CJ Hosting Tutorial - MajorDomo Setup

Majordomo Instructions

Replace FooBar.COM with your own domain name.

Majordomo address: # majordomo@FooBar.COM
List Name: #
List posting address: # @FooBar.COM
List password: #

Your mailing list has been established. It is being served by an automated mailing list manager that responds to commands emailed to the "Majordomo address" listed above. This message has all the details of how to manage your list remotely using Majordomo.

******
There's a lot of info here, so please read this completely and carefully, and save it for future reference.
******

Your list-owner password is shown above. Keep track of this; you'll need it later. Instructions for changing your password are below.

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 "who" 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 shown at the top of this file.

To be added to your list, a user simply sends a message to majordomo.

address-- To: majordomo@FooBar.COM
message-- subscribe ListName

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:

subscribe <list> [<address>]
unsubscribe <list> [<address>]
which [<address>]
who <list>
info <list>
index <list>
get <list>
lists
help
end

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@FooBar.COM).

The "undocumented" commands for use by list owners are:

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, which is listed above, 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.

newinfo <list> <password>
This is so that you can replace the information file that people get when they do "info <list>" or "subscribe <list>". It 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 comments and default values in place. 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> are given at the top of the form. You will receive a config file that can be used to change the operation of your list. If the information at the top of this form shows that resend is being used, you want to configure the majordomo and resend subsystems. Otherwise you only have to configure those items that are associated with the majordomo system.

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.

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.

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. To do so, follow the following directions _exactly_:

1) 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.

2) 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!

3) 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 bay 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.

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.

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 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.

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@FooBar.COM 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.

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