Mailing Lists Plus Ayitey Bulley [email protected].
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Transcript of Mailing Lists Plus Ayitey Bulley [email protected].
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Workshop Agenda
• Introduction to Mailing Lists• Majordomo Installation• Sendmail & Majordomo• Creating & Managing Lists• Mhonarc, Majorcool, other tools and
advanced topics
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Introduction to Mailing Lists
• Really Basic Lists (the quick & dirty way)– addressbook– MTA (exim or sendmail) aliases
• Mailing List Management Software (MLM)– The Mailing List Software Inventory http://listes.
cru.fr/sympa/robots.html
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Addressbook
• Advantages– Quick to implement.– Requires no interaction with any outside
agent (listmaster, MLM software, etc.).
• Disadvantages– It can quickly become a pain to keep updated.– Users replying to a message may end up
talking to many more people than they intended to.
– Control over list participation.– Does not scale well.
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MTA (exim/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:
mylist: :include:/usr/home/user/my-list
• While both of these are quick to set up, they require hand maintenance by the owner.
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Mailing List Management Software (MLM)• When choosing an MLM you need to
remember that the software must allow at least three layers of list management:
– List Master– List Owners– List Members
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List Master
• Trusted user with access to the central mailer software (exim, sendmail, etc.).
• Ability to create, delete and re-configure individual lists.
• Error handling and problem reporting.
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List Owners
• Ability to manage user membership (subscribe/unsubscribe)
• Ability to configure list options and Information.
• Support of archives or digests • Access control for lists (open, closed,
moderated, etc.)
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List Members
• Ability to manage personal membership (subscribe, unsubscribe)
• Access to information (lists, info, who, which)
• Access to the listowner (owner-listname@)
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Supporting List Owners and End-users• This requires: 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 list owners– Stock text for responding to common problems – Pointers to documents in every listmaster email
message (.signature file or message_footer)
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Test Drive Exercise
•Create a mailing list using exim aliases file. •Join a majordomo list
Send mail to [email protected] with subscribe afnog in the body of the message.
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Majordomo Installation
• Before installing majordomo you will need:– root access– perl– sendmail or exim– gnu c compiler (gcc) or some other version of cc– complete paths to perl, sendmail or exim and gcc
• Installing majordomo consists of two main parts:– root tasks– tasks for majordomo user (majordom)
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Installing Majordomo - root tasks
• Create a user and group to own majordomo.• Make changes to sendmail or exim
– add majordom to list of Trusted users– add an entry for the majordomo.aliases file
(optional)
• Create the majordomo.aliases file.– create empty files– set permissions on files– edit to add new list aliases to file– run exim_dbmbuild/newaliases– restart exim/sendmail
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Installing Majordomo - root tasks (contd.)• Install the majordomo software.
– uncompress files in a temporary working directory.
– edit the Makefile defining• paths to Perl interpreter and C compiler.
• the majordomo home directory.
• location of the manual pages.
• user and group majordomo will run under.
• permissions for the various files and directories.
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Installing Majordomo - root tasks (contd.)
• Create a majordomo.cf file and edit it.– copy the sample.cf file to majordomo.cf– edit the majordomo.cf file and set the ff. variables
• $whereami What machine am I on?
• $whoami Who do users send requests to me as?
• $whoami_owner Who is the owner of the above, for problems?
• $homedir Where can I find my extra .pl files?
• $listdir Where are the mailing lists?
• $log Where do I write my log?
• $sendmail_command Where the sendmail program resides.
• $mailer What program and args do I use to send mail to the lists?
• $bounce_mailer What program and args do I use to send administrative messages?
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Installing Majordomo - root tasks (contd.)• Run make as needed
– make wrapper– make install– make install-wrapper– at this stage the Log file and the lists and
digests directories have not yet been created, though they have been named in the majordomo.cf file.
• Change login id to majordomo user
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Installing Majordomo - majordom tasks• Finish the installation by completing the
ff. Tasks as the majordomo user.– create the Log file, and the lists & digests
directories.– run the config-test.– Test it further by creating a test list and
sending mail to majordomo.
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Installing Majordomo - Exercise
• Install majordomo on your machines using the handouts
• create a mailing list on your workstations.
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Sendmail & Majordomo
• Trusted UserTroot
Tdaemon
Tuucp
Tmajordom
• Using an aliases.majordomo file # location of alias file
O AliasFile=/etc/aliases,/home/majordom/aliases.majordomo
• newaliases equivalent to exim_dbmbuild
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Managing Majordomo
• The most difficult part of mailing lists is day-to-day management. To lessen the task you need:– good documentation – good communication with your owners and
list members – and good tools as lists can quickly become
an enormous time sync.
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Managing Majordomo
• It is very important to hand-off tasks to the lowest link in the mail chain at every opportunity. Hand-off could be as follows:root --> listmasterlistmaster --> listownerlistowner --> list members
• If you are the listmaster, you will also want a set of tools that allow you to deal with routine tasks such as list creation, deletion etc. as well as resolve problems with a minimum of effort.
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Managing Majordomo - Exercise
• Install and setup the UO md-apps for managing list creation/deletion request.
• Use handouts to do this exercise.
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MhonArc, Majorcool, other tools and advanced topics
• Mhonarc - a web archiving tool • Majorcool - another web archiving tool• Advanced Topics
– Virtual Lists• Limited use - requires root intervention
• You need mx records for each host
• Sendmail additions (digest related)
• Virtualusertables and maps
• Reconfigure scripts for multiple installations
• Sendmail configuration required