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- From: welty@cabot.balltown.cma.COM (richard welty)
- Subject: rec.autos: Automotive Mailing Lists: how to set up your own
- Message-ID: <1993Apr20.040503.18447@cabot.balltown.cma.COM>
- Followup-To: rec.autos
- Keywords: Monthly Posting
- Reply-To: welty@balltown.cma.com
- Organization: New York State Institute for Sebastian Cabot Studies
- Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 04:05:03 GMT
- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
- Lines: 116
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu rec.autos:103731 rec.autos.tech:54173 rec.autos.sport:29552 rec.autos.driving:16492 rec.autos.vw:14448 rec.autos.antique:1247 news.answers:7767
-
- Archive-Name: rec-autos/part6
-
- [New article as of 4 February 1993 -- rpw]
-
-
- Many people want to set up mailing lists for their favorite
- automotive topics; rather fewer know how to do it. This article
- will provide the essential information for doing so on standard
- Unix systems. A shell script and examples of alias file setups
- are included which presently run on a Sparc 2 here at balltown.cma.com
- for a number of mailing lists. Note that if you do set up an automotive
- mailing list, please let me know of the -request address so that I can
- list it in the montly rec.autos posting. Also inform the keeper of the
- Usenet list-of-lists (check news.answers for this monthly posting.)
-
- First of all, to get anywhere, you need to either 1) be a sysadmin,
- or 2) have some measure of assistance from your sysadmin. It is also
- important that you have reasonably good network connectivity; if it seems
- like you get everything several days after anyone else, or that you
- have trouble getting email through, then your network connectivity is
- probably not good enough.
-
- Listserv:
-
- There is a handy automated mailing list package named listserv, which
- is available from several ftp servers on the network. Details of
- the installation and operation of listserv are beyond the scope of this
- article, but anyone who is considering running a large mailing list should
- probably look at listserv carefully.
-
- The Alias file:
-
- On a typical unix system; there is a file named /usr/lib/aliases on
- whichever file server is your mail host; it contains lines such as:
-
- foo: bar, baz, bletch
-
-
- which means that any email sent the name `foo' on that host is
- redistributed to users bar, baz, and bletch. thus, the simplest
- possible email list is
-
- my-favorite-car: member1, member2, member3, my-address
- my-favorite-car-request: my-address
-
- this has a couple of problems; the most noticeable one being that
- you have to be superuser to edit the alias file. however, you can
- do the following, with the connivance of your sysadmin:
-
- my-favorite-car: :include:/home/mydir/misc/autos/my-favorite-car-list
- my-favorite-car-request: my-address
-
- Where the file specified is a list of comma and newline separated
- addresses. This file can be in the list admin's home directory,
- owned by the list admin.
-
- Bounced Mail:
-
- this still has a problem; bounced mail usually gets distributed to all the
- members of the list, which is generally considered somewhat irritating.
- Therefore, the way that the driving school mailing list is set up
- is instructive (Thanks to harpal chohan of the bmw list for this setup,
- by the way. I'm not sure where he got it from.)
-
-
- school-request: welty
- school-rebroadcast: :include:/home/newwelty/misc/autos/school/list
- school: "|/usr/local/adm/bin/explscript school"
- owner-school: school-request
- owner-school-out: school-request
-
-
- here's what is going on here:
-
- the owner- and -request addresses are intended as traps for bounced mail
- coming from the network. the -request address also serves as the point
- of contact for administrative duties.
-
- school is what people send mail to; instead of pointing at addresses,
- it points at a shell script which rewrites headers before resending
- the email. school-broadcast (of which nobody except me knows the name;
- the name has been changed here to protect my own sanity) points at the
- actual list members.
-
- the shell script i use is as follows:
-
- -----------------
- #!/bin/sh
- cd /tmp
- sed -e '/^Reply-To:/d' -e '/^Sender:/d' -e '/^From /d' | \
- (echo Reply-To: ${1}@balltown.cma.com; \
- echo Errors-To: ${1}-request@balltown.cma.com; \
- echo Sender: ${1}-request@balltown.cma.com; \
- cat -) | \
- /usr/lib/sendmail -om -f ${1}-request@balltown.cma.com \
- -F "The ${1} Mailing List" ${1}-rebroadcast
- exit 0
- -------------------
-
- note that this script does not know the name of the list; the name
- is passed in from outside, so that the script may be used for multiple
- lists (i run several out of this site.)
- the script excises Reply-To:, Sender:, and From lines from the incoming
- message, substitutes for Sender: and Reply-To:, and adds Errors-to:
- 99.9% of all email bounce messages end up being sent to the -request
- or owner- addresses if this header rewrite is done.
-
- For digested lists, there is some digestification software around.
- Hopefully I'll be able to provide more information in a future version
- of this posting.
-
- richard welty (welty@balltown.cma.com)
- --
- richard welty 518-393-7228 welty@cabot.balltown.cma.com
- ``Nothing good has ever been reported about the full rotation of
- a race car about either its pitch or roll axis'' -- Carroll Smith
-