Introduction to Mailing Lists

• Really Basic Lists (the quick & dirty way)

  .addressbook

  This is where most mailing lists start - a single user enters a list of addresses into their favorite mail client in order to send messages to a group of friends with typing all the addresses each time they want to send a message:

  
  nus     Us - NANOG     (hak@darkwing.uoregon.edu,hugi@oregon.uoregon.edu,
  jad@ns.uoregon.edu,joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu,shep@network-services)
  
  

  While this has the advantages of being quick, and requiring no interaction with any outside agent (listmaster, MLM software, etc.), it can quickly become a pain to keep updated and if the full list is displayed in headers, users replying to a message may end up talking to many more people than they intended to. Individual members have no control over their participation, so they must depend on the address book owner to remove them or update their address if it changes.

  sendmail aliases

  If a system administrator is willing to take on the task of maintaining list membership this can be done quickly using a sendmail aliases:

  
  # Alias for distribution list, members specified here:
  staff:wnj,mosher,sam,ecc,mckusick,sklower,olson,rwh@ernie
  
  

  A sysop may also allow aliases that point to lists that are managed by individual users:

  
  # Alias for distribution list, members specified elsewhere:
  #keyboards: :include:/usr/jfarrell/keyboards.list
  convers: :include:/home1/tgivon/convers
  film: :include:/home4/jlesage/film
  uschina: :include:/home1/stirling/alachina
  
  

  While both of these are quick to set up, they require hand maintenance by the owner (sysop or end-user) and ANY user who learns a sendmail alias can mail to the group.

• mailing-list management software (MLM)

  If the easy thing is wrong, what are your options? As it turns out, managing mailing lists is a problem that is interesting to a lot of people - so there are lots of list management programs available: The Mailing List Software Inventory. Several of the most popular programs are covered in the O'Reilly "Managing Mailing Lists" book (including majordomo) but there a two newer programs that are worth mentioning. The first is a gnu product called MailMan which includes a web interface for listowners and members - this program was written in python. The second is listar (also gnu licenced) which has been designed to be a less complex version of the listserv software.

  When chosing an MLM you need to remeber that the software must allow at least three layers of list management:

  - Listmaster:

  • Trusted user access to the central mailer software (sendmail, exim, etc.)
  • Ability to create/delete/re-configure individual lists
  • error handling /problem reporting

  - List Owners:

  • Ability to manage user membership (subscribe/unsubsribe)
  • Ability to configure list options and information.
  • support of archives or digests
  • access control for lists (open, closed, moderated, etc.)

  - List Members:

  • Ability to manage personal membership (subscribe/unsubsribe)
  • Access to information (lists/info/who/which)
  • Access to the listowner (owner-listname@)

  For this demonstration, I've chosen to use majodomo - not because its the most beautiful, or the easiest to manage, but because it is widely deployed which means that there are lots of resourses (support documents, scripts, add on software, user groups and mailing lists, etc.) for the beginning listmanager to use. A second reason is that the basic program was written in perl and the source is easy to customize if you're willing to learn a little perl.

• Supporting List Owners and End-users
  • listmaster@ & owner-listname@
  • Good Documentation
    - Joining a Mailing List at the UO
    - Managing a Majorodomo List
  • Training
    - Managing a Majordomo List
  • Communication
    - a list for listowners - stock text for respond to common problems - pointers to documents in every listmaster email message
    (.signature file)

• Test Drive - Join a majordomo list

  Start the pine email program and send a message to:

  majordomo@lists.uoregon.edu

  with NO subject line and just the following in the body of the message

  subscribe afnog2000

  Within a short time you should receive a message from majordomo at lists asking you to confirm your request - Follow the steps in the message (reply & send the confirmation code) and you should receive a second message telling you that you've been added to the list.

• Now lets Install majordomo