IN THIS SECTION:
Installing
The SmartList Software | Creating
A List
Assigning
A List Administrator (maintainer)
Location
Of Files To Edit For Your Mailing List | SmartLists
Commands
Where
To Find More SmartList Information
Where
To Find Basic SmartList Documentation
Installing The SmartLists Software
Before using your mailing list you must first install the Smartlists
software to your account. This is done by entering your control panel
and clicking on the Mailing List option. Once inside the Mailing List
option you will see a button that you need to click to install the
software to your account. It will take approximately 10 minutes for
the server to install the software to your account.
Creating A Mailing List
Once the software is installed you create your lists from inside the
Mail Manager in your Control Panel. After you have installed the software
you will see a link inside your Mail Manager named "New List", click
it to create the list. See the following screenshot.
After you click add to create your list, you will be taken to a
new window giving you a somewhat poor description of your list,
just click on the Home link in the upper left hand corner of the
screen to return to the Mail Manager. Once you return to the Mail
Manager, you will see the name of your new list. See the following
screenshot.
Assigning A List Administrator (Maintainer)
Before you can edit or administer a list, you must first provide the
system with the Maintainers email address, the Maintainers password,
and the maximum number of emails that can be stored in archive.
Maintainer = the person who has permission to edit and administer
the list.
To provide this information click on the list name and you will be
taken to a new screen where you provide the maintainers information.
We have provided a screenshot of this screen below. Once you fill
in the needed information, you will need to click on edit. The system
then provides you with the name of the file that you can edit. We
will get into editing the files below.
Location Of Files To Edit For Your
Mailing List
So far you've learned how to install the mailing list software, create
list, and assign a maintainer to the list. Now the list is ready to
make it do all the neat little tricks lists can do in order to work
the way you need them to. Before you can add commands to your list,
you need to know where the files are that you edit to apply the commands
to.
The location of the files that you will edit for your mailing list
are located in this directory: /home/yourdomain/yourdomain-mail/nameoflist/.
You can either edit these files from inside the File Manager of your
Control Panel or upload them to your own PC and edit them as a text
file. If you upload these files to your hard drive to edit, remember
to FTP them back to your account in ASCII mode.
Each file located inside your list directory contains instructions
for editing and should be read carefully prior to editing. Following
is a screen shot of what your list directory will look like if viewing
it from the control panel. We've created a list named <mylist<
that we are using as an example.
List Commands
Now you are ready to apply commands to your list by editing the files
as indicated above. Below is a list of commands with instructions.
If you are in need of further instructions or more information on
a particular command, please visit one of the links below the commands
under "Where To Find More SmartList Information" or "Where To Find
Basic SmartList Documentation".
- What does "uncomment" mean?
- How do I make replies go to the list instead of
to the sender?
- How do I make the list Open/Closed?
- How do people subscribe/unsubscribe to the list?
- How do I subscribe/unsubscribe people to my list?
- How do I get a list of the subscribers?
- How do I use X-Command:?
- How do I change the admin password for my list?
- How do I turn a non-digest list into a digest?
- How often do digests get sent out?
- Can I force a digest to be sent every day, even
if it is small?
- How can I add a message to the beginning of every
digest?
- How can I restrict who can subscribe to my list?
- How can I restrict who can post to my list?
- How can I automatically subscribe people who post
to the list?
- How can I automatically send files to new subscribers?
- How can I make my list moderated?
- How do I enable 'auto help'?
- How does someone access the archive server?
- How can I restrict who can access the archive
server?
- How can I prevent certain people from automatic
unsubscription?
- How can I disable automatic unsubscription?
- Can I add comments to the addresses in the dist
file?
- How can I tell smartlist to notify me when someone
subscribes/unsubscribes?
- How can I change the messages that smartlist sends
to people?
- How can I add "[listname]" to all of the mailing
list messages for easy filtering?
- How can I add a short message file to the top
of all of the mailing list messages?
- How can I add a short message file to the bottom
of all of the mailing list messages?
- How can I keep the automatically added messages
from multiplying when people quote them all the time?
