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From: barr@math.psu.edu (Dave Barr)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.list-admin.software,comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.sendmail,comp.mail.smail,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: Majordomo Frequently Asked Questions
Supersedes: <majordomo-faq_832860182@math.psu.edu>
Followup-To: comp.mail.list-admin.software
Date: 22 Jun 1996 10:03:24 -0400
Organization: The Pennsylvania State University
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Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
Expires: 26 Jul 1996 14:03:03 GMT
Message-ID: <majordomo-faq_835452183@math.psu.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: augusta.math.psu.edu
Summary: This is a list of frequently asked questions about Majordomo,
a Perl-based package for managing mailing lists
Article-Names: comp.mail.list-admin.software:faq
Xref: news1.ucsd.edu comp.mail.list-admin.software:1293 comp.mail.misc:21806 comp.mail.sendmail:23811 comp.mail.smail:2287 comp.answers:15490 news.answers:61648
Version: $Id: majordomo-faq.html,v 1.97 1996/04/29 23:12:59 barr Exp barr $
Archive-Name: mail/list-admin/majordomo-faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Table of Contents:
1. What is Majordomo and how can I get it?
+ What is Majordomo?
+ Where do I get it?
+ How do I install it?
+ How do I upgrade from an earlier release?
+ Where do I report bugs or get help with Majordomo?
+ Which is better, Majordomo or LISTSERV?
2. Problems setting up Majordomo
+ What are the proper permissions and ownership of all
Majordomo files and directories?
+ I get "Unknown mailer error" when majordomo runs
+ I get "Permission denied at ..." when majordomo runs
+ I get "shlock: open(">/some/path/...") when majordomo runs
+ A file is visible via index, but can't 'get' it
+ Majordomo seems to be taking many minutes to process commands
+ I get an error "insecure usage" from the wrapper
+ I get "majordomo: No such file or directory" from the wrapper
+ I get an error "Can't locate majordomo.pl"
+ I told my majordomo.cf where to archive the list, why isn't
it working?
+ I'm accumulating lots of files called /tmp/resend.*.in and
.out,
+ A list is visible via lists, but can't subscribe or 'get'
files
+ I get "Out of Memory" when upgrading to 1.93
+ I get warnings or errors when trying to compile 1.93's
wrapper
+ Problems with 1.93's request-answer
+ I get "Invalid archive directory. Aborting."
3. Setting up mailing lists and aliases
+ How do I direct bounces to the right address?
+ Semi-automated handling of bounced mail
+ What's this Owner-List and List-Owner stuff? Why both?
+ How should I configure resend for Reply-To headers?
+ How can I hide lists so they can't be viewed by 'lists'?
+ How can I restrict a list such that only subscribers can send
mail to the list?
+ Can I have the list owner or approval person be changeable
without intervention from the Majordomo owner?
+ What about all of these passwords starting in version 1.90?
+ How do I tell majordomo to handle "get"-ing of binary files?
+ How do I set up a moderated list?
+ How do I set up a digested version of a list?
4. Miscellaneous mailer and other problems
+ Address with blanks are being treated separately
+ Why aren't my digests going out?
+ Why do I get duplicate mail sent to the list?
+ How do I gate my list to and/or from a newsgroup?
+ How can I improve Majordomo's performance?
+ How can I handle X.400 addresses?
This FAQ is Copyright 1995 by David Barr and The Pennsylvania State
University. This document may be reproduced, so long as it is kept in
its entirety and in its original format.
Credits:
This FAQ originally written by Vincent D. Skahan. Many thanks to the
members of the majordomo-workers and majordomo-users mailing lists for
many of the questions and answers found in this FAQ. Thanks to
fen@comedia.com (Fen Labalme) for getting an HTML version started.
You can get an HTML version of this FAQ on the World Wide Web at
http://www.math.psu.edu/barr/majordomo-faq.html. You can request a
copy by email by sending a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu, with
the following text in the body:
send usenet/comp.mail.list-admin.software/Majordomo_Frequently_Asked_Questions
If you have any questions or submissions regarding this FAQ, send them
to barr@math.psu.edu (David Barr).
_________________________________________________________________
Section 1: What is Majordomo and how can I get it?
What is Majordomo?
Majordomo is a program which automates the management of Internet
mailing lists. Commands are sent to Majordomo via electronic mail to
handle all aspects of list maintainance. Once a list is set up,
virtually all operations can be performed remotely, requiring no
intervention upon the postmaster of the list site.
