I’ve had to maintain a couple Listserv servers for the last few years.  Listserv hasn’t changed since the ’90s.  One thing that wasn’t thought of back then but is pretty common now are HTML e-mail clients. 

It is common for an HTML form that is requesting an e-mail address to do some basic verification.  It isn’t hard to code it to make sure the address is formatted as username@domain.xxx.  Also a quick check to make sure the address doesn’t include things like: mailto:username@domain.xxxwould be easy as well.  Unfortunately Listserv doesn’t do this check when accesping subscriptions via e-mail.  If you send a subscribe request in an HTML e-mail, it includes the markup.  Instead of seeing:

subscribe listname username@domain.xxx

It sees:

subscribe listname user...@domain.xxx<mailto:username@domain.xxx>

Obviously this is a bad address.  Listserv tries to process it, it fails and all of a sudden you have gigs of logs.  To clean this up, you have to find the addresses in the logs, delete them from the subscribers lists, and clear out messages from the queue.  That is what I’ve been doing the last couple hours. 

And just incase LSoft is listening, I have one other suggestion.  I appreciate you trying to keep the logs small but at least have the option to disable long log line truncation.  Right now if a line is to long, around 120 characters or so, instead of throwing in a line break or extending it, you throw up an (…) and end the line.  That isn’t acceptable.  Nothing frustrates me more knowing that the answer to the problem I’m experiencing is hidden behind a (…).   Please get rid of it or make it possible to disable that functionality.

</rant over>

Update: Thanks to Jacob Haller in the comments below, we have more info.  First off, the log truncation can be temporarily disabled using the debug_log_tcpgui keyword.  More information here: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/15.5/sitevars.html#cDebuglogtcpgui

Even better, in the next version, they will be correcting the bug with the HTML markup in subscribe messages.  That makes me incredibly happy.  It will save me so much time and I can’t wait until the next version.  Thank you LSoft.  It is good to see a company put forth the extra effort necessary to address their customers concerns.  Please make sure you read Jacob’s comment below.