• The Dragon supports general mailing lists managed by the Majordomo software package. This page contains information for list owners information. It is mostly derived from information in the file list-owners-info in the majordomo distribution.
• Getting Started
• The Gory Details
• Configuring Your List
• Regular Expressions
• Approval
• Bounced Messages
• "My list is open and majordomo still asks me to approve a subscription. Why?"
• Moderation
• Restricting Posting
• Archive Digest
• More Information

Getting Started

As soon as possible, please issue a newinfo command for your list (see below) to create the file that someone will receive when they join or ask about your list. You can issue a approve <list password> who <list name> command for your list to see who's already on your list. You may or may not already be subscribed to your own list.

The Gory Details

Your mailing list is managed by an automated mailing list management program called Majordomo. Majordomo should free you from dealing with most of the administrivia usually associated with running mailing lists (adding users, dropping users, etc.). To submit something to your list, you (or anybody else) should simply mail it to the list posting address (listname@cs.wisc.edu). All majordomo commands are contained in the body (not the subject list) of email messages. To be added to your list, a user simply sends a message to majordomo. There are two ways to do that: Send mail to listname-request@cs.wisc.edu with subscribe as the message
OR: Send mail to majordomo@cs.wisc.edu with subscribe listname as the message. NOTE: if you use a +confirm subscription policy for your list, majordomo will send a message containing an authorization command in it to the user who requested the subscription. This command must be mailed back to majordomo@cs.wisc.edu to complete the subscription request. Majordomo understands several commands, and is not limited to a single command per message (it will process commands until reaching end-of-message or the command end). The command help will tell you about all the other commands. Actually, it won't tell you about all the other commands that Majordomo understands. There are several commands there for use by list owners such as yourself, which are not advertised to the public. All of these commands are password-protected on a list-by-list basis, but anyone with a valid list/password combination can invoke these commands. This is not exactly high-tech security, but it's more intended to keep annoyance to a minimum than to be foolproof. The documented commands which Majordomo understands and which are for everyone to use are documented in the CSL Majordomo FAQ. You can get detailed explanations of all of these by asking for help from Majordomo (send a message containing just the word help as the message text to majordomo@cs.wisc.edu).

List Owner Commands

The undocumented commands for use by list owners are listed below. Brackets are not used in mail messages. approve passwd {subscribe | unsubscribe} list address This is so that you can approve subscription or unsubscription actions that need approval by the list owner. Note that this is just a standard subscribe or unsubscribe command prefixed with approve password (where you substitute the password for your list for password). approve passwd who list This allows you to get the list of addresses for your anonymous list. Without the password, even the list owner can not see who is on the list. passwd list old_passwd new_passwd This is so you can change the password for your list, if you desire. newintro list password This is so that you can replace the information file that people get when they do intro list or subscribe list. It reads everything after the newintro command to end-of-message or the word EOF on a line by itself as the new intro for the list. newinfo list password This replaces the information file that people get when they do info list. (This file is also sent by subscribe list if the intro file doesn't exist). This reads everything after the newinfo command to end-of-message or the word EOF on a line by itself as the new info for the list. config list password Retrieves a self-documenting configuration file for the list list. The password can be the password contained in the file list.passwd or the admin_password in the configuration file. newconfig list password Validates and installs a new configuration file. It reads everything after the newconfig command to end-of-message or the word EOF on a line by itself as the new info for the list. The config file is expected to be a complete config file as returned by config. Incremental changing of the config file is not yet supported. As soon as the config file is validated and installed its settings are available for use. This is useful to remember if you have multiple commands in your mail message since they will be subject to the settings of the new config file. If there is an error in the config file (incorrect value...), the config file will not be accepted and the error message identifying the problem line(s) will be returned to the sender. Note that only the error messages are returned to the sender not the entire config file, so it would be a good idea to keep a copy of your outgoing email message. writeconfig list password Write a new config file in standard form. Writeconfig forces a rewrite of the config file with all default values in place (or current values if the config file already exists). It is useful to use after an upgrade of majordomo since it will add the new keywords for people to change. It also updates the documentation in the file if that has changed. mkdigest digest list name password
mkdigest digest list name digest outgoing alias password Generate a digest immediately without waiting to reach the maxlength given in the config file. The first form will cause the digest to be sent to an alias found by appending -outgoing to the digest list name. Because this can be a security concern, the second form allows specification of the name of the alias that the outgoing digest will be sent to.

Configuring Your List

You should retrieve the configuration file for your list. To do this, send an email message to the majordomo address listed at the top of this form. The contents of this message should be: config list list-password Where list list-password were given to you at list creation time. You will receive a config file that can be used to change the operation of your list. Configure the majordomo and resend subsystems. The configuration file is meant to be self documenting. Once you have completed all of the changes to the config file, You should use the newconfig command (described above) to put a new configuration file in place. If you have a digest version of your list, you should retrieve the config file for the digest as well using: config digest-list-name digest-list-password and configure the parameters for the digest and majordomo subsystems.

Regular Expressions

For some of the configuration options, a rudimentary knowledge of perl style regular expressions will help you run Majordomo through its tricks. A regular expression is a concise way of expressing a pattern in a series of characters. The full power of regular expressions can make some difficult tasks quite easy, but we will only brush the surface here. The character / is used to mark the beginning and end of a regular expression. Letters and numbers stand for themselves. Many of the other characters are symbolic. Some commonly used ones are:

Examples

/cs\.umb\.edu/ Notice the periods are preceded by a backslash to make them be literally periods. This matches any string containing cs.umb.edu such as:

      
        cs.umb.edu
        foo.cs.umb.edu
        user@foo.cs.umb.edu
        users%foo.cs.umb.edu@greatcircle.com
  

    
        rouilj@cs.umb.edu
        rouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu
        arouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu@greatcircle.com

  

but it doesn't match

    
        rouilj@umb.edu
        brent@cs.umb.edu

  

    
        rouilj@cs.umb.edu
        rouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu

  

but it doesn't match

    
        arouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu@greatcircle.com

  

because the regular expression says the string has to begin with letter r and end with letter u, by using the ^ and $ symbols, and neither of those is true for arouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu@greatcircle.com. /.*/ This is the regular expression that matches anything. /.\*rouilj/ Here the * is preceded by a \, so it refers literally to an asterisk character and not the symbolic meaning zero or more times. The . still has its symbolic meaning of any one character, so it would match for example

    
        a*rouilj
        s*rouilj       

  

It would not match this because the . by itself implies one character:

    
        *rouilj

  

Normally all matches are case sensitive; you can make any match case insensitive by appending an `i' to the end of the expression. /aol\.com/i This would match aol.com, AOL.com, AoL.cOm, etc. Removing the `i':

    
      /aol\.com/

  

would match aol.com but not AOL.com or any other capitalization. To be on the safe side put a \ in front of any characters in the regular expressions that are not numbers or letters. In order to put a / into the regular expression, the same rule holds: precede it with a \. Thus, with \ in front of the / and = characters, this

    
        /\/CO\=US/

  

matches /CO=US and may be a useful regular expression to those of you who need to deal with X.400 addresses that contain / characters.

Approval

When Majordomo requests your approval for something, it sends you a message that includes a template of the approval message; if you concur, you simply need to replace PASSWORD in the template with your list password, and send the template line back to Majordomo. The requests for approval that Majordomo generates all start with APPROVE in the Subject: line. You aren't limited to approving only things to Majordomo requests approval for. You can approve any subscribe or unsubscribe request, regardless of whether Majordomo has requested this approval, with an approve command. Thus, you can subscribe or unsubscribe people from your list without them having to send anything to Majordomo; just send an appropriate approve PASSWORD subscribe LIST ADDRESS or approve PASSWORD unsubscribe LIST ADDRESS command off to Majordomo. If you use a mailer which is capable of sending a message to an external program, can run perl and can run sendmail or a program capable of behaving like it for the purposes of sending mail, then all you have to do is send the entire approval message (including all of the headers, which are very important and which are automatically removed by some mailers unless configured to do otherwise) to the approve script. Approve looks for a file called .majordomo in your home directory to find the approval password for your list. The format of this file is given in the following excerpt from the approve manual page:

    
     approve assumes that the approve password for each  list  is
     the  same  as the approval password used by resend, and that
     this password is stored in a file called .majordomo  in  the
     user's home directory.  The file has the following format:

          this-list    passwd1   Majordomo@This.COM
          other-list   passwd2   Majordomo@Other.GOV

     The first column specifies the name of the mailing list, the
     second  column  specifies  the list-owner's password for the
     given list,  and  the  third  column  specifies  the  e-mail
     address  of  the associated Majordomo server.  It is assumed
     that the value in the  third  column  is  an  Internet-style
     something@somewhere  address, and that postings for List
     should be sent to List@somewhere.  Since  this  file  only
     needs  to be read by the user, it should be mode 600 to pro-
     tect the passwords.