_majordomo - n: a person who speaks, makes arrangements, or takes
charge for another. From latin "major domus" - "master of the
house". _
Majordomo is written in Perl (at least 4.036). It should also work
under at least Perl 5.001a. It will _not work with Perl 5.001!!! It
has reportedly worked with Perl 5.000 on some but not all platforms_.
ftp://ftp.netlabs.com/pub/outgoing/perl5.0/ is the latest release
from the author. However, with Perl 5 you must edit majordomo and
resend to look for instances of the "@" character inside text strings
"something@something". Change the "@" to "\@". The same fix is also
required if you want to run Majordomo under OSF/1 on the DEC AXP
systems with Perl 4 or 5. [from Jim Reisert]
Many people have been having problems with DEC OSF/1 AXP systems with
Majordomo. Apparently Perl on the Alphas is not as stable as compared
to other platforms, and Majordomo tickles bugs in that port of Perl.
If you are having problems, please make sure you are running the very
latest version of Perl (version 5.002 is known to work).
There have also been reported problems with the native compiler for
AIX 3.2.5. Perl compiled with that compiler will crash when running
Majordomo (even though it passes all the regression tests), however if
you compile Perl with gcc it will work.
Majordomo was developed under UNIX based systems, but will probably
work on others. If you can get Perl to compile and run cleanly on your
system, and can send Internet mail by piping or calling an external
program (and that external program reads its list of recipients from a
plain text file), you can probably get Majordomo to work on a wide
variety of UNIX-based and non-UNIX based systems.
Majordomo controls a list of addresses for some mail transport system
(like sendmail or smail) to handle. Majordomo itself performs no mail
delivery (though it has scripts to format and archive messages).
Here's a short list of some of the features of Majordomo.
* supports various types of lists, including moderated ones.
* List options can be set easily through a configuration file,
editable remotely.
* Supports archival and remote retrieval of messages.
* Supports digests.
* Written in Perl, - easily customizable and expandable.
* Modular in design.
* Includes support for FTPMAIL.
There is a World Wide Web interface for Majordomo and other mail
servers, called "Mailserv". Check it out at
http://iquest.com/~fitz/www/mailserv/. There's also another one
called LWGate at http://www.netspace.org/users/dwb/lwgate.html.
Where do I get it?
Via anonymous FTP at: ftp://ftp.greatcircle.com/pub/majordomo/
The current version is 1.93. Version 1.94 is currently in alpha test
(meaning not a public release). The release date for 1.94 has not been
announced.
If you don't have Perl, you can get it from:
ftp://ftp.netlabs.com/pub/outgoing/perl5.0/
Information about Perl can be found from:
http://www.metronet.com/perlinfo/perl5.html
The FTPMAIL package can be found in
ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/ftpmail or any comp.sources.misc
archive (volume 37).
How do I install it?
Majordomo comes with a rather extensive README. Read this file
completely. This FAQ is meant to be a supplement to Majordomo's
documentation, not a replacement for it. If you have any questions
that this FAQ doesn't cover, chances are that it is covered in the
README or other documentation in the Majordomo distribution. For
anyone who is going to run a list, you must read Doc/list-owner-info
before trying to do anything. If you don't have access to the system
where your list is being run, the Majordomo maintainer who set up your
list should have sent it to you. Bug him if he didn't.
If you have permission problems unpacking the distribution, try using
the 'o' flag to ignore user/group information.
How do I upgrade from an earlier release?
Be sure to browse the "Changes" and "Changelog" files to get an idea
what has changed. There currently is no canned set of instructions for
upgrading from an earlier release. The most straightforward method is
to simply install the current release in a different directory, (with
the same list/archive/digest directories) and change the mail aliases
for each list to use the new Majordomo scripts as soon as you feel
comfortable with the new setup.
Where do I report bugs or get help with Majordomo?
If you need help, there is a mailing list
majordomo-users@greatcircle.com, which is frequented by lots of users
of Majordomo. Report bugs to majordomo-workers@greatcircle.com.
Be sure always to include which version of Majordomo you are using.
You should also include what operating system you are using, what
version of Perl, and what mailer (sendmail, smail, etc) and version
you are using, especially if you can't get Majordomo to work at all.
But first, you must have thoroughly read the ALL documentation in the
Majordomo distribution and this FAQ. If you got this FAQ from the
Majordomo distribution, or anywhere except from the WWW site at the
top of this document don't expect it to be up-to-date. It's probably
not.