- How can I add a custom header to all of the mailing
list messages?
- How can I remove some headers from all of the
mailing list messages?
- How can I remove all of the X- headers from all
of the mailing list messages?
- Where can I get smartlist?
- Is there a smartlist mailing list?
- Where can I find more SmartList information?
- Where can I find basic SmartList documentation?
- Can SmartList do subscriber confirmation?
- Is there an easy way to remove duplicates from
the dist file?
- How can I keep people from sending HTML/attachments/other
junk to the list?
- Is there an archive of the mailing list?
- A list of X-commands
1. What
does "uncomment" mean?
To uncomment a line in the file, remove the hashmark (#) from the
front of the line (if there are more than one, be sure and remove
them all), and change the value if necessary. For example, the moderate
section in the standard distribution looks like this:
#moderated_flag
##moderated_flag= yes # uncomment this to make the list
# moderated (you must create a
# `moderators' file for this to work)
# set moderator_PASSWORD to get
# stricter checking
To turn your list into a moderated list,
remove the two hash marks from the line that says "moderated_flag
= yes", so the section now looks like this:
#moderated_flag
moderated_flag= yes # uncomment this to make the list
# moderated (you must create a
# `moderators' file for this to work)
# set moderator_PASSWORD to get
# stricter checking
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2. How
do I make replies go to the list instead of to the sender?
In the rc.custom file, uncomment the line:
reply_to = $listaddr
and set it to something like this:
reply_to = "Reply-To: $listaddr"
Although for various reasons this is discouraged,
many people want it this way anyway (For more information on why this
is discouraged, see
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html).
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3. How
do I make the list Open/Closed?
To make the list closed subscription (i.e. the maintainer has to approve
subscriptions), uncomment the auto_subscribe line in rc.custom, and
set it to read:
auto_subscribe = no
To make the list closed unsubscription, do
the same thing with the auto_unsubscribe line.
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4. How
do people subscribe/unsubscribe to the list?
By sending a message to the listname-request address with the message
'susbscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the body of the mail, if the list
is open they will be added to it, if it is a closed list the request
will be forwarded to the list maintainer.
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5. How
do I subscribe/unsubscribe people to my list?
By using the subscribe and unsubscribe X-Command. (see list of X-commands)
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6. How
do I get a list of the subscribers?
By using the showdist X-Command. (see list of X-commands)
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7. How
do I use X-Command:?
By adding an X-Command: header to an email message and sending it
to the request address for your list, you can execute commands remotely,
see the list of X-Commands for a list of possible X-Commands.
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8. How
do I change the admin password for my list?
The password is stored in the rc.custom file.
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9. How
do I turn a non-digest list into a digest?
You can configure a list to send out digests of accumulated submissions.
In order to do so, simply uncomment the appropriate assignment to
digest_flag in rc.custom. Digests are then sent out every so often
depending on size and age of the accumulated messages.
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10. How
often do digests get sent out?
When it reaches a certain pre-set size limit (set in rc.custom), or
it ages beyond the maximum age (3 days).
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11. Can
I force a digest to be sent every day, even if it is small?
Yes, by creating a file called .digest.force in your list directory,
a digest will be sent out the next time that flush_digests is run,
no matter how big it is (unless it is empty). You should have a crontab
entry that runs flush_digests every day (if you want to send out a
digest every day), if you want to force a digest every day, using
.digest.force is not the way to go, since the file is deleted every
time that flush_digests is run, if you really want digests every day,
run flush_digests from cron with the -f (force) option.
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12. How
can I add a message to the beginning of every digest?
If you create a file named digest.admin in either the main directory
of the digested list or in the archive/latest directory belonging
to it, it will be picked up by the next flush_digests and included
up front to the actual digest under the heading "Administrivia". The
archive/latest/digest.admin file digested list will be automatically
removed after the digest has been pushed out. The digest.admin file
in the main directory of the digested list will not be removed and
is included in every digest.
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13. How
can I restrict who can subscribe to my list?
