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Majordomo Mail Lists On The Berklix ServersThis page is
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| "John Smith, MicroSoftVirus js@msv.com" | <John_Smith@MicroSoftVirus._ERASE_.com> |
| John Smith, MicroSoftVirus js@msv.com | <John_Smith@MicroSoftVirus._ERASE_.com> |
| "John Smith, MicroSoftVirus js@msv.com" | John_Smith@MicroSoftVirus._ERASE_.com |
| <John_Smith@MicroSoftVirus._ERASE_.com> | |
| John_Smith@MicroSoftVirus._ERASE_.com |
Anonymous Subscription ? No.
Do not send an anonymous request such as
subscribe gea-announce
123456789012-0001@t-offline.com
Instead send such as:
subscribe gea-announce "John Smith"
<123456789012-0001@t-offline.de>
or at least
subscribe gea-announce John.Smith@t-offline.de
Why:
Some of the lists need authorisation from a human owner
before you can subscribe. (Spam protection measure, etc).
If you make your subscription look un-necessarily
anonymous, list owners are liable to just delete such
requests. They are not paid to waste their time mailing
you back to ask if you are a real human in good standing,
& have some friends in or knowledge of the list you
wanted to join. The list owner has no way to know you'r
not some spammer , joining just to spam. Other list
participants & owners also like to know real human
names. Give a human name.
-
Bored Reading ? - Give Majordomo@ Berklix.Org A Try Now !
After You Have Subscribed
You May Be Un-subscribed Without Warning If You Breach Requirements:
Format: Ascii is the preferred & reccomended Format.
- Send Ascii (plain text) where you can.
- Do Not Send HTML. It's spammers format. Not all mail readers support like or want HTML. & HTML is superfluous. HTML also uses MIME.
- Try to avoid posting MIME Enclosures (usually for HTML): It causes invisible footers (footer contains the important "How To Unsubscribe" etc).
- Avoid mass excretia from Microsoft Outlook (new name Entourage) at top, eg: PADDING-RIGHT, MARGIN, etc.
- Avoid appearing like spam, eg: colour, underlining, fonts, surplus spacing.
- Do Not Send MS-Word format etc Never send proprietary non publicly defined formats (EG Microsoft's Word, Power Point Excel, & pretty mutch any format that starts ms-*, etc).
- Acceptable where & if necessary (but see note about MIME above): Publicly defined formats such as .gif .jpg .tiff .pdf .ps etc are acceptable if not avoidable. But we don't waste list bandwidth sending surplus big pictures to many who won't use them or need them. Just send an http:// or ftp:// URL (web ref.) to your original, for those few who want it. .
-
Best Avoid: Public formats that need
monstrous applications EG Open
Document Format for Open Office.
Why not Open Office format:- burdensomely enormous as a tool merely to read mail.
- Needs 4 Gig of source to build, (or needs you to trust others to build binaries - defeating one of the major benefits of open source - security of not using imported un examinable binaries)
- Needs manual fetching of some sources (deliberately crippled by Sun, for their licence reasons.
- Depends on other web sites that break
- Depend on too much other stuff that tends to break.
- Depends on java (more pain - versions etc)
- That even as a binary (if you'r prepared to trust & run foreign binaries (& some are not!), needs mammoth resources, & won't run on old or light weight &/or portable hardware.
- Do Not Send PC (i386,4,5,686 Pentium etc) architecture dependent formats. Formats (eg flash) that need applications that only run on eg Intel i386, but not AMD64, Vax or Sparc etc are bad news.
Do NOT Send Headers with multipart/alternative ie No HTML
These are Not Allowed & Rejected by the robot
(Some mail providers foolishly set multipart/alternative as their default. You need to change that as
it is automatically Rejected to prevent- Footers Breaking
- Junk HTML duplicates that waste bandwidth.
- Change your mailer settings.
- How To Send Ascii Plain Text
- About Formats
Microsoft users, click "Format" then click (If English) "plain text" or if German: "Nur-Text" You do Not want: "Rich-Text (HTML)".
Do Not Send Bulky Large Postings (eg big pictures)
Do not send bulk - EG big pictures :- Postings if too big get rejected by the robot.
- Realise some lists eg gea-announce@ have well over 300 members. If you iattempt to send such lists eg 2 big pictures & a map, the robot adds protective wrapping, tries to send 6 Meg x 300 = 1.8 Giga Byte & rejects you instead.
- If the announcement is for an imminent event, First send just your text announcement, to ensure the server sends it out to all in time. Then if the map of where to go is bulky, send it as a seperate email.
- Unless pictures are really necessary, to show where to go, omit them.
- Recipients providers (ISP) also give low priority to receiving your bulk).
- Shrink your picture before sending. Shrink to half by half size frame & you shrink data by 4 ! Reduce JPEG quality 25%, down to 75% & its hard to see the difference, but you shrink data by a factor of 10. Do both & you achieve massive savings.
- Bulk creates a pointless peak load, as not all people need the pictures, especially they don't need them at exactly the same time.
- It delays other mail on the server
- Peak traffic during business hours, & wasted telecom traffic costs can make us unpopular with sites that support / subsidise our servers.
- Not all recipients have fast DSL download, some have slow modems (or corporate gateways), & some complain to sender or list owner. Don't be cause of complaints.
- Some recipients have low quotas on their mailboxes
- Your unexpected bulk pictures will overflows numerous recipient mailboxes, leaving no room for more important mail.
- Some receive list mail at work, their boss may also complain to them about irrelevant pictures.
- Those mailboxes automatically complain to list owner, wasting his time while he checks the error report type.
DO Not Cross Post To Multiple Lists
At least mark all but one of the lists with bcc in header so we don't risk receiving a storm of replies from other lists. ( If very occasionally a cross posting is appropriate, Please post clearly to One list only, Use a BCC to the other list, & make a clear statement in body of mail, to direct all follow up discussion to one list only. )To clarify, as "cross posting" is likely a new non self evident term to some, Assume:
- General & Beer garden list bg-announce@ doesn't need walk detail, as walkers are on gea-walk@
- General & beer garden list bg-announce@ doesn't need ski detail, as skiers are on gea-ski@
- General GEA list gea-announce@ doesn't need ski detail, as skiers are on gea-ski@
- gea-ski@ doesn't need beer garden or walk announcements etc.
- "Walks to beergardens": If it's a long walk with proper boots, post detail to gea-walk@, else to gea-announce@.
Do Not Send .Doc etc enclosures with non portable format
Postings with enclosures in certain formats are automatically blocked by the mail robot, eg:These formats deprecated as bloated, proprietary, risky, & not open to all, Please use a different public format eg PDF or something else. For more background:Content-Type: application/msword;
Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-powerpoint;
Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document;Do Not Send Virus Alerts
If you want virus alerts, subscribe a virus alert list. If you don't want viruses, either buy a virus filter, or dump your inferior virus prone commercial software, & use higher quality free software such as FreeBSD that doesn't suffer from viruses. or Linux that also generally doesn't suffer from viruses. (Both BSD & Linux have the capability to avoid viruses totally, but as Linux has more users & some of them have markedly lower skills, it's potentially more exposed if ignorant users choose to run systems insecurely. This is Not a technical fault of Linux but a problem of user skill/ education).Do Not Send From An Un subscribed Address
Many people have multiple email addresses. They subscribe one address, Receive list postings to it, Then later post to the list from a second address. As they haven't subscribed the new address, Majordomo@ berklix.org doesn't know they're not a spammer. Such postings may get silently dumped, or may be forwarded to a list owner, who is Not paid to waste time on it. This author owns many lists on berklix.org. He is too busy to waste time approving such mail. If he has enough time to do more than just delete it, he rejects it back to sender with this standard reply, to make both sender & others who sender may complain to, realise he won't do their work of maintaining their own subscribed address. Note-
Majordomo@
berklix.org will of
course allow you to subscribe multiple addresses.