You can search the majordomo-workers and majordomo-users archives at
http://www.meadow.net/Majordomo/
Please don't ask the FAQ maintainer for help on Majordomo. I will
probably accidently delete your message. Let me say that about 90% of
the answers I give are from the documentation or this FAQ. Most of the
rest are answered by reading the source. It's really not that hard to
figure out.
Do NOT ask questions about Majordomo on the
list-managers@greatcircle.com list. That list is for general
discussions about running mailing lists, not for help on specific
packages. The same goes for the Usenet group
comp.mail.list-admin.policy.
There is a good guide for people running majordomo lists at
http://www.uchicago.edu/a.docs/Mail/majordomo.admin.html.
Which is better, Majordomo or LISTSERV?
For a good comparison of various mailing list managers (MLM's) there's
a good FAQ by Norm Aleks. It is posted monthly to news.answers and
comp.mail.list-admin.software. It's also mirrored at the following
URL. ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/mail/list-admin/software-faq
You can also request a copy via email, by sending the text "get
mlm-software faq" in the body of a mail message to
LISTSERV@listserv.net. Contact naleks@library.ummed.edu (Norm Aleks)
for more information.
Section 2: Problems setting up Majordomo
What are the proper permissions and ownership of all Majordomo files and
directories?
By far the biggest problem in setting up Majordomo is getting all the
permissions and ownerships right. In part this is due to the security
model that Majordomo uses, and it's also due to the fact that it's
hard to automate this process. That's due to improve in future
releases.
Majordomo works by using a small C "wrapper" which works by allowing
Majordomo to always run as the "majordom" user and group that you
create. (note that the wrapper may disappear in a future release,
since its function could safely be replaced by features found in Perl
5) You can use a different name than "majordom" for your user and
group, but that is what is assumed for the explanations found in this
document. Because Majordomo does not run with any "special" (root)
priviliges, and because of the fact that Majordomo does a lot of
.lock-style locking (with shlock.pl), permissions on all files and
directories are critical to the correct operation of Majordomo.
The wrapper
The wrapper is compiled in one of two ways, by uncommenting the
correct section in the Makefile for your type of system. If you are
unsure if your system is POSIX or not, I would suggest you assume that
your system is not. (The default in 1.93 is POSIX) If things don't
work right (for example you get symptoms of permission problems or you
get an error from the wrapper saying to recompile using POSIX flags),
then try POSIX.
Some systems which are BSD: SunOS 4.x, Ultrix, most BSD 4.2 and
4.3-based systems. POSIX systems include Solaris 2.x, IRIX 5.x, BSDI
(and presumably other 4.4 BSD-based systems), Linux.
Make sure W_PATH is right in the Makefile. On IRIX 5.x, you need to
add /usr/bsd to the W_PATH to get the hostname (needed by Perl)
command. (IRIX doesn't have a /usr/ucb). If you are on a non-POSIX
system, the wrapper must be both suid _and_ sgid (mode 6755) to
"majordom". It must _not_ be setuid root!
_OR_
On a POSIX system the wrapper must be setuid root, and double-check
that W_UID and W_GID are the uid and gid of the "majordom" user and
group. Don't set W_UID to be 0!
Then compile the wrapper and install it. Do not install the wrapper on
an NFS filesystem with the "nosuid" option set. This will prevent the
wrapper from working.
Majordomo files
All files that majordomo creates will be mode 660, user "majordom",
group "majordom" if it is running correctly. The Log file that
Majordomo writes logging information to must have this same permission
and ownership. Make sure any files you create by hand (.config,
subscription lists) have this same permission and ownership. (the can
also be mode 664 if you don't need the contents to be private to
others) The permissions/ownership of the Majordomo programs and
related files themselves aren't as critical, but the must all be
readable to the "majordom" user/group. All Majordomo programs
(majordomo, resend, etc.) must have the execute bit set.
Majordomo directories
All directories under Majordomo's control ($homedir, $listdir,
$digest_work_dir, $filedir, as defined in your majordomo.cf) must be
mode 770 (or 775). They should be user and group owned by "majordom".
If want to allow a local user to be able to directly modify files or
for example copy files into a list's archive directory, you may make
the directory or file owned by that user. However directories and
files must be group-"majordom" writeable.
I get "Unknown mailer error" when majordomo runs
If something is wrong with your setup, the wrapper will often exit
with various return codes depending on what the problem is. In order
to really understand what is going on, look at the session transcript
further down in the bounce message to see the error which is returned
from the wrapper or from Majordomo. You should always see some sort of
error message.
