name, e.g. mailto:gnucash-de-request@gnucash.org?subject=unsubscribe.

Netiquette

Beneath the usual Netiquette you should obey the following:

  • Before your first posting disable any autoresponder. Because it is annoying for people answering you, you could be removed from the list.
  • Use plain text instead of html formated in your email client - html parts will be eaten by the mail server to reduce spam.
  • Use the reply to the list or reply to all button of your email client instead of reply (to the sender) - others could also be interested in the theme and probably help.
  • If you answer using your daily digest, replace in the subject "gnucash-<list> Digest ..." with that from the thread you are answering to.
  • In your reply strip off unneeded parts of the citation.
  • A final Thanks, that solved my problem. or Sorry, I'm giving up because ... would be fine. It would help other users, searching the archives, to decide to follow the instructions or not.
    • But there is no need for follow up Thank yous.
  • Each list has a moderator. The moderator makes the final decisions on which posts are acceptable or not, and is able to suspend list membership at their discretion. Posts to the list which are considered flaming, spam, or which contain offensive language may lead to suspension. Netiquette gives general guidelines.

Support

The Gnucash team, together with experienced users, will answer your questions about the use of Gnucash on gnucash-user and the other mailing lists listed below:

Self Signed Certificates

Note: the SSL certificates used for the mailing lists are self-signed and will create a warning through the new certificate security feature built in Firefox (Error code: sec_error_untrusted_issuer). That's not a problem, we're not attacking your computer, we're just too cheap to pay for a regular certificate. For best results you should add it as an exception, adding the certificate as a trusted certificate. Doing this will prevent passive attacks against you, so someone reading your network traffic won't see what pages you're trying to access.

Development

The following mailing lists are intended for discussion of the ongoing development of Gnucash, including submitting patches, helping with testing, or discussing future development directions. These lists should not be used for asking questions about the use of Gnucash. Questions of that nature should be submitted to gnucash-user or one of the other mailing lists mentioned in the 'Support' section above.

Mailing List Archives

You can also jump to specific archives for some of the lists:

For other lists, you can go to the mailman server and select the list you want to see.

Searching the List Archives

We currently have no on-site mechanism to search the mailing lists.

Instead, you can use the term "site:lists.gnucash.org" at Google or Yahoo! to search within the archives, e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alists.gnucash.org+string+to+search .

You should really search the archives before asking a question.

You should also look in the FAQ to see if your question has been asked and answered before.

Spam Prevention

The GnuCash mailing list server runs a number of tests to reduce the amount of spam collected in the mailman queues. In addition to the normal content filters and DNS Blacklists, the server also uses a sender verification method and greylisting to make sure the email is originating from a legitimate email account. Unfortunately this can affect your ability to send to the list if you're using one of the major email companies and THEY don't follow the rules.

For example, if you get a bounce back saying something like: 

... while talking to lists.gnucash.org.:
>>> DATA
<<< 550 5.7.1 <gnucash-user@gnucash.org>... sender <me@my.domain> via [10.20.30.40] to <gnucash-user@gnucash.org> rejected, too many recent retries
550 5.1.1 <gnucash-user@gnucash.org>... User unknown
<<< 503 5.0.0 Need RCPT (recipient)

This means your email provider failed the sender verification tests (i.e., it accepts mail to ANY address), and then when it was greylisted it re-transmitted the message too many times (more than three) in the spam-detection window (five minutes). Once this happens, you're blacklisted from the list. Unfortunately there's nothing you can do but wait until the blacklist entry times out (about one week). You might want to complain to your email provider, or you could change to a provider that's more friendly, or just use a different email address.

There is no manual way to reset the blacklist, so please don't ask. We apologize for your inconvenience, but rarely does this affect real users. If you get hit by this, we're sorry, but this is a problem from your provider's end and we cannot correct it on our end.

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