[news.admin] Setting up and running an internet style mailing list

mark@drd.UUCP (Mark Lawrence) (04/13/89)

I'm getting ready to set up a mailing list (to be run as Interviews, for
example, is run) and I thought that I would set it up as a single user
for the -request mail and a mailing list alias referenced from
/usr/lib/aliases for the actual main list (where I would maintain the
distribution in my own file using the include keyword).  Obviously I'm
using sendmail for transport (SunOS 3.5 version).  I just want to set up
the main address to echo incoming messages back to the distribution.  I
just happened to think about the situation where people have vacation
turned on or mailer daemon messages come back at you -- I certainly
don't want those rebroadcast.  Inserting a "Reply-To" line in the header
with the address being the -request alias would be nice but not
immediately obvious to me as to how I'd go about it.  I know other
people run lists without admin type messages echoing back to the
distribution -- how is it done?

Mark

karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (04/14/89)

mark@drd.UUCP (Mark Lawrence) writes:
   I know other
   people run lists without admin type messages echoing back to the
   distribution -- how is it done?

Here is my canonical large mailing list maintenance scheme.

In /usr/lib/aliases:

ListName-request:	karl
ListName:		"|/n/dinosaur/0/karl/ListName/SendScript"
owner-ListName:		ListName-request
ListName-out:		:include:/n/dinosaur/0/karl/ListName/Aliases
owner-ListName-out:	ListName-request

/n/dinosaur/0/karl is my home directory.  The Aliases file has the
actual addresses.  The SendScript looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
/bin/sed -e '/^Reply-To:/d' -e '/^Sender:/d' -e '/^From /d' | \
	(echo Reply-To: ListName@cis.ohio-state.edu; \
	 echo Errors-to: ListName-request@cis.ohio-state.edu; \
	 echo Sender: ListName-request@cis.ohio-state.edu; \
	 echo Precedence: bulk; /bin/cat -) | \
	/usr/lib/sendmail -f ListName-request@cis.ohio-state.edu \
		-F 'ListName Mailing List' ListName-out

The Precedence: header and -f ListName-request are what prevent
vacation(1) from generating responses to mail which arrives from such
lists.

--Karl