  

If you have the necessary environment for running the approve script, contact the Majordomo owner at the site that serves your list and request it.

Bounced Messages

Majordomo may bounce certain messages that people attempt to post to your mailing list. These messages may be bounced because they appear to be administrative requests (i.e., someone mailed a request to subscribe or unsubscribe to the posting address rather than to Majordomo or to the -request address), because they are too long, because they match strings that you or the list server owner has defined as being taboo, or for any of a number of other reasons, many of which may seem annoying but have been decided upon as being useful in stopping unwanted messages from making it onto your list. (These are often configurable, so if you find a check to be too restrictive you can generally turn it off). Note also that the bounces mentioned here are not the same as the errors that will be returned by various mail servers when addresses or hosts are unreachable. Those are generally referred to as bounces, also; sorry for the confusion. Majordomo will forward these messages to you in another message whose subject line begins with the word BOUNCE; the subject line will also indicate the name of the list the message was bounced from (in case you manage more than one list) and the reason the message was bounced. If you decide that the message is OK and should not have been bounced, then you can cause Majordomo to post it anyway by sending the message back to the posting address (NOT to the Majordomo address) with a special Approved: password header. There are two ways to do this; the method you use depends on your having access to and the ability to run the approve script mentioned in the previous section. If you can run approve it is recommended that you do so, as this method is much less prone to errors and will reduce the time you spend moderating your list. See the man page for the approve program. If you cannot run the approve script, you can manually approve the message. To do so, follow the following directions exactly: Save the original message (the body of the message you received from Majordomo) in a file. The portion you need will consist of the headers of the original message, followed by a single blank line, followed by the text of the original message. You do not need to include any of the headers of the message which contained the original message. Here's a quick example:

    
From: majordomo@list.server         \
To: your-list-approval@list.server  | Don't want these headers
Subject: BOUNCE: taboo_header found /
                                    - Blank line
>From list-member@her.site  date    \ 
Received: some long routing info    | Headers of original message;
From: list-member@her.site          | You want these.  It's OK if you
To: your-list@list.server           | don't have the first line.
Subject: Just a message             /
                                    - Blank line, you _must_ have this!
Hello.  I'm just writing to         \
consume some bandwidth and          | Message body; include all of
take up space in your mail          | this.
spool!                              /

  

Basically you want everything after (and not including) the first blank line. Edit the file to insert a line that says Approved: password (where password is the password for your list) at the top, before the original message, with absolutely no intervening space:

    
Approved: sekrit
>From list-member@her.site  date
Received: some long routing info
From: list-member@her.site
To: your-list@list.server
Subject: Just a message

Hello.  I'm just writing to
consume some bandwidth and
take up space in your mail
spool!

  

Send this edited file back to the posting address for your list (NOT to Majordomo). You should make sure that your mailer doesn't try to do anything like include your prepared mail as an attachment, encode it somehow, indent every line, or add anything extra to the beginning or end of the message. There are mailers that will do pretty horrible things to messages before they are sent; you should take care that you aren't using one or, if you are, you have it configured to pass your text on unadulterated. This time around, Majordomo will notice the Approved: line and check it against your list password. If it matches, Majordomo will strip off the header of your message and the Approved: line (leaving just the original message), and send the original message on through. Even your own messages may be bounced to you for approval. To send out your own message without server checks (perhaps you know it contains something the list server will complain about) you can pre-approve the message one of the two following ways: If you're using a mailer that can add additional headers, add one like the following:

    
        Approved: sekrit

  

It's precise location within the headers is not important. If your mailer does not allow you to add additional headers, you can add the line:

    
        Approved: sekrit

  

as the first line of the message, followed by a blank line (which is required for your message to be sent properly) followed by the text of your message. The Approved: line and one following blank line will be deleted and the message will be passed without being checked. The blank line is important because it is used to differentiate between a pre-approval and the approval of a bounced message, outlined above.

My list is open and majordomo still asks me to approve a subscription. Why?