For information purposes, here are the current return codes from the
wrapper:
* 1: Usage error
* 2: Insecure usage (argument to wrapper can't contain a '/')
* 3: malloc() failed (out of memory)
* 4: set[ug]id() failed, compile with POSIX instead of BSD flags
* 5: execve() failed
* >5: return code from perl
[reported by Russell Street]
You may also get problems when messages to majordomo are queued (for
example if you change sendmail's behavior to always queue messages
rather than perform immediate delivery). The problem was that if
sendmail queues a message it smashes the case in command lines and
addresses when the queue gets processed. This is in spite of the lines
shown by mailq. This is sendmail 5.x on Solaris 2.3, but it might
apply to other versions of sendmail.
I get "Permission denied at ..." when majordomo runs
I get "shlock: open(">/some/path/..." when majordomo runs
A file is visible via index, but can't 'get' it
Majordomo seems to be taking many minutes to process commands
These are all symptoms of a permission or ownership problem. See the
previous question. The directory specified of any "shlock" errors
indicates a problem with that directory. A "get" problem means the
ownership or permission of archive directory for that list is wrong.
I get an error "insecure usage" from the wrapper
The argument to "wrapper" should be simply be the command, not the
full path to the command. "wrapper" has where to look compiled in to
it (the "W_BIN" setting in the Makefile) and for security reasons will
not let you specify another directory.
Your alias should say for example:
|"/path/to/majordomo/wrapper majordomo"
I get "majordomo: No such file or directory" from the wrapper
Make sure that the #! statement at the beginning of all the Majordomo
Perl executables contain the correct path to the perl program (the
default is /usr/local/bin/perl). Note many UNIXes have a 32 character
limit on that path -- make sure it doesn't exceed this limit. Make
sure also that majordomo and all the related scripts are in the W_BIN
directory as defined in the Makefile when you compiled the wrapper.
I get an error "Can't locate majordomo.pl"
[from Brent Chapman]
Majordomo adds "$homedir" from the majordomo.cf file to the @INC array
before it goes looking for "majordomo.pl". Since it's not finding it,
I'd guess you have one of two problems:
1) $homedir is set improperly (or not set at all; there is no default)
in your majordomo.cf file.
2) majordomo.pl is not in $homedir, or is not readable.
[from John P. Rouillard]
3) Note that the new majordomo.cf file checks to see if the
environment variable $HOME is set first, and uses that for $homedir.
Since the wrapper always sets HOME to the correct directory, you get a
nice default, unless you are running a previously built wrapper, in
which case you may get the wrong directory.
[from Andreas Fenner]
4) I had the same problem when I installed majordomo (1.62). My
Problem was a missing ";" in the majordomo.cf file - just in the line
before setting homedir .... My hint for you: Check your perl-files
carefully.
I told my majordomo.cf where to archive the list, why isn't it working?
[From John Rouillard]
The archive variables in majordomo.cf aren't used to archive anything.
You have to use a separate archive program, or a sendmail alias to do
the archiving. The info is used to generate a directory where the
archive files are being placed by some other mechanism.
You are telling majordomo to look in the directory:
/usr/local/mail/majordomo/archive/listname
for files that it should allow to be gotten using the get command.
Majordomo comes with three different archive programs that run under
wrapper, that do various types of archiving. Look in the contrib
directory.
I'm accumulating lots of files called /tmp/resend.*.in and .out what are
these and how can I get rid of them?
This is a known bug in Majordomo 1.92. There was a typo in resend on
line 347. Change the double-quotes to angle-brackets. (just like the
other calls to unlink())
A list is visible via lists, but can't subscribe or 'get' files
[From Brent Chapman]
I'll bet your list name has capital letters in it... Majordomo smashes
all list names to all-lower-case before attempting to use the list
name as part of a filename. So, while it's OK to advertise (for
instance) "Majordomo-Users" and have the headers say
"Majordomo-Users", the file names and archive directory names
themselves all need to be in lower case. If you want to use mixed
case, simply configure the list using the lower-case names everywhere,
except put the mixed-case version in the "-l" and "-h" flags to
resend.
I get "Out of Memory" when upgrading to 1.93
[summary of report from Matthew A. Braithwaite]
There appears to be a bug in error reporting in Majordomo 1.93. Under
certain circumstances, if the directory containing your Log file is
not writable by majordomo then it will get caught in an infinite
recursion, eventually allocating all the memory in the system. The fix
is to make sure that the directory containing your Log file is user
and group writeable, and user and group owned by your majordomo user
and group. This doesn't work in all cases. There have been reports
that some O/S have bugs in Perl's eval() routine causing this error.