S
-
Some mailer tools allow automatic reduction
of duplicate received mail. A
- Future list manager I intend to install will allow a more sophisticated approach.
-
Some mailer tools allow automatic reduction
of duplicate received mail. A
Protect Our List Address From Spam Address Harvesters
Never include our list address on any Internet scannable resource. We do not want web crawler robots harvesting our mail address to be sold to spammers.Avoid Bounces
Berklix mail list policy forbids all automatic response to list mail.Avoid mail bounces & noise back to the Majordomo owner, list owner, or list etc. Bounces might be for many reasons, but Please spare the list owner work to deal with your problems, eg:
Failing Address
Some computer en route to you may fail periodically. Perhaps not your fault but even less is it the fault or concern of the Majordomo or list owner, so unsubscribe any problematic address, & subscribe a less troublesome more reliable address.Failure To Unsubscribe An Addresses Scheduled To Later Expire
Unsubscribe old addresses Before they are due to expire:
Unsubscribing may need a confirmation password returned to your old address. You can't receive it after your address has expired.If you cancelled your address with your ISP or company, but forgot or didn't realise you should unsubscribe first, apologise to the list owner for wasting their time, & ask for manual intervention. (You may be liable to pay the beer or charity charge for wasting Majordomo or list owner's time, as mentioned elsewhere.) If you are too lazy to un-subscribe, you deliberately waste the list site's bandwidth, & waste the list owner's time when he/she realises they need to manually remove a dead address.
If you just leave, & let your mailbox at your paid ISP (Internet Service Provider) or ex employer overflow or bounce back to consume the time of the Majordomo & list owners (volunteers, not paid to waste time!). You will force them to waste their time trying to figure out if the bounces are a temporary net failure to be ignored, or a permanent change to be dealt with.
If you deliberately waste Majordomo or list owner's time or bandwidth. expect a hostile reaction: Any such address or new replacement address may be published. The list owner &/or Majordomo owner may refuse to authorise your later subscription from a new address
Avoid Automatic Responder "Mailbox Full" Responses.
Don't trouble Majordomo & list owners with your problems ! Configure your mailbox Not to bleat to mail lists. The list mechanism is certainly NOT going to "Please try sending again later." ! Look at the berklix mail list identification headers available, & particularly the Sender: string, examine the options your ISP provides, & configure your mailbox, not to bleat repeatedly to mail lists or mail list owners, or buy a bigger mailbox & subscribe that instead !Avoid Automatic Responder "I'm Away On Business/Holiday" Responders
Such automatic responses may be fine for individuals humans, but are annoying to list recipients, list owners & Majordomo owner. (Auto repliers should not keep replying to every message , they should probably reply just once per combination of recipient absent period & sender first posting after beginning of absence). Don't trouble us with your noise ! Either teach your mailer program not to bleat to lists (as per "Mailbox Full"above), or Subscribe some better address that does not send such noise. For every message sent to the list, the list owner personally sees your auto responder bleat for every message. He gets repeat notifications when many people are on holiday or away on business ! A tedious flood that announces clueless incompetence. Noise he does Not want.A good auto responder should recognise list mail, & should Not be responding to every posting from mail lists you are subscribed to.
Look at your auto responder, & see if it's set to the right preferences, (even if its not currently in use). Look at the fields set in this list mail header, such as eg
Sender: owner-list-name@berklixC an you configure your auto responder Not to respond to mail with that ?
Precedence: bulk
Do not mail Majordomo or list owner asking eg: "I use WorbleThrobMail Version 1.2.3, After I click on the `Display All Elephants In Pink' button, what do I do ?" The Majordomo & list owner specialises in Unix, (& in particular, in free software ), & does not use anything running on Microsoft, & does not know the settings for most of the many MS mailers on the market, if WorbleThrobMail was your choice (or your company's choice), it's Your job to know how to use , it wasn't the Majordomo or list owner's choice. If you can't control your mailer program, switch to another one, or take lessons on the one you've got.
