OS/2 Shareware BBS: 2 BBS/02-BBS.zip/gigop806.zip/MAILLIST.FAQ

Text File | 1994-04-26 | 8KB | 178 lines

Q:  How do I host a mailing list?
Q:  Sample of hosting a mailing list

A:  [This _only_ applies if you are trying to HOST the mailing list;
     if all you want to do is _translate_ an existing mailing list
     from another site into echomail and vice versa, see the MAPPING
     faq].

    Hosting a mailing list is easy with GIGO.  GIGO contains two verbs,
    called CAPTURE (which intercepts messages to certain email addresses,
    newsgroups, and/or echos), and EXPLODE (which sends the captured
    messages to the various recipients).

    In addition, you may find LISTSERV to be a valuable tool; that is
    discussed seperately.  It's main function is to automate
    subscribe and unsubscribe requests from various users.

    The best way to explain how this works, is with a real example of
    hosting such a mailing list.

Problem:
    You wish to host a mailing list (called "fubar-l") at your site.
    You wish to also have this translated to an echomail conference
    called "FUBAR", as well as to the newsgroup "alt.fubar".

Q:  How do I create a .ML file?
Q:  What is a .ML file?

    A .ML file is simply an ASCII file, with a list of recipients.
    Each line should have exactly one address on it, and should
    not include the real name or any other extraneous information.

    Create a file called "fubar.ml" in your GIGO directory.
    You will want to place one email address per line in this file.
    Ie,
       +-------------------
       |[e-mail]
       |[e-mail]
       |root@yoursite
       |
    It is probably a good idea to include your regular email address on
    this list, at least at first, to help confirm that everything is
    working as planned.



Q:  How do I set up addresses for posting news and echomail by email?

 +-- Skip these instructions if you have already done this for another
 |   mailing list; they are only needed once for your gateway.
 |
 |  Next, you are going to add a couple of SITE statements in your
 |  gateway.cfg file.  You may instead wish to INCLUDE MAILLIST.CFG,
 |  and keep your mailing list configuration in this config file instead.
 |  A sample one should be included in the GIGO archives.
 |
 |  Add:
 |    SITE pnews news       ; creates a SITE to post to newsgroups with
 |    SITE pecho echo       ; creates a SITE to post to echomail with
 |
 |  These two SITE statements allow posts to go to places such as
 |  [e-mail].  You may change "pnews" and "pecho"
 |  to something else of your choice for security reasons :-) ; these
 |  are just the examples that I am using.  It is suggested that you
 |  do use a different set of names, so that you don't get some twit
 |  hacking via your gateway.
 |_____________________________________________________________________


Q:  What is this "badmail.ml" file?
Q:  What are .MLB files?

    "BADMAIL.ML" is a file a bit unlinke the other .ml files; this file
    is actually a set of rules that tell GIGO what mail should _not_ be
    re-broadcast in the mailing list.  You would want to tell GIGO
    that messages from mailer-daemons, etc are not to be resent, as these
    are normally bounce messages that did not go to the bounce address.

    Each line in this file should be the token name to look for
    (ie, "From:" or "Subject:"), followed by a space, and then the
    text that defines it as a bad message.  An example file would be:
       +-------------
       |From: daemon
       |From: Mailer-Daemon
       |From: daemon
       |From: DAEMON
       |From: !uucp
       |From: uucp@
       |From: Post Office
       |Subject: Returned mail:  Host
       |
    Any message that has been determined to be bad by the rules defined,
    will be saved as a .MLB (Mailing List - Bad) file instead of a
    .MLQ file.  You can either delete these messages, or (preferably)
    take a look at them first, and possibly rename it to a .MLQ
    file and let it actually be sent out.


Q:  How does one CAPTURE messages for a mailing list that I am hosting?

    Now, you must tell GIGO what messages to CAPTURE, and where to
    place them.  You will also want to tell GIGO where bounced messages
    from the mailing list should be sent (undoubtedly, someone's address
    who subscribes will not be valid).

    Assuming:
      you want to use the "fubar\" subdirectory
      you want error messages to be sent to "[e-mail]"
      you want _email_ to  fubar-l captured
      you want _news_  in "alt.fubar" captured
      you want _echomail_ from "FUBAR" captured
      you have a defination of "bad mail" in badmail.ml
      you want to name the mailing list "The Fubar Debate"

    you will want to create the following CAPTURE line:

    CAPTURE fubar\ fubar-l fubar-owner alt.fubar FUBAR badmail.ml The Fubar Debate

Q:  What is a .MLQ file?

    Once this is defined, any messages sent in any of the three mediums
    will be captured, and placed into the fubar\ directory as a *.MLQ
    file (MLQ stands for Mailing List Queue).  It is a plain ASCII
    text file, with the first line of that text file being a Ctrl-A
    followed by "ECHO", "NEWS", or the email address of the person
    that posted the message.  This information is used by EXPLODE so that
    the message is not sent back to the same place the message originally
    came from.

    Note that you may have multiple CAPTURE lines, even pointing to the
    same directory (ie, if you have multiple incoming email addresses).
    Only the first applicable CAPTURE statement for a given message will be
    used.



Q:  How do I send out the .MLQ files that were CAPTURED

    Now that you have these captured messages, you are going to need to send
    them out to the various recipients.

    Assuming that you created "SITE pnews news" and "SITE pecho echo",
    and assuming that we are following up on the previous example
    for the FUBAR mailing list:

    EXPLODE fubar\ fubar.ml fubar-owner [e-mail] [e-mail]

[Quoted from MAILLIST.CFG]

 ;  Whenever GIGO runs, if there are any EXPLODE statements in the config
 ;  file, GIGO will look at the specified files for *.MLQ files.  If
 ;  it finds any, it will process those files, and rename them to
 ;  *.MLS files (Mailing List Sent).  You may either do further processing
 ;  on them, or simply delete them - that is up to you.  The author
 ;  saves them in an archive for later use.
 ;
 ;  When GIGO finds a MLQ file to be sent out, it will take a look at the
 ;  first line of the file.  If it starts with Ctrl-A ("
"), it will
 ;  assume that that first line contains the phrase "NEWS", "ECHO",
 ;  or the email address of the person that wrote the message (if the
 ;  message was sent as email instead of via the newsgroup or echo).
 ;
 ;  GIGO will then take a look at the list of recipients, and start generating
 ;  the appropriate information in the spool directory for sending messages
 ;  out to all of the recipients.  GIGO will bundle roughly 10 addresses at a
 ;  time to a single message (if you have 100 recipients, you are likely going
 ;  to send out 10 messages with 10 people on each one).  The exact number
 ;  will vary ; GIGO will never place more than 250 characters on the "rmail"
 ;  line in the XQT files.
 ;
 ;  GIGO will also want to send the message to an email->newsgroup address,
 ;  and an email->echomail address.  GIGO can provide these address.  These
 ;  are only neccessary if you wish have messages from the mailing list
 ;  sent to a newsgroup, or sent to an echo, or both.  This provides a
 ;  3-way gate between all 3 medias.