This condition will also arise if the wrapper is configured or
installed improperly. Refer above for how to configure and install the
wrapper on your system.
I get warnings or errors when trying to compile 1.93's wrapper
You're probably trying to compile the wrapper using the default
Makefile on a non-POSIX system (like SunOS 4.x). As it says in the
Makefile, SunOS isn't POSIX -- you need to use the BSD rules.
If you're having trouble compiling the wrapper under AIX, change the
line that says:
char setgroups_used = "setgroups_was_included"; /* give strings a hint */
to
char *setgroups_used = "setgroups_was_included"; /* give strings a hint */
The wrapper compilation may generate warnings under Linux and SunOS,
which you can safely ignore. Some systems (IRIX 5.x) also require an
#include<string.h>/tt> after stdio.h.
Problems with 1.93's request-answer
[ Summary by Yusef Pisan ]
There are a some known bugs in request-answer. If you get the error
'Undefined subroutine "main'lopen"' (or "main::lopen" for Perl 5), you
need to insert the line 'require "shlock.pl";' near the beginning of
request-answer. The syntax of the 'do_exec_sendmail' function is
different in majordomo than in majordomo.pl, so you need to change all
occurrences of 'do_exec_sendmail' in request-answer to something like
'do_exec_sendmail_in_request_answer'.
On line 41 where it exec()'s sendmail, change the "-f$list-request" to
"-f$list-approval".
I get "Invalid archive directory. Aborting."
archive2.pl, as a security feature, refuses to write to directories
other than ones "approved" for archiving. You need to edit the
variable "@archive_dirs" in your majordomo.cf to list all the
directories that you have set up for list archives.
_________________________________________________________________
Section 3: Setting up mailing lists and aliases
How do I direct bounces to the right address?
You should use 'resend' to filter all messages. Make sure the "sender"
keyword in the config file points to "owner-listname" and that you
have defined the "owner-listname" alias to point to the owner of the
list.
What this does is force outgoing mail to have the out-of-band envelope
FROM be "owner-listname", and thus all bounces will be redirected to
that address. (Users often see this mirrored in the message body as
the "From " or "Return-Path:" header). 'resend' also inserts a
"Sender:" line with the same address to help people identify where it
came from, but that header is not used for the bounce address.
If you are using sendmail v8.x, you don't have to use 'resend' to do
the same thing. You simply have to define an alias like this:
owner-sample: joe,
Note the trailing comma is necessary to prevent sendmail from
resolving the alias first before putting it in the header. Without the
comma, it will put "joe" in the envelope from instead of
"owner-sample". Either address will work, of course, but the generic
address is preferred should the owner ever change.
However if you choose not to use 'resend', you will have to do without
much of majordomo's other features like moderating, administrivia
checks, and others.
Semi-automated handling of bounced mail
[From John Rouillard]
Just create a mailing list called "bounces". I usually set mine up as
an auto list just to make life easier.
All that "bounce" script does is create an email message to majordomo
that says:
approve [passwd] unsubscribe [listname] [address]
approve [passwd] subscribe bounces [address]
The [address] and [listname], are given on the command line to bounce.
The address of the majordomo, and the passwords are retrieved from the
.majordomo file in your home directory.
A sample .majordomo file might look like (shamelessly stolen from the
comments at the top of the bounce script):
this-list passwd1 Majordomo@This.COM
other-list passwd2 Majordomo@Other.COM
bounces passwd3 Majordomo@This.COM
bounces passwd4 Majordomo@Other.COM
A command of "bounce this-list user@fubar.com" will mail the following
message to Majordomo@This.COM:
approve passwd1 unsubscribe this-list user@fubar.com
approve passwd3 subscribe bounces user@fubar.com (930401 this-list)
while a command of "bounce other-list user@fubar.com" will mail the
following message to Majordomo@Other.COM:
approve passwd2 unsubscribe other-list user@fubar.com
approve passwd4 subscribe bounces user@fubar.com (930401 this-list)
Note that the date and the list the user was bounced from are included
as a comment in the address used for the "subscribe bounces" command.
What's this Owner-List and List-Owner stuff? Why both?
[From David Barr]
The "standard" is spelled out in RFC 1211 - "Problems with the
Maintenance of Large Mailing Lists".
It's here where the "owner-listname" and "listname-request" concepts
got their start. (well it was before this, but this is where it was
first spelled out)
Personally, I don't use "listname-owner" anywhere. You don't really
have to put both, since the "owner" alias is usually only for bounces,
which you add automatically anyway with resend's "-f" flag, or having
Sendmail v8.x's "owner-listname" alias.
