Basic Commands for List Managers

The following is a brief description of how to do the things that most list owners/managers want to do. All these commands are sent as the text of email messages addressed to 'majordomo@lists.uoregon.edu'. The subject line will be ignored and can be omitted.

If you have more than one email address, you can submit majordomo commands for list managment from any of them, not just the one given for the list owner, so long as you give the correct password. However, to post to your list, you will have to use an email account that has been subscribed to the list. When your list is created, the address you have given for the listowner will be subscribed to the list unless you have given us an initial list of member addresses for the list. In this case, it is up to you to include yourself in that list.

Only majordomo commands should be included in the text of the message. More than one command can be included in a single message (including commands of different types). EACH COMMAND SHOULD BE ON A SEPARATE LINE.

WARNING! sometimes a subscribe or unsubscribe command will be so long that your mail program will 'wrap' it, producing two lines instead of one. If you put a backslash character ( \ ) at the end of the first line, majordomo will treat the second line as the continuation of the first. If you are using Eudora, be sure to press the 'Enter' or 'Return' key to put a 'hard' carriage return after the backslash. Eudora does a wordprocesser like wrap based on the window width while you are entering the text, but inserts hard returns at the first white space after column 72 when it actually sends the message unless you have turned the word wrap feature off.

The last command should be the single word 'end'. This will prevent majordomo from trying to interpret your 'signature' (should you have one) as majordomo commands.

ADDING PEOPLE TO THE LIST

To add someone, use the 'subscribe' command (replace 'password' with your list's password, and 'listname' with your list's name).

approve password subscribe listname jdoe@darkwing.uoregon.edu
end

More than one person can be subscribed using the same mail message by including additional subscribe commands on separate lines:

approve password subscribe listname jdoe@darkwing.uoregon.edu
approve password subscribe listname mbrown@oregon.uoregon.edu
approve password subscribe listname fredf@cunyvm.bitnet
end

Be sure to use the 'fully-qualified' (i.e., long or complete) form of the persons address (see the example above). Bitnet addresses should end in '.bitnet' (e.g., fredf@cunyvm.bitnet).

REMOVING PEOPLE FROM THE LIST

To remove someone, use the 'unsubscribe' command:

approve password unsubscribe listname jdoe@darkwing.uoregon.edu
end

More than one person can be unsubscribed using the same mail message by including additional unsubscribe commands on separate lines.

GETTING THE CURRENT MEMBERSHIP LIST

To get a list of the addresses of people currently subscribed, use the 'who' command. In general, only list members can do this:

who listname
end

The list will be returned to you as the text of an email message from majordomo.

CORRECTING BAD ADDRESSES

Majordomo does not do any checking on the validity of an email address that you provide. If a bad address is subscribed to your list, you will receive an automatic error message from the mail system when majordomo attempts to send the subscription notification to the new subscriber or the next time anyone sends to the list. This error message will not come from majordomo, but from the mail system software, probably 'From: postmaster@...'. To correct a bad address, send an unsubscribe command specifying the bad address and a subscribe command specifying the good address:

approve password unsubscribe listname jmsith@canard.uoregon.edu
approve password subscribe listname jsmith@canard.uoregon.edu
end

(Note that since majordomo sends a 'notification' message not only to you, but to the address you specified as part of the command every time it executes a subscribe or unsubscribe command, you will get another 'bad address' error message from the mail system when you unsubscribe a bad address. This is 'normal'.)

STRANGE BEHAVIOR

Failing to use the fully-qualified email address in a subscribe or unsubscribe command can result in strange behavior on the part of majordomo. If strange things start happening with your lists behavior and it isn't immediately obvious to you what is wrong, use the 'who' command to get a list of current subscriber addresses and check to make sure that all the addresses are 'fully-qualified'.

CHANGING YOUR WELCOME MESSAGE

To change the message that people get when they subscribe to the list or use the 'info' command, send a message to majordomo with contents that begin with the line (substituting your listname and list password):

newinfo listname password

Then include the text for the new welcome/info message, beginning on the next line.

The last line of the message should be the word EOF on a line by itself.

To get a copy of the current welcome/info message, use the 'info' command:

info listname

CHANGING YOUR LIST PASSWORD

Send a message to majordomo with contents

passwd listname old-password new-password

Note that the password changing command is spelled 'passwd' (like in UNIX).

APPROVING POSTS

Most lists at UO are 'closed', that is, only list members can post. At UO we have configured Majordomo so that for a moderated list, only the moderator(s) can post. In both types of lists, posts from non-members or non-moderators, respectively, are referred to the list owner for 'approval'. Unfortunately, the approval process is somewhat complicated and is discussed in detail in the web page:

http://lists.uoregon.edu/mod.html

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Page last updated November 22, 2004 Comments? listmaster@lists.uoregon.edu