lyman@inference.com (John Lyman) (06/14/91)
Archive-name: mail/mailing-list/distribute/1991-06-13 Archive: ftp.umiacs.umd.edu:/pub/distribute.tar.Z [128.8.120.23] Original-posting-by: lyman@inference.com (John Lyman) Original-subject: SUMMARY Unix list-servers Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) A few day back, I posted the question: Would someone please give me a pointer to where I can find a good list server to handle mail list subscriptions for both internal and external mail routing. I received many replies, of which all but one were requests for a summary. I find it somewhat difficult to summarize a single response, but here it is: From: steve@umiacs.UMD.EDU (Steve D. Miller) I know that Chris Meyers (chris@wugate.wustl.edu) has done a LISTSERV clone, and from what I've seen it's pretty reasonable. I don't know whether it's in distributable form yet. You might also want to get my ``distribute'' program, at least if you're going to run any large mailing lists. Distribute doesn't deal with subscriptions, but it does take several steps (e.g., hacking headers correctly and checking for gross header errors) that can really save your sanity. If you want this, ftp to ftp.umiacs.umd.edu and grab pub/distribute.tar.Z. -Steve I have pulled Steve's code and reviewed it. As far as I can tell, it looks pretty good, and is very straightforward in what it does. Furthermore, it is easily customizable, assuming you don't mind hacking `c` code. I have not as of yet used it or even installed it. The missing item in the mail list management process as I see it, is some sort of automagic to support the maintenance of the physical mailing list. Not having gotten any replies from this list, I sent the same query to the maintainers of a number of other lists, also got no reply. So, I am off to hack up a shell script to do it, which I plan to use in conjunction with Steve's distribute program. I expect to have a working list manager sometime this weekend. When I feel it is ready for testing, I will post a notice to this mail list, and all of those of you who are interested in it, can give it a shot. -- -John lyman@Inference.COM -- comp.archives file verification ftp.umiacs.umd.edu -rw-r--r-- 1 root system 15009 May 24 09:06 /pub/distribute.tar.Z found distribute ok ftp.umiacs.umd.edu:/pub/distribute.tar.Z