Probably because the request is trying to subscribe or unsubscribe an address other than the one it came from.

Moderation

If your list is moderated, (the moderate parameter in the config file is yes) then messages without an Approved: line are bounced, just as described above. To cause them to be posted to the list, you add a valid Approved: line and send them back, just as described above. Again, the approve program automates all this if you wish to use it. You can also use the above pre-approval method to send your own messages without them being bounced back to you. If you have any questions about all of this, send them to the Majordomo-Owner address shown at the top of this file.

Restricting Posting

An easier alternative to moderation is to restrict who can post to the list, which can be done with the restrict_post configuration variable. The variable requires a file listing the people who can post. The most common case is to limit posting to people who are subscribed to the list. This keeps out advertisements and other junk mail sent by non-subscribers. Since majordomo already has a file of subscribers, you don't need to create and maintain a file, so it's easy to set. Change the restrict_post line to this, where listname is the name of your list: restrict_post = listname If you have a digested list, but you want digest members to be able to post to the undigested list for simplicity, you can specify multiple files to verify the user against. Separate the filename with colons restrict_post = listname:digest-listname If you want to restrict posting to any other set of people, you'll need to ask majordomo-owner for help. Unfortunately there's no way to tell majordomo about keeping another file of people who are allowed to post, so a file would have to be set in place by hand. Some future release of majordomo may provide a way to do this automatically.

Archive

Archiving has to be set or unset by the system administrators. It is not the default but can be requested. Here is what can be done. Archive files can be split by years, months, or days. This means all mail to the list for one of those periods of time will be collected into one archive file. People who want to get archived mail will need to get one such file as a unit. We are running an indexer program nightly. It produces two index files that subscribers can get: CONTENTS lists what subject lines are in each archive file; TOPICS lists what archive files contain each subject. Subscribers use the get command to see files in the archives. Examples: get ListName CONTENTS gets the CONTENTS file for the list ListName get ListName ListName.9507 gets the July 1995 archive file for the list ListName Access to archives is controlled by the private_get variable in the config file. The default yes means they must be subscribers to get archived files. Subscribers can also get a list of filenames and dates in the archive by sending an index command. Example: index ListName This is controlled by the config file variable private_index similarly. Notes on archiving. It's possible for the archive to contain files besides the indexes and the archive files of messages. However, majordomo offers no method for you to put them there. In an unusual case you can ask majordomo-owner to put a file there for you. Archiving could be accomplished by directing a copy of messages to some other place besides the majordomo archive. Ask, if you have something in mind.

Digest

A digest version of a list is a way to reduce the number of messages sent from Majordomo to subscribers. Normally, each message to the list is remailed to all the subscribers, but with a digest, several messages are collected into a batch and then sent together as one message. This does not reduce the total size too much, although there are fewer mail header lines-- the main purpose is to reduce the number of separate messages. This actually helps the mail systems at both ends, and may help subscribers reduce clutter in their mailboxes. A Majordomo digest is actually a separate mailing list. The digest of ListName would normally be called ListName-digest. People subscribe independently to ListName and ListName-digest. Very likely no one would want to be on both lists. To change between ListName and ListName-digest, a subscriber needs to unsubscribe from one list and subscribe to the other. This can be done with one message to majordomo@cs.wisc.edu with two command lines in it, e.g.:

    

  unsubscribe ListName
  subscribe ListName-digest
  
  

Remember that ListName-digest will have its own information file and configuration file. Change them, if you want to, when you change the same files for ListName. Majordomo will send a digest automatically when the size of the digest exceeds the size given as max_length in the configuration file of the digest list. The default max_length is 40 K. Thus the interval between digests can vary, but they will be of a predictable size. The listowner can also tell Majordomo to make a digest (meaning, compile and send out a digest) by sending the command mkdigest at any time:

    
  mkdigest ListName-digest password

  

A daily digest (or for some other time period) could be achieved by setting the max_length high enough so as not to be reached normally in a day, and then setting up a job to run daily that sends mail to Majordomo with the mkdigest command. On a unix system, give the commands man crontab and man 5 crontab at the shell for an explanation of such jobs, or ask majordomo-owner for help.

More Information

For more information about Majordomo, please consult the Majordomo Mailing List archives on the web.

Last updated: August 15, 2006 Copyright © 1994 - 2007 Dr. Steve Yuen. All rights reserved.