Majordomo Administrators' Manual

The Gory Details
Configuring Your List
Regular Expressions
Approval
Bounced Messages
Moderation
Restricting Posting
Archive
Digest

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. There are two ways to do it:

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

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.
newintro list password: This is so that you can replace the information file that people get when they do "intro list" or "subscribe list". It reads everything after the "newintro" command to end-of-message or the word "EOF" on a line by itself as the new intro for the list.
newinfo list password: This replaces the information file that people get when they do "info list". (This file is also sent by "subscribe list" if the intro file doesn't exist.) This 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 default values in place (or current values if the config file already exists). 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.

Regular Expressions

For some of the configuration options, a rudimentary knowledge of perl style regular expressions will help you run Majordomo through its tricks. A regular expression is a concise way of expressing a pattern in a series of characters. The full power of regular expressions can make some difficult tasks quite easy, but we will only brush the surface here.

The character / is used to mark the beginning and end of a regular expression. Letters and numbers stand for themselves. Many of the other characters are symbolic. Some commonly used ones are:

  \@    the `@' found in nearly all addresses; it must be preceeded by a
        backslash in later versions of perl to avoid errors
  .     (period) any character
  *     previous character, zero or more times; note especially...
  .*    any character, zero or more times
  +     previous character, one or more times; so for example...
  a+    letter "a", one or more times
  \     next character stands for itself; so for example...
  \.     literally a period, not meaning "any character"
  ^     beginning of the string; so for example...
  ^a    a string beginning with letter "a"
  $     end of the string; so for example...
  a$    a string ending with letter "a"

Example 1.
        /cs\.umb\.edu/

Notice the periods are preceded by a backslash to make them be
literally periods.  This matches any string containing cs.umb.edu
such as:
	cs.umb.edu
	foo.cs.umb.edu
	user@foo.cs.umb.edu
	users%foo.cs.umb.edu@greatcircle.com

Example 2.
	/rouilj\@.*cs\.umb\.edu/

The `@' has special meaning to later versions of perl and must be prefixed
with a backslash to avoid errors.  The string ".*" means "any character,
zero or more times".  So this matches:
	rouilj@cs.umb.edu
	rouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu
	arouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu@greatcircle.com

but it doesn't match
	rouilj@umb.edu
	brent@cs.umb.edu

Example 3.
	/^rouilj\@.*cs\.umb\.edu$/

This is similar to Example 2, and matches the same first two strings:
	rouilj@cs.umb.edu
	rouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu

but it doesn't match
	arouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu@greatcircle.com

because the regular expression says the string has to begin with 
letter "r" and end with letter "u", by using the ^ and $ symbols, and 
neither of those is true for arouilj@terminus.cs.umb.edu@greatcircle.com.

Example 4.
        /.*/

This is the regular expression that matches anything.

Example 5.
        /.\*rouilj/

Here the * is preceded by a \, so it refers literally to an asterisk
character and not the symbolic meaning "zero or more times".  The . still
has its symbolic meaning of "any one character", so it would match for
example
        a*rouilj
        s*rouilj       

It would not match this because the . by itself implies one character:
        *rouilj

Normally all matches are case sensitive; you can make any match case
insensitive by appending an `i' to the end of the expression.

Example 6.
       /aol\.com/i

This would match aol.com, AOL.com, AoL.cOm, etc.  Removing the `i':

      /aol\.com/

would match aol.com but not AOL.com or any other capitalization.


To be on the safe side put a \ in front of any characters in the
regular expressions that are not numbers or letters.  In order to put
a / into the regular expression, the same rule holds: precede it
with a \.  Thus, with \ in front of the / and = characters, this
        /\/CO\=US/

matches /CO=US and may be a useful regular expression to those of you
who need to deal with X.400 addresses that contain / characters.

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.

If you use a mailer which is capable of sending a message to an external program, can run perl and can run sendmail or a program capable of behaving like it for the purposes of sending mail, then all you have to do is send the entire approval message (including all of the headers, which are very important and which are automatically removed by some mailers unless configured to do otherwise) to the approve script. Approve looks for a file called ".majordomo" in your home directory to find the approval password for your list. The format of this file is given in the following excerpt from the approve manual page:

approve assumes that the approve password for each list is the same as the approval password used by resend, and that this password is stored in a file called .majordomo in the user's home directory. The file has the following format:
this-list passwd1 Majordomo@This.COM other-list passwd2 Majordomo@Other.GOV
The first column specifies the name of the mailing list, the second column specifies the list-owner's password for the given list, and the third column specifies the e-mail address of the associated Majordomo server. It is assumed that the value in the third column is an Internet-style "something@somewhere" address, and that postings for "List" should be sent to "List@somewhere". Since this file only needs to be read by the user, it should be mode 600 to pro- tect the passwords.

If you have the necessary environment for running the approve script, contact the Majordomo owner at the site that serves your list and request it.

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. There are two ways to do this; the method you use depends on your having access to and the ability to run the approve script mentioned in the previous section. If you can run approve it is recommended that you do so, as this method is much less prone to errors and will reduce the time you spend moderating your list.

If you cannot run the approve script, you can manually approve the message. 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.

Again, the "approve" program automates all this if you wish to use it. You can also use the above pre-approval method to send your own messages without them being bounced back to you.

If you have any questions about all of this, send them to the Majordomo-Owner address shown at the top of this file.

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.