(while I'm on the subject) The "-approval" is a Majordomo-ism, and is
only necessary if you want bounces and approval notices to go to
different mailboxes. (though you'll have to edit some code in
majordomo and request-answer if you want to get rid of the -approval
alias, since it's currently hardwired in)
So, to answer your question, I'd say "no". You don't have to have
both. You should just have "owner-list".
How should I configure resend for Reply-To headers?
Whether you should have a "Reply-To:" or not depends on the charter of
your list and the nature of its users. If the list is a discussion
list and you generally want replies to go back to the list, you can
include one. Some people don't like being told what to do, and prefer
to be able to choose whether to send a private reply or a reply to the
list just by using the right function on their mail agent. Take note
that if you do use a "Reply-To:", then some mail agents make it much
harder for a person on the list to send a private reply.
If you are using resend, use the '-r ' flag to set the Reply-To field
to the list, or use the 'reply_to' config keyword for 1.9x or greater.
How can I hide lists so they can't be viewed by 'lists'?
That is what advertise and noadvertise are for. The two keywords take
regular expressions that are matched against the from address of the
sender. A list display follows the rules:
1. If the from address is on the list, it is shown.
2. If the from address matches a regexp in noadvertise (e.g. /.*/)
the list is not shown.
3. If the advertise list is empty, the list is shown unless 2
applies.
4. If the advertise list is non-empty, the from address must match an
address in advertise. Otherwise the list is not shown. Rule 2
applies, so you could allow all hosts in umb.edu except hosts in
cs.umb.edu.
How can I restrict a list such that only subscribers can send mail to the
list?
For pre-1.9x versions of majordomo, see the -I option to resend. For
1.9x this is the restrict_post keyword in the config file. Just set it
to the filename that holds the list of subscribers. Unfortunately this
means you probably will need help from the Majordomo maintainer in
setting it if you don't have access to the host machine. This is due
to be improved in a future release of Majordomo.
However, there is a problem with either of these methods. Majordomo
works by filtering the messages coming in through the "listname"
alias, doing its dirty work, then passing the resulting message out to
another alias you define like "listname-outgoing". If you trust people
to not send mail directly to the "listname-outgoing" alias, then
you'll be fine. If however you're not trusting, there are several
steps to make sure people don't bypass the restrictions of the list.
There are several methods. First you need to change your
"listname-outgoing" alias such that it is not obvious. Next, you need
to make it such that people can't find out what your -outgoing alias
is.
You can use the "@filename" directive in resend to move the
command-line options of resend into a file readable only by the
majordomo user/group. This will make it such that you can't find out
the -outgoing address by connecting to your mailer and doing an EXPN
or VRFY. The "@filename" directive seems to have fallen into
undocumentation for some reason. This should be fixed in future
releases.
Another more direct approach is to simply disable EXPN or VRFY
altogether. See the documentation for your mailer on how to do this.
However this doesn't prevent local reading if the aliases file.
Sendmail 8.x will unfortunately log your -outgoing alias in the
"Received:" lines. To get around this you need to specify more than
one address for the list name argument to resend. (for example
"mylist:|"/usr/local/lib/majordomo/wrapper resend -h foo.org -l mylist
mylist,nobody"" where nobody is an alias for /dev/null) For Sendmail
8.x you must _not_ define an alias 'owner-mylist-seekrit' to be
something like 'owner-mylist,' (with the commma). Otherwise sendmail
will set the envelope address of outgoing mail to contain your secret
outgoing alias.
Finally it should be noted that it is impossible with any method to
prevent people from forging mail as someone on the list, and sending
to the list that way.
Can I have the list owner or approval person be changeable without
intervention from the Majordomo owner?
Sure! Just make owner-listname and/or listname-approval be another
majordomo list. (probably hidden, for simplicity's sake)
What about all of these passwords starting in version 1.90?
Think of three separate passwords:
1. A master password that can be used by both resend and majordomo
contained in [listname].passwd. To be used by the master list
manager when using writeconfig commands etc. This allows someone
who handles a number of mailing lists all using the same password.
2. A password for the manager of this one list. The admin_passwd can
be used by subsidiary majordomo list maintainers.
3. A password for those concerned with the list content
(approve_passwd)
This way the administration and moderation functions can be split. The
original reason for maintaining [listname].passwd was to allow a new
config file to be put in if the config file was trashed and the
admin_password was obliterated, and may still be useful to allow a
single password to be used for admin functions by the majordomo admin
or some other "superadmin".
