MAJORDOMO
Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
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NAME
Majordomo - manage multiple mailing lists
SYNOPSIS
Majordomo
DESCRIPTION
Majordomo
is a perl script which automates the management of Internet mailing lists.
It is executed via electronic mail; users send e-mail to
Majordomo
with instructions in the body of the message, and the perl script performs
the requested actions and responds with the results. Any text in the
"Subject:" line is ignored.
COMMANDS
Majordomo
understands the following commands (arguments in "[]" are optional):
- subscribe list [address]
-
Subscribe yourself (or
address
if specified) to the named
list.
- unsubscribe list [address]
-
Unsubscribe yourself (or
address
if specified) from the named
list.
If
list
is ``*'' (an asterisk), unsubscribe from all lists on this Majordomo
server.
- auth special-word subscribe list address
-
If the
list
subscribe policy setting includes +confirm,
Majordomo will ask for confirmation before a subscription
is approved.
The conformation request will show the
special-word
to send with
auth .
- get list file
-
Get the
file
related to
list.
- index list
-
Return an index of the files you can
get
associated with
list.
- which [address]
-
Find out to which lists you (or
address
if specified) are subscribed.
- who list
-
Find out who is on the named
list.
- info list
-
Retrieve the general introductory information for the named
list.
- intro list
-
Retrieve the introductory message sent to new users
of
list.
Non-subscribers may not be able to retrieve this.
- lists
-
Show the lists served by this Majordomo server. It will also show a 50
character list description if one has been provided.
- help
-
Retrieve an informational message, a brief synopsis of the user portion of
this manual page.
- end
-
Stop processing commands (useful if your mailer adds a signature).
A command may be split across multiple lines if all of the lines in
the command except the last end with a backslash "\".
In addition, the owner of the list can issue the following commands:
- approve password subscribe list address
-
Instruct Majordomo to add
address
to
list.
The password is required to authenticate the list owner. This is very weak
authentication as the password is transmitted in the clear in an e-mail
message. No claims are made that it will provide anything other than
rudimentary protection against abuse of the Majordomo server.
- approve password unsubscribe list address
-
Instruct Majordomo to delete
address
from
list.
The password is required to authenticate the list owner. See the comments
above regarding the password.
- newinfo list password
-
Update the informational message for
list
with the text which follows on subsequent lines. No formatting of the
message occurs, so the list owner should be careful to constrain the message
to eighty columns. Majordomo will include everything up to the string
EOF
or to the end of the mail message, whichever comes first. This is useful in
case the owner wants to verify the new message immediately, e.g.,
-
To: majordomo
newinfo list password
This is new information for the "list" list.
EOF
info list
-
This will simultaneously update the information for the list, and then
retrieve it for verification. Note that blank lines are preserved in the
message.
- newintro list password
-
Similar to
newinfo ,
but updates the (optional) introductory message sent to new
list
subscribers.
passwd list old-password new-password
Replace the password for
list
with
new-password.
- config list password
-
retrieve a self-documenting configuration file for
the list <list>. The password can be the password
contained in the file <listname>.passwd or the
admin_password in the configuration file.
- newconfig list password
-
Validates and installs a new configuration file. The config file
includes everything up to the string
EOF
or to the end of the mail message, whichever comes first. The config
file is expected to be a complete config file as returned by the
"config" command. 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 errors are returned to the
sender not the entire config file.
- writeconfig list password
-
Write a new config in standard form. All of the config
file documentation is optional. Only the keywords and
values are necessary. If a config file, stripped of
all comments is installed using newconfig, that is
what is returned by config. 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
[
outgoing-address
]
password
This will force a digest for the specified list to be created. It is
most useful if you don't have an account on the machine that handles
the digest for your list.
The optional
outgoing-address
will override the default address,
listname-outgoing,
for distributing the digests;
this is usually done for security.
CONFIGURATION
(Note that this section has not been updated to majordomo version 1.90).
Majordomo
supports
open
and
closed
lists. An
open
list is one to which anyone can subscribe themselves. A subscription
request sent to
Majordomo
for a
closed
list is forwarded to the owner of the list for approval. If a user tries to
subscribe an address which is different from their own (for example, a local
list exploder),
Majordomo
will forward the request to the list owner for approval, regardless of the
open or closed status of the list.
Majordomo
depends on the existence of certain system mail aliases. The first three
are for running the perl script on incoming e-mail and specifying the
responsible person in charge of the server:
majordomo: "|/usr/local/mail/majordomo/wrapper majordomo"
majordomo-owner: brent
owner-majordomo: brent
These next few aliases are for a list called "sample":
sample: :include:/usr/local/mail/lists/sample
owner-sample: sample-owner
sample-request: "|/usr/local/mail/majordomo/wrapper request-answer sample"
owner-sample-request: sample-owner
sample-owner: brent
sample-approval: brent
FILES
/etc/majordomo.cf
/usr/local/lib/mail/majordomo/
BUGS
This man page has not been fully updated to conform to majordomo 1.90.
AUTHORS
Majordomo and most of the ancillary perl code was written by Brent Chapman,
<brent@GreatCircle.COM>. The latest version of the code is available by
anonymous FTP from FTP.GreatCircle.COM, in directory pub/majordomo.
This man page was written by Jim Duncan, <jim@math.psu.edu>. Minimal
update of the man page by John Rouillard <rouilj@cs.umb.edu>.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- COMMANDS
-
- CONFIGURATION
-
- FILES
-
- BUGS
-
- AUTHORS
-
This document was created by
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Time: 19:44:24 GMT, January 22, 2007