dhawk@well.sf.ca.us (David Hawkins) (03/29/91)
We're having an occaisional problem with people who get accounts here,
sign up for a lot of BITNET lists, and then leave (for one reason or
another.) I don't know a lot about BITNET and how it works, so these
are fairly basic questions:
1. Is there a simple way to send a message to BITNET saying "Take
this person off every list" ???
2. Is there a way to block people from signing up on BITNET lists?
The reason I'm concerned is that our present connections are uucp, and
our phone bills are getting up there enough to get the boss's
attention. Also, people don't log in and the mail builds up quickly
enough to fill up /usr/spool/mail
Thanks for any help you can give me! Email or post - I read both
newsgroups.
later, david
--
David Hawkins System Operator {apple,pacbell,hplabs,ucbvax}!well!dhawk
"Lack of skill dictates economy of style." -- Joey Ramonetneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) (03/29/91)
In article <23911@well.sf.ca.us> dhawk@well.sf.ca.us (David Hawkins) writes: >We're having an occaisional problem with people who get accounts here, >sign up for a lot of BITNET lists, and then leave (for one reason or >another.) I don't know a lot about BITNET and how it works, so these >are fairly basic questions: > >1. Is there a simple way to send a message to BITNET saying "Take >this person off every list" ??? >2. Is there a way to block people from signing up on BITNET lists? > >The reason I'm concerned is that our present connections are uucp, and >our phone bills are getting up there enough to get the boss's >attention. Also, people don't log in and the mail builds up quickly >enough to fill up /usr/spool/mail Please stop thinking up new ways to erode the Well's already diminishing functionality! If you really want everyone to languish in PicoSpan all day, force it as the shell, and have done with it. In the meantime, Well users can sign up for a lot more different kinds of mailing lists than just LISTSERV (what you call "BITNET") mailing lists. The procedures for doing drops, suspends, address changes etc. vary according to the particular list. You probably don't want to waste your time on such detailed nursemaiding anyway. It would be better to hack Sendmail as follows: when incoming mail arrives for a user whose mailbox is bigger than N bytes, *and* who has not logged in for M days, then generate a bounce to the sender. This lets the moderator of the mailing list deal with the issue. You can even supply an explicit explanation of why the bounce is being done.
wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) (03/30/91)
dhawk@well.sf.ca.us (David Hawkins) writes: >We're having an occaisional problem with people who get accounts here, >sign up for a lot of BITNET lists, and then leave (for one reason or >another.) I don't know a lot about BITNET and how it works, so these >are fairly basic questions: >1. Is there a simple way to send a message to BITNET saying "Take >this person off every list" ??? >2. Is there a way to block people from signing up on BITNET lists? This is an old problem of mine. First, you really dealing with LISTSERV@BITNIC for those automatic mailing lists. Yes, in theory, what you do is write back to BITNIC to get removed. But, alas, it does not seem to be that simple. You see, if you log on one iotia differently than the time the subscriber did, LISTSERV says: Hey, you're no subscriber, and won't let you unsubscribe. While otherfolks CLAIM that BITNIC is run by humans, *I* think it's escaped from the old Star Trek episode "For the World is Hollow, and I have Touched the Sky" in that I never found any people to acknowledge me. My workaround won't help you much. I use filter [from elm] and bitbucket the stuff I don't want. That won't cut your phone bills any. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.....wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu & no one will talk to a host that's close............(305) 255-RTFM Unless the host (that isn't close)......................pob 570-335 is busy, hung or dead....................................33257-0335
wolfgang@wsrcc.com (Wolfgang S. Rupprecht) (03/31/91)
In article <23911@well.sf.ca.us> dhawk@well.sf.ca.us (David Hawkins) writes: >We're having an occaisional problem with people who get accounts >here, sign up for a lot of BITNET lists, and then leave (for one >reason or another.) Is there a way to block people from signing up >on BITNET lists? It seems that the real problem is that a mailing lists are really a poor way to run news a system. You get the mail dumped into a mailbox on a per user basis. This means lots of duplication, extra delivery cycles, and no automatic expiry. Better would be to dump mailing list mail it into /usr/spool/news and use the normal news software to deal with it there. This is exactly what I do here. All mailing lists get forwarded to inews via an alias in the sendmail alias file. Users can then read the mailing list via rn or nn. If they don't read it for a few weeks, it simply gets expired as all news does. Overflowing mail boxes just aren't a problem. This does mean you still have to educate users to as you to set up a new mailing list connection for them. Oh yea, thanks to Rich $alz for the hints as to how to redirect mail into inews. -wolfgang Here is the script I use with cnews. No doubt the bnews stuff is similar. #! /bin/sh ############################################################################### ## ## ## File: post ## ## Author: Wolfgang S. Rupprecht <wolfgang@wsrcc.com> ## ## Created: Wed Nov 28 18:22:19 EST 1990 ## ## Contents: mailing list reflector - put mail into newsgroups ## ## ## ## $Header$ ## ############################################################################### # Copyright (c) 1990 Wolfgang S. Rupprecht # You may do anything with this file except change or remove this # copyright notice. Derived works must be clearly marked as such. # put lines like this into your /etc/aliases (aka. /usr/lib/aliases) file. # mazda-list: "|/usr/local/lib/post list.mazda mazda-list" # weights-list: "|/usr/local/lib/post list.weights weights-list" # set up the moderators list to mail followups back to the list itself # inews has caniptions if this is wrong . ${NEWSCONFIG-/usr/lib/news/bin/config} export NEWSCTL NEWSBIN NEWSARTS NEWSPATH NEWSUMASK NEWSMASTER NEWSCONFIG NEWSGROUP="${1-list.misc}" MAILINGLIST=${2-""} USER="news" HOME="/usr/spool/news" ORGANIZATION="Mailing list ${MAILINGLIST} to newsgroup $NEWSGROUP reflector." HOSTNAME=YourHostNameHere export ORGANIZATION USER HOME ( echo "Newsgroups: $NEWSGROUP" echo "Distribution: local" echo "Approved: $USER@$HOSTNAME" echo "Path: $USER" sed -e 's/^From /X-From: /' ) | /usr/lib/newsbin/inject/inews -h -- Wolfgang Rupprecht wolfgang@wsrcc.com (or) uunet!wsrcc!wolfgang Snail Mail Address: Box 6524, Alexandria, VA 22306-0524