Note that the admin passwd in the config file is not a file name, but
the password itself. This is the only way that the list-maintainer
could change the password since they wouldn't have access to the file.
How do I tell majordomo to handle "get"-ing of binary files?
Majordomo is not designed to be a general-purpose file-by-mail system.
If you want to do anything more than trivial "get"-ing of text files
(archives, etc) than you should get and install ftpmail. Majordomo has
hooks to allow transparent access to files via ftpmail (see
majordomo.cf). See the beginning of this FAQ for where to get ftpmail.
How do I set up a moderated list?
First, you need to tell Majordomo that the list is moderated. In the
configuration file for the list, you set "moderated = yes". If you're
using Majordomo 1.9x or greater, do not try to use the now-deprecated
"-A" option to resend. In fact if you're using 1.9x or greater, you
shouldn't be using ANY options to resend except "-h" and "-l".
Any mail which is not "approved", gets bounced with "Approval
required". If the moderator wishes to approve the message for the
list, then you need to tag the message as "approved" and send it to
the list. The "approve" script which comes with Majordomo does this
for you. If you don't have access to "approve" (e.g. you're not on a
UNIX system with Perl), you have to do it by hand. The easiest way is
to forward the original message to the list, add the line "Approved:
_approval-password_" to the very first line of the body, leave a blank
line, and then the contents of the original message. (meaning there
should be a blank line before and after the "Approved:" line.)
How do I set up a digested version of a list?
[ Modified from explanation given by jmb@kryten.atinc.com (Jonathan M.
Bresler)]
* Create aliases for the mailing list and the digest. See section
2.2 of the README for an example.
* create an alias for the majordom(o) user, so that his cron
generated mail comes to me, rather than just piling up in
/usr/local/mail/majordom.
* create the list's and the digest's files, (widget, widget-digest,
widget.config, widget-digest.config, etc.). Edit the
widget-digest.config file and make sure all the digest options are
set to your tastes.
* create the digest directory and archive directory. See FAQ section
2 on how to set permissions on all majordomo files and
directories. You must have archives if you have digests so the
digester can make the digest. You can purge the archive after the
digest is generated.
* Add yourself to both the mailing list and its digest so you can
monitor what happens...at least for a while (not a bad idea to
create a dummy user, and subscribe him to both the mailing list
and its digest. This preserves a record of messages for debugging.
Don't forget to remove this account and unsubscribe it after
debugging.)
* Optionally you may add a crontab for majrodom, to push out a
digest at set intervals regardless of the number of queued
messages. Of course you can do this from any account not just
majordom, as long as the password is correct. See the question Why
aren't my digests going out?".
_________________________________________________________________
Section 4: Miscellaneous mailer problems
Address with blanks are being treated separately
If a subscriber to the list is
John Doe <jdoe@node.com>
it gets treated these as the three addresses:
John
Doe
<jdoe@node.com>
[From Alan Millar]
Majordomo does not treat these as three addresses. Apparently your
mailer does.
Remember that all Majordomo does is add and remove addresses from a
list. Majordomo does not interpret the contents of the list for
message distribution; the system mailer (such as sendmail) does.
I'm using SMail3 instead of sendmail, and it has an alternative (read
"stupid") view of how mixed angle-bracketed and non-angle-bracketed
addresses should be interpreted. I found that putting a comma at the
end of each line was effective to fix the problem, and I got to keep
my comments. So I patched Majordomo to add the comma at the end of
each address it writes to the list file.
You can also add the $listname.strip option so that none of the
addresses are angle-bracketed. (the "strip" config option for 1.90)
Why aren't my digests going out?
>I'm not sure how to set up the digest feature of majordomo 1.92
>to send digests out. Currently, it is digesting incoming mail,
>but that's all it's doing.
[from John Rouillard]
echo mkdigest [digest-name] [digest-password] | mail majordomo@...
This will force a digest to be created. Or you can set the max size in
the digest list config file down low, and force automatic generation.
There are some patches for 1.92 that will allow other ways of
specifying automatic digest sending. The patch is in the contrib
directory.
Why do I get duplicate mail sent to the list?
I've you're running MMDF, read on: [From Gunther Anderson]
Well, I can tell you what happened to me recently. We use MMDF here,
which certainly colors the picture a little. What was happening here
was that MMDF was verifying the validity of the whole mailing list
before returning from the Submit call. The thing calling the Submit
would time out and close, but the Submit itself would still be running
somewhere. The calling routine would believe that the message had
failed in its delivery, but the Submit would eventually succeed. The
calling process would try again some time later. This, of course, is
bad. The larger the list got, the more addresses there were to verify
(verification was really just a DNS search on the target machine
name), the more likely, under load, that the message would duplicate.