There are four ways in which you can restrict who can subscribe to
a list:
- You can put the addresses of unwanted subscribers on the so-called
reject-list (the `reject'-file).
- You can create a program (e.g. a shell script) called "subscreen".
It must be executable and will receive the mail address of the prospective
subscriber as the first argument. If subscription for that address
is allowed, the program must return with exit code zero. If subscription
is disallowed, simply return with exit code one. A sample program
is provided in the examples directory.
- You can completely disable automatic subscription by uncommenting
the appropriate "auto_subscribe" line in rc.custom.
- You can completely disable automatic unsubscription by uncommenting
the appropriate "auto_unsubscribe" line in rc.custom.
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14. How
can I restrict who can post to my list?
You can restrict submissions to people on the accept-list (the `accept'-file).
Mail from anyone else will be passed on to the maintainer instead
of being submitted. To enable this you have to uncomment the appropriate
"foreign_submit" line in rc.custom. By default the accept file is
hardlinked to the dist file (i.e. if submissions are restricted, only
subscribers can do so). If you want to allow only an even more select
group, delink the accept file and edit it to taste. If you'd like
to have both the dynamic accept file and a static one, create a new
file "accept2", it will be searched in addition to the regular accept
file.
If, in addition to notifying the maintainer you want an automated
reply to be generated to the submitter which was not in the accept
file, then you can accomplish this by simply creating an accept.txt
file. Its contents will (like the contents of the help.txt file) be
returned to the submitter.
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15. How
can I automatically subscribe people who post to the list?
Instead of rejecting submissions by people not on the accept (dist)
list, you can enable "force_subscribe". This will cause people submitting
mails to the list to be autosubscribed to the list if they were not
in the dist file.
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16. How
can I automatically send files to new subscribers?
You can create a file named "subscribe.files". It can contain any
number of archive-server commands. The results (i.e. the files requested)
will be sent to the new subscriber.
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17. How
can I make my list moderated?
First create a file named "moderators", it should contain the fully
qualified mail addresses of all the moderators for this list (i.e.
just local usernames are not sufficient, at least include an @host
or host! ). Then uncomment the appropriate "moderated_flag" line in
rc.custom.
From then on all mail that does not contain an "Approved: the_address_of_one_of_the_moderators"
field is forwarded to all the moderators.
One of the moderators should then resend the mail to the list after
adding an "Approved: his_own_address" field to the header (and possible
editing the contents of the mail). It will be no problem if several
moderators resubmit the same submission concurrently, since the mailing
list will filter out duplicates anyway (i.e. only the first one will
go out and be archived).
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18. How
do I enable 'auto help'?
By uncommenting the appropriate "auto_help" line in the rc.custom
file the list will respond to every undecipherable request message
as if it requested help. Messages that will still get through to the
maintainer are those:
- that seem to come from a daemon.
- which look like a reply.
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19. How
does someone access the archive server?
By sending email to your listname-request address, with a subject
of 'archive'.
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20. How
can I restrict who can access the archive server?
You can restrict archive access to people on the accept-lists (the
`accept' and `accept2'-file). Mail from anyone else will be passed
on to the maintainer instead of being passed to the archive server.
To enable this you have to uncomment the appropriate "restrict_archive"
line in rc.custom.
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21. How
can I prevent certain people from automatic unsubscription?
Everything in the dist file preceding the line containing: '(Only
addresses below this line can be automatically removed)' is write
protected from changes by multigram (i.e. these addresses can never
be automatically/accidentally unsubscribed).
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22. How
can I disable automatic unsubscription?
By removing the line '(Only addresses below this line can be automatically
removed)' from the dist file, automatic unsubscription will be disabled.
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23. Can
I add comments to the addresses in the dist file?
Yes, as long as the comments are one of the format:
Some sample entries:
(the preferred format):
joe@some.where
joe@some.where (some comment)
joe@some.where (some comment) (some more comments)
Depreciated, but allowed:
<joe@some.where>
<joe@some.where> some comment
<joe@some.where> (some comment)
Not allowed:
(some comment) joe@some.where
some comment <joe@some.where>
The email address must be the first thing
on the line, and must be separated from the comments by a space.