If you have a solution for others such as "For WorbleThrobMail, click in this order to set your auto responder properly" then please mail your advice to majordomo-owner
Avoid MX loops
If you create your own new domain, try testing mail delivery, (perhaps by subscribing to & sending messages to the demo-list@ list on this Majordomo) before subscribing a live list with real people.Avoid Grey Listing - else White list berklix.org
What Grey Listing Is
Policy: Automatic responses not allowed.
If your email provider configures his mail system to enable "Grey Listing", so that for example: "Grey list rejected," or "Grey listing in action, please come back in ..." emails get sent to the owner of berklix.org lists: This is not allowed. Deliberate errors causing extra automatic junk mail breaches your subscription. Your subscription will be terminated if you do not quickly fix Your problem.Philosophy: Grey listing is a problematic anti spam method:
Grey listing may save you some spam. It may also save your mail provider some staff costs resolving spam issues. BUT it works by automaticly bouncing errors back to the innocent volunteer unpaid berklix.org list owner's mail box. Grey listing is thus often an incompetently initiated & badly configured & irresponsible dirty trick by selfish providers, to dump their problem on someone else, unpaid. It is not acceptable.How Grey Listing Works: Automatically rejects first mail transmissions, relying on non spammer senders to automatically retry, whereas spammers turn off retry to maximise throughput), The error mails penalise innocent senders (unless white listed). Bad enough for 1 to 1 mail, grey listing becomes itself mass spam when loads of list subscribers each grey list excrete individually, back to a list owner, who receives bulk excrement from grey listers, in response to each valid posting.
Text for Periodic posting from list-owner to list
Subject: Subscriptions terminate if providers grey list berklix.org.Reminder: If your mail provider add "Grey Listing" you must personally ensure they also "White List" berklix.org, else your subscription terminates. Addresses currently breaking the rule will be sent a private mail warning. Grey listing is an unwelcome & problematic anti spam method. http://www.berklix.org/robot/majordomo/#grey_listing
Text for periodic private mail from list-owner to individuals with grey listing providers:
Subject: Un-subscription if your provider does not white list berklix.org.Warning: Your mail provider has enabled grey listing. This contravenes terms of berklix.org list subscription. Tell them to now quickly either A) Add berklix.org to your white list, or B) Turn Off irresponsible grey listing, or C) You will be forcibly un-subscribed.
It's your responsibility to force your provider to fix problems he caused. If they fail to fix your problem, unsubscribe your address (if you haven't already been forcibly un-subscribed), & subscribe yourself from a better address with a different domain.
Sorry, but list owners at berklix.org have not created your problem, do not know or want to know your issues, & have neither time nor paid to help on the many issues of many different list subscribers. All that is either the responsibility of your employer, your home mail provider, your software vendor, or yourself personally.
More info: http://www.berklix.org/robot/majordomo/#grey_listing
Recipient not allowing attachments or embedded images:
Your problem, don't shove your problem back on list owner, get a better mail account, or be forcibly un-subscribed !Keep To Remit Of List
Keep postings relevant to the remit of the particular mail list you are on.Keep To Subject
Else change the subject header.Also Do not allow your mailer to screw up "Subject:" with a wild Germanic non compliant mess of eg
"Re: Bzw: Re: Bzw: Original subject"I f your mailer fails to recognise "Re." & appends spurious "Bzw" & if you don't know how to fix the Bzw default, then you owe it to list readers to edit the Subject line back to a single "Re." manually yourself. Other readers have mailers that sort by subject, which fails if your Germanic software runs out of control.Do Not Send Abuse & Flames
If you must be offensive/ critical &/or flame other list members etc, take it off list as soon as possible to private mail. Preferably never start it on list.Criticism Of Organisers
- Positive criticism (as in "If we do it this way we could improve ... ") may be useful. Negative personal public criticism from non contributors may often be just the carping of hollow vessels.
- Clubs (& list servers) are built & maintained by the regular donation of time from activist unpaid volunteers, organising events & or background services.
- Clubs supported on berklix servers are free. Organisers are not paid anything. Organisers are not required to tolerate or waste time refuting or correcting un truths, distortions, or delusions etc.