We finally got so large, with so many international addresses (which
seem to timeout on DNS queries much more ofen than US addresses) that
we were always duplicating. Infinitely (until I killed the original
submitter).
The solution for us was MMDF-specific. We used a different channel for
submission and delivery, one which deliberately doesn't verify the
addresses before accepting a job. We used the list-processor channel,
and only had to check that the listname-request name was set properly,
because list-processor insists on making listname-request the envelope
"From " header name.
If you're running Sendmail, this is more rare. There have been
unconfirmed reports that on some systems having the queue process
interval set too short can cause problems, even though sendmail is
supposed to handle this. Workarounds are to increase your queue
process interval (-q flag), or decrease the interval between queue
checkpoints (OC flag in sendmail.cf).
There have been many reports from Linux users complaining about
duplicate mail. The problem seems to be that flock() under Linux is
broken. This may be fixed in a future release, but for now in
sendmail's conf.h in the #ifdef __linux__ section add a line #define
HASFLOCK 0. There are also reports that some versions of the libc have
problems, and that linking with the libresolv.a from a recent BIND
version will work around the problem.
[ Please let me know if you have any more information --ed ]
How do I gate my list to and/or from a newsgroup?
The easiest method is to use a program called newsgate. Send mail to
rsalz@uunet.uu.net (Rich Salz) for a copy. Unless he tells you
otherwise, do not redistribute what he sends you. Installation
instructions are straightforward, it provides sample entires for your
newsfeeds/sys file and aliases entries. The newsgate package includes
news2mail and mail2news.
How can I improve Majordomo's performance?
Mail to list throughput
Majordomo does very little except pass each message to the list
through 'resend', and then pass it on to your mailer for distribution.
Improving your mailer is the first step to improving speed of delivery
of mail to the list. Upgrading your sendmail to version 8.x will
improve things greatly, as this version has a lot of enhancements
which use connections more efficiently. For most lists, this is
enough. Majordomo itself doesn't use very much resources except
perhaps memory. Adding more memory will help if your machine does a
lot of paging during mail delivery. Using other mailers instead of
sendmail like ZMailer has met with varying success.
If your lists are very large you may try installing bulk_mailer, by
Keith Moore. It pre-sorts the list into chunks grouped by site, and
passes the resulting chunks off to individual sendmail processes for
delivery (see note next paragraph). Get it from
ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/moore/bulk_mailer/. It installs simply by
replacing your usual -outgoing alias with (line wrapped for clarity):
sample-outgoing: |"/path/to/bulk_mailer owner-sample@your.site
/path/to/lists/sample"
bulk_mailer has reportedly resulted in dramatic speedups in delivery
times, on the order of several times faster. Note this works just as
well on digested lists as well as normal lists. bulk_mailer did have
one problem. Until version 1.3 it didn't understand parenthesized
comments in addresses, resulting in incorrect sorting and reduced
performance. Your list must be configured with strip=yes in the
configuration file if you don't upgrade to 1.3.
The restrict_post list option with large lists can cause a significant
slowdown in mail delivery, since resend has to do a sequential search
through the subscription list for each mail sent to the list (to
verify that the sender is subscribed to the list). Think twice about
using this option with very large lists.
Majordomo command processing
Most of the improvements in this are are experimental and not widely
available or not yet completed but scheduled for future releases. Some
areas include: improvements in shlock.pl to use exponential backoffs
to reduce contention and starvation of locks, using some sort of
dbz-style database for subscription lists to speed up subscribe and
unsubscribe commands, and changes in the configuration file system to
allow faster parsing and faster execution of certain commands such as
"lists". If you are interested in working on improvements in this
area, join the majordomo-workers list mentioned above. If you make any
specific patches or additions available, please let me know so I can
add references to it here.
How can I handle X.400 addresses?
Majordomo by default treats addresses starting with "/" as "hostile",
and won't let people subscribe. This is to prevent someone from
subscribing a majordomo-owned filename to the list, and being able to
write by sending mail to the list. Unfortunately, all X.400 addresses
begin with a "/". Starting in Majordomo 1.93, there are three
variables in the majordomo.cf which control how majordomo treats these
sorts of addresses. See the end of the sample.cf in the Majordomo 1.93
distribution for a complete explanation.