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24. How
can I tell smartlist to notify me when someone subscribes/unsubscribes?
By setting the cc_requests or cc_unsubrequests variables in the rc.custom
file to yes (making sure to uncomment it).
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25. How
can I change the messages that smartlist sends to people?
The messages that smartlist sends out are in the ~slist/listname directory,
and can be edited using any available file editor. The files that
it sends and their uses are:
| help.txt |
Sent as a response to a help command,
or if anything smartlist doesn't understand is sent to the listname-request
address. |
| subscribe.txt |
Sent to new subscribers. |
| unsubscribe.txt |
Sent to someone who just unsubscribed. |
| archive.txt |
A description of how to use the archive
server, and the commands it understands. |
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26. How
can I add "[listname]" to all of the mailing list messages for easy
filtering?
In your rc.custom file, uncomment the line that reads "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_10
= rc.local.s10", and make a file called "rc.local.s10" in your list
directory, in that file put this:
---- Cut Here ----
SUBJ=`formail -zx Subject:` # extract the subject
:0fw
* ! ^Subject:.*\[listname\]
* ! ^Subject:.Re: *
| formmail -I "Subject: [listname] $SUBJ"
---- End Here ----
Be sure to replace "[listname]" with what
you would like to be at the beginning of the subject line.
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27. How
can I add a short message file to the top of all of the mailing list
messages?
Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom
file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
# Adding a disclaimer in front of every mail:
#
:0 fhw
| cat - header.txt
You will also need to create a file called
header.txt, which contains the text to add to the message (this file
can be empty though, so you can create the files, but only fill them
in when you need to add something)
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28. How
can I add a short message file to the bottom of all of the mailing
list messages?
Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom
file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
# Appending a disclaimer to every outgoing mail:
#
:0 fbw
| cat - footer.txt
You will also need to create a file called
footer.txt, which contains the text to add to the message (this file
can be empty though, so you can create the files, but only fill them
in when you need to add something)
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29. How
can I keep the automatically added messages from multiplying when
people quote them all the time?
A small refinement here: if you add something like this:
#
# Appending a disclaimer to every outgoing mail:
#
:0 fbBw
* ! to unsubscribe
| cat - footer.txt
then (assuming that the phrase "to unsubscribe"
appears in your footer.txt file), the footer won't be repeated if
some bozo list member quotes an entire message without trimming the
footer.
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^ 30. How
can I add a custom header to all of the mailing list messages?
Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom
file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
# Adding some custom headers (although it will work, this is not
# needed for Reply-To related headers, see the reply_to variable in
# rc.custom):
#
:0 fhw
| formail -i "X-Subliminal-Message: SmartList is great" \
-I "X-Mailer: procmail, which is great too :-)"
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31. How
can I remove some headers from all of the mailing list messages?
Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom
file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
# To get rid of some headers:
#
:0 fhw
| formail -I X-Mailing-List: -I X-Mailer:
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32. How
can I remove all of the X- headers from all of the mailing list messages?
Uncomment the line "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20" from your rc.custom
file, and add the following to your rc.local.s20 file:
#
# To get rid of all X- fields:
#
:0 fhw
| formail -I X-
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33. Where
can I get smartlist/procmail?
The latest version of Procmail can be found at:
ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/procmail/procmail.tar.gz
The latest version of Smartlist can be found at:
ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/procmail/SmartList.tar.gz
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34. Is
there a smartlist mailing list?
Yes, to subscribe send a message to smartlist-request@Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE
with the word "subscribe" in the body of the message.
There is also a digested version of the mailing list, which can be
subscribed to by sending a message to smartlist-d-request@Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE,
with the word "subscribe" in the body of the message.
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35. Where
can I find more SmartList information?
SmartList Utilities and Patches - send email to mailto:alan.stebbens@software.com?subject=send
smartlist library with the subject "send smartlist library".
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36. Where
can I find basic SmartList documentation?
The smartlist distribution comes with a rather detailed manual in
the .etc directory, which you can also find at http://www.hartzler.net/smartlist/.
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37. Can
SmartList do subscriber confirmation?
Subscriber confirmation usually consists of a message that is sent
to anyone who wants to subscribe to the mailing list, this message
must be returned in order to subscribe to the list, thus verifying
that the person who sent the subscribe command is the person that
the message will be delivered to, there are a few different subscription
confirmation systems for SmartList, which can be found at the following
URL's.
confirm 1.1 by
Michelle Dick.
Werner Reisberger's confirm
script
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38. Is
there an easy way to remove duplicates from the dist file?
This script was contributed to the SmartList mailing list by mark
Mark David McCreary, you can run this from your list directory (where
the dist file is located), and it will remove the duplicates and sort
the entries that appear below the "(Only addresses below this line
can be automatically removed)" line.
#! /bin/sh
:
#
# rc.dedup.list
#
# mdm 11/5/97 borrow code from David W. Tamkin, with additional
# suggestions from Martin Konold and Hal Wine
#
#
# This script will sort and remove duplicates from a Smartlist
# distribution file. Smartlist dist files contain a comment line
# that looks like this
#
# (Only addresses below this line can be automatically removed)
#
# Addresses above and including this line will not be sorted.
#
lockfile=lockfile # /usr/bin/lockfile
cat=cat # /bin/cat
rm=rm # /bin/rm
sed=sed # /bin/sed
# create lock file to discourage smartlist running a job
$lockfile -10 -l3600 -r11 -s30 rc.lock
$sed -e "1,/(Only addresses below this line can
be automatically removed)/{
;w slabove.$$
;d;
}
" dist | sort -fu -o slbelow.$$
$cat sl?????.$$ > dist
$rm -f sl?????.$$
$rm -rf rc.lock
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39. How
can I keep people from sending HTML/attachments/other junk to the
list?
Several good recipes for this have been posted to the smartlist mailing
list, since they tend to be rather large, I have put them in separate
files from the main faq, with links listed here:
- Mike Nolan contributed this one, which rejects messages
that are posted in html.
- Rob Lingelbach contributed this one, which rejects messages
in html, messages with a Return-Receipt request, uuencoded messages,
winmail.dat files, non text encoded files, attached applications,
inline attachments, and messages which have too much quoted text.
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40. Is
there an archive of the mailing list?
Yes, at http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~casterln/smartlist-arc/maillist.html.
Up To Command List
41. A
list of X-commands.
The format for the X-Command header is:
X-Command: joe@somewhere.edu password command
"command" can be anything of the following:
| subscribe mailaddress |
Subscribe mailaddress to the list |
| unsubscribe mailaddress |
Unsubscribe mailaddress from the list |
| checkdist mailaddress |
To multigram-match mailaddress to
the list (showing the eight best matches) |
| showdist |
To list the distfile |
| showlog |
To list the log |
| wipelog |
To clear the log |
| help |
To show this command summary |
| info |
Ditto |
The exact fieldname defaults to "X-Command", but can customizedsed
to whatever you want.
The "joe@somewhere.edu" is always the mail address of the maintainer.
Note that this has to match what was specified on the command line
of "createlist" when the list was created.
Note that the X-Command: field has to be part of the header, when
it's in the body of the mail, it has no effect.
Anytime an X-Command: mail has been processed, the results will be
mailed back to the maintainer of the list, and the X-Command: field
will have been renamed to X-Processed:.
Although this remote-facility is convenient, some might argue that
it presents a security hole. Well, in order to make this hole as small
as possible, you can keep the password secret. Also, the exact mailaddress
of the maintainer might not be publicly known. You can simply change
the X-Command field into something else like X-MyCommand. Above all,
since faking mail is a well known possibility it would be ridiculous
to take more precautions than these. Besides, if someone indeed manages
to sneak in a bogus X-Command:, it will never go unnoticed since the
mailing list maintainer (and only the maintainer) will always receive
the X-Processed: mail.
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|