- Critics who mouth off but don't contribute, are worthless & disposable.
- Any large group may contain a few people who'd prefer things a different way, their noise may well be out of proportion to the silent majority.
- Opinions that count most are from those who regularly donate time to arranging events & support services for benefit of members.
- Normal list members who correct factually incorrect assertions are particularly appreciated.
Avoid Time Wasting
Majordomo is a robot, & infinitely patient if you get things wrong. You are encouraged to think, then try again. Wasting the time of the human Majordomo &/or list owners is highly inadvisable: he is unpaid, too busy, & has no reason to tolerate waste of his/her time.Please Help The Clueless !
Majordomo & list owners only have time to maintain & improve the list servers & infrastructure, not to hand hold list members. The Berklix servers support mail list for an eclectic mix of different types of people. Some lists are composed largely of highly competent people. Some other lists have a high percentage of clueless people, some of whom are brave enough to admit the fact, (& some are perhaps incompetent but don't admit it ;-) ... When you see someone blundering, or if you know of some clueless friend or acquaintance, please help them with their subscription problems, perhaps private mail them some advice, off list, or help over a beer or coffee or cake that the clueless person should provide you (point them to this section in justification of your expected reward
To Unsubscribe An Unknown / Unrecognised Address :
EG- Forwarded, so different from where Majordomo thinks you are.
- Where you don't know what address you are subscribed as.
Received: from ****.berklix.com [194.221.32.**]If your employer's office or personal net provider is doing forwarding or address alias changing for you, Majordomo will not know that. It just knows where it sends your mail, it does not know to which name & where one of your employers or providers etc computers might forward it after. Any forwarding you/ your company/ provider arranges, is unknown to Majordomo, but should be visible in your mail header. Normally your last name, lower in the header, is the name Majordomo has you subscribed as.
Use that address to unsubscribe:unsubscribe gea-announce jill@the_address_she_long_ago_subscribed_as.comMajordomo - Manual (Documentation)
- This Majordomo manual is here for the interest of those on mail lists administered by a Majordomo Program, who don't have access to Unix systems manuals.
- The Majordomo manual is not necessary to use the Majordomo service which helps users by describing the right subscribe & unsubscribe commands. The manual is just here for interest & convenience.
- The Majordomo manual is the Generic manual for a generic recent default installation. It has not been edited to show specifics of the berklix.org list configurations. (Too time consuming to periodically import generic versions & re-edit!) In particular, some commands such as `who' & maybe `which' have, & respectively may have not been enabled as easily abused.
Other Mail List Robots
- Listproc functional comparison
- ListServ - Commercial & Free versions
- Majordomo
- Majordomo2
- Ecartis, Formerly Listar)
- FML, Quote from top page 2007: Sorry, currently, all development and maintenance stopped due to my decease. I guess the author writing this doesn't really mean he's dead himself, probably he's just stopped, It's a Japanese background
-
Mailman (GNU)
-
In FreeBSD Mail Wrappers.
Mailman offers nice functionality than Majordomo. Some time I'll likely migrate the mail lists to it, But:- Last twice I tested Mailman on FreeBSD, Mailman had evil dangerous defaults that zombi-ed a berklix server ! , so I'm cautious of other potential Mailman cavalier config options that might also lurk ready to bite. (It had a fatal "1 min. (5 min on 2nd time) crontab loop & try again & stack up python processes on news failure"
- Ever more processes, loaded server so much there was no chance to ssh in to reboot or kill process (after phoning to request a host reset, by time I got mail acknowledging reset, it had saturated again, & access failed).
- I reported error.
- I didn't have more time then to risk more silly defaults, if any.
- When I get time I plan to move to mailman, but last I looked NetBSD & OpenBSD were still using Majordomo, (though FreeBSD has long used mailman)
- Berklix hosts already support many mail lists so I'll need time to carefully proceed & test before migration.
Archives
Yes Majordomo supports searchable archives.- For access to all normal lists you must be subscribed first.
- Some lists are public technical discussion lists, (eg for HP Network ScanJet 5 [& 6] Upgrade & Conversion), the archive for those is Enabled.
- Some lists are public lists, but have had a few daft/ annoying weirdos &/or pirates etc, so archives Off to protect list & individuals.
- Some lists are not public, but corporate, archive for those is not a matter for public web.
-
Example: If you are subscribed (for example) to a
list called demo-list, Try sending Majordomo
help
index demo-list
get demo-list.archive.0304
Server Configuration Options
Skip this section, unless you want to ask for Server Options to be changed to suit your whim. Server settings affect either all people on one list, or all lists. Sensible people try not to get involved. Unfortunately some few have more of a whim for change, than sense or sufficient understanding !General
- The berklix mail lists servers are generally modelled after BSD ( http://www.freebsd.org, http://www.netbsd.org, http://www.openbsd.org ) mail server configurations, (though FreeBSD has moved to Mailman since).
- I don't necessarily feel bound to configure everything BSD fashion though. I don't take, claim, nor blame BSD as the final arbiter of the perfect mail list.
- I belong to many list , including some BSD, many non BSD, some berklix & many non berklix. I observe good & bad points on those many lists.
- A few egotists occasionally act as if they have a personal right or God given insight to personally define how all mail lists should function in general, & how berklix mail lists should work in particular; often quoting a few lists they're on & I'm not, that operate in a different way. as if that's relevant or statistically significant, ... & if I don't agree I'm wrong & I Must change the servers according to their whim.
- No one pays for Majordomo & list owners time configuring & running berklix mail lists, & none have the right to impose their unilateral demands on me while I do the work of running servers & lists for free. I _Must_ do nothing, except in last resort, maybe chuck off egotists if they persist in really annoying & wasting Majordomo & list owners.
- For any server option some feel should be changed, there's usually others of the opposite opinion, & Majordomo & list owners have got better things to do with their time usually, than get involved in debate.
- A few suggestions have been useful, more have not, some were blinkered requests/demands, EG "I'm used to something different than what you'r providing & I don't want to change""
- Some configuration change suggestions might still be useful in future, keep it to a friendly Suggestion, not a Demand & you'll do us both a favour, rather than annoy us both, & waste time of both of us!
- Some options below are Not open for further debate, you are discouraged from wasting time discussing those, Thanks !
Reply-To:
You are free to assert Reply-To: on your individual postings if you want. The list servers don't assert the Reply-To: field. They could, but I've left that feature turned off. Sometimes people ask Why : It depends partly what you'r used to, what you like. Some are used to lists that do assert. Some are used to lists that do not. The many prior lists I was & am on (freebsd.org + many other) did not & do not.The Majordomo source doc/FAQ reads:
- 3.4 - How should I configure resend for Reply-To headers?
- Whether you should have a "Reply-To:" or not depends on the charter of your list and the nature of its users. If the list is a discussion list and you generally want replies to go back to the list, you can include one. Some people don't like being told what to do, and prefer to be able to choose whether to send a private reply or a reply to the list just by using the right function on their mail agent. Take note that if you do use a "Reply-To:", then some mail agents make it much harder for a person on the list to send a private reply. The most important reason why Reply-To: to the list is bad is that it can cause mail loops if any of the members of your list are running fairly-common but broken software which doesn't know what an envelope address is. (Many Microsoft products, as well as many other PC-based non-SMTP/Internet mail systems which work through an SMTP gateway.)
- You should read the following FAQ on why you shouldn't set the Reply-To: field. http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
Subject: Prefixes
Subject prefixing is spurious. Of the hundreds of subscribers on many berklix lists just two I recall have asked for this. I tried it on one list, & got numerous complaints. You won't get it on berklix.org lists.If you want to filter mail lists into seperate mail sub-directories:
- If you have the (Free!) luxury of working on a Unix system, then use Procmail, my example is here.
- If you use Micro$oft, I'd suggest you dump it !
I don't know if Procmail will run on
Micro$oft, but procmailrc is public source code, so
go check their web, &/or pay a programmer to
port it to MS if you want. If you won't dump MS, I
can't advise you further, but if anyone else wants
to provide a URL to a page of mail filter tools
advice for MS, do so.
Members Only: Majordomo config option: restrict_post (& similar)
This is On, restricting lists to only accept postings from subscribed addresses. To help protect against spammers.Occasionally someone receives on an old address, but posts from a new address. This get bounced to the list owner as potential spam, (as from an unlisted sender). If the list owner knows the human sender, the list owner may choose to forward the mail, embedding headers so the sending human can see which old address they sent from, so the human can unsubscribe, & subscribe their new current address. Headers In Body
Headers In Body
Sometimes the list owner forwards a posting with some headers in the body of the posting, (which looks dead ugly): Why it's done is explained below:Mostly the problem ia a regular list member who has failed to coordinate his sender address with his subscription receiving address.
Some subscribers do not react when list owners ask them to re-subscribe their proper sender's address. They ignore the requests & continue posting from a non subscribed addresses. That wastes list owner's time with repeat forwardings (& they & list would be inconvenienced if list owner was away & not available to manually keep forwarding on time).
Options then are to silently delete bad postings (as some list owners do), until sender learns he Must fix his wrong subscription address, or sometimes to be a bit more lenient for a while, & forward with headers so senders realise:
- Their postings are a mess,
- They didn't get it right
- They need to re-subscribe their sending address
- They can see what their sender's address appears to be, so they can compare it with their receiving address in their incoming header, & then send off a correct pair of unsubscribe & subscribe commands to Majordomo (Sometimes people may find it particularly hard to know who they are subscribed as or apparently sending as, if eg masquerading is involved, & if they don't have headers to inspect.
List owners usually remember to strip the part of the header between the list server & their private routing as irrelevant. List owners may leave headers between wrongly subscribed list members & mail list server as relevant. Sometimes list owner might strip a bit more, but better to strip too little than too much: removing too many clues for sender as to where they sent from & what they need to fix their end.
R-DNS - Reverse Domain Name Service (Anti Spam)
Some (later all) Berklix servers reject mail from non R-DNS compliant senders. (to reduce spam incoming). Senders to berklix addresses may need to configure their mailer to use their ISP's mail relay host for their outgoing mail. (This is the default for most major ISPs, but not for eg D-Telekom, who charge an extra 3 Euro/month. Any sender who runs mail servers at home, from behind dynamically allocated IPs that are not R-DNS compliant, who does not use a smart (relay) host with fixed IP with valid Reverse DNS (Domain Name Service) record will get bounced or lost. SASL is a method of authenticating a client to a remote smart host mail server. BSD users who have a login on Berklix servers, can ask for a SASL password.Server Bugs
Invisible footers can occur with MIME Enclosures : Some mail reader tools (MS-Outlook (new name Entourage) & Unix-Exmh) will not show the footer
The next box will be deleted once this issue is resolved/ debugged.If a MIME multi part is posted, & Majordomo processes it with a *.config with no blank line in footer specifier, ie Something appends "--" to the last MIME boundary line (with no intervening line feed). The boundary is then not recognised by EXMH-2.7.0 & MS-Outlook (new name Entourage), so list footer is not displayed (though is sent).message_footer << END
_______________________________________________________________________
GEA - http://...
Debug/ Analysis of 2 examples:-
With a mail Steve S. sent 2006.09 to
bg-announce@ via Majordomo@berklix,
with header
That mail comprised 2 MIME enclosures: Content-Type: text/plain, + Content-Type: text/html, + a 3rd separator.Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C6D7F5.98043CE4"
Somewhere (@ Steve or @ Majordomo ?) 2 minus characters got appended immediately to the finalmaking"------_=_NextPart_001_01C6D7F5.98043CE4""------_=_NextPart_001_01C6D7F5.98043CE4--"
Which was then not recognised as a separator.
(Perhaps Steve's mail client did not append a terminal line feed ?)
(Not sure what inserted the "--" (once known where, we can try to prepend a line feed there ). The "--" is perhaps supposed per RFC to seperate mail body from signature line (if this is the same thing, that suggests Steve's end would need to insert the line feed, Perhaps it went wrong 'cos Steve appeared not to have a signature, perhaps if he had one his mailer might append a line feed after the separator ? ).
http://www.ietf.org internet-drafts draft-ietf-usefor-useage-01.txt says:Whenever a poster or posting agent appends such a signature to an article, it MUST be preceded with a delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (US-ASCII 45) followed by one SP (US-ASCII 32).)
After I manually inserted a line feed before the trailing "--" EXMH then displayed the footer, (but not the body which I could mouse select). -
With a mail sent by lab@gta.
com to
freebsd-net@freebsd.
org Thu, 14 Sep 2006
09:30:34 -0400 using
Mime-Version: 1.0& of course routing through mailman, not Majordomo, it displayed with EXMH OK, as the end of the mail was
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="NzB8fVQJ5HfG6fxh"
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i- --NzB8fVQJ5HfG6fxh Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"(So EXMH has by default displayed a posting with legible text, several enclosures & a legible footer - it is possible).
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
_______________________________________________
freebsd-net@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-net
SPAM
We used to get some spam, as lists run as instant relay, not content moderated or slowed waiting for human approval. Many lists are now only open for members to post to. Numerous spammer domains are blocked, inevitably some others are not. If you are paying me for internet consultancy I'll discuss spam prevention, domain black holing etc.Forgeries
Spammers & others regularly forge mail senders addresses. Internet designers are adding secure non forge-able mail, but it's not commonly available yet (& there are good technical reasons Not to adopt some schemes). The openness stems from the way the Internet evolved: from an open trusting group of computer scientists & other academics exchanging technical info, to a net that was later adopted by business & general humanity including a full share of spammers criminals perverts lunatics & idiots etc. It's thus possible for the malign to forge instructions to, & responses from, Majordomo , you, I, or anyone else. Including instructions for subscription change requests etc, & forged responses. That's why Majordomo never trusts your first request, but always mails you back, with a confirmation password to be returned, to prove you are really you, & not some impostor, & that you still want whatever you previously asked for, actually to be done. Obviously, if you personally did Not ask for something to be done, you should Never send a reply quoting an authorisation password !German/Deutsch Translation/Uebersetzung ?
Not Yet / Noch Nicht / Sorry ! - Im moment diese Seite & Welt Weit benutzter Doku. & Majordomo Robot Program sind nur in English. Viel benutzer koennen English lesen, gut genug es zum benutzen.
Falls Sie wollen mehr - Entweder:- Lesen sie teilchen dieses Text mit uebersetzungs hilfe ab eg babelfish.org
- Machen Sie selbst eine Ubersetzung (*)
- Bezahlen Sie selbst fuer Ubersetzung eines teils die Majordomo generische Doku. (*) (Ich kenne Ubersetzer dass bereit sind, falls sie zahlungs-bereit sind). Schreiben sie mir wass sie leisten koennen).
- (*) Give me the translation with unrestricted copyright to further use. I will contribute common (non berklix specific) parts, back to Majordomo authors, for free world wide public domain availability. Your name will be credited if you want).
- Ja dieses koennte in besser Deutsch geschreiben sein, aber: es lohnt sich nicht, fuer mich es zu tun. Machen Sie Es Bitte ! Es gibts viel mehr leute koennte gutes Deutsch schreiben, &/oder eine Uebersetzung machen, als koennte computers konfigurieren. Es interessiert mich nicht, meine Freizeit an Deutsche Grammatik zu kummern: stat Grammatik, mache ich die Technik. Bitte liefern SIE einem Deutsch Uebersetzung ! Machen Sie _Ihre_ beitrag an Welt Weit Frei Software. Liefern Sie besser Dokumentation/ Uebersetzungen !
- Zu Faul ? Also nicht klagen ! Those who contribute no help, no time, no money, deserve Nothing in return.
- Other public software needing / getting translations.
