Majordomo Configuration
Configuring your Majordomo List
You should retrieve the configuration file for your list. To do this, send an
email message to your majordomo address (majordomo@yourdomain.com).
The contents of this message should be:
config mylist [password]
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 to put a new
configuration file in place.
Your list has automatically been set up with a digest versions. You should
retrieve the config file for the digest as well using:
config mylist-digest [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:
- 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:
You do not want these headers:
From: majordomo@yourdomain.com
To: your-list-approval@yourdomain.com
Subject: BOUNCE: taboo_header found
Headers of the original message. You want these. It's okay if you don't have the first
line.
From list-member@her.site date
Received: some long routing info
From: list-member@her.site
To: mylist@yourdomain.com
Subject: Just a message
Message body; include all of this.
Hello. I'm just writing to
consume some bandwidth and
take up space in your mail
spool!
Basically you want everything after (and not including) the first blank line.
- Edit the file to insert a line that says
Approved: [password] at the top,
before the original message, with absolutely no intervening space:
Approved: [password]
From list-member@her.site date
Received: some long routing info
From: list-member@her.site
To: mylist@yourdomain.com
Subject: Just a message <
Hello. I'm just writing to
consume some bandwidth and take up space in your mail
spool!
- 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 may 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: [password]
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: [password]
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:
restrict_post = [mylist]
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.
If you want a digest version of your list, you must request it at the time that
you request your list.
A Majordomo digest is actually a separate mailing list. The digest of mylist is called
mylist-digest.
People subscribe independently to mylist and mylist-digest. Very likely no
one would want to be on both lists. To change between mylist and
mylist-digest, a subscriber needs to unsubscribe from one list and subscribe to the
other. This can be done with one message to majordomo@yourdomain.com
with two command lines in it, e.g.:
unsubscribe mylist
subscribe mylist-digest
Remember that mylist-digest will have its own information file and
configuration file. Change them, if you want to, when you change the same files
for mylist.
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.
PREMIUM FEATURES
Source: http://www.hostingmanual.net/premium/major-configure.shtml
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