From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 03:27:03 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA21871; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 03:12:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA21864 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 03:11:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-25.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.95]) by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA30012; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 12:18:06 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA00294; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 13:12:11 +0200 Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 13:12:11 +0200 Message-Id: <199808011112.NAA00294@quill> From: Norbert Bollow Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM CC: ERIC@VM.SE.LSOFT.COM In-reply-to: <199808010519.WAA11795@web.webcoach.com> (RAF@CU.NIH.GOV) Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I wrote: > > b) Such a "probe failed" message MUST NOT be sent with MAIL FROM:<> > > In fact, RFC821 is very clear that e-mail messages are supposed to > > have a good reverse-path > > [..] > > and later the exception of bounces is introduced with the words Roger Fajman writes: > RFC 821 isn't the whole story on this issue. Other RFCs have introduced > the principle that some messages may be sent with a null MAIL FROM. Ok, but still there is no RFC which would allow any software product to start sending arbitrary kinds of error messages with a null envelope sender. > RFC 1894 states that Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs) are to be sent > with a null MAIL FROM address. While a DSN may be a bounce message, it > may also be a report of successful delivery. RFC 2298 states that > Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) are also to be sent with a > null MAIL FROM address. Ok, you are right that both DSNs and MDNs are further exceptions to the general rule that e-mail messages are supposed to have a valid, non-null reverse path. > Also note the following text in RFC 821: > > MAIL (MAIL) > > ... In some types of error > reporting messages (for example, undeliverable mail > notifications) the reverse-path may be null (see Example 7). > > This suggests that there could be messages other than bounces that > have a null MAIL FROM. Sure. This leaves room for later RFCs to introduce other kinds of error messages which can also be sent with a null reverse-path. But note the wording "In _some_ types of error reporting messages (...) the reverse-path may be null". This does not give any arbitrary software package the right to invent new types of error reporting messages and send them with null reverse path without having the new type of error reporting message properly reviewed and specified in an RFC so that people who develop spam filters (like e.g. Ron) and those who develop bounce-handlers (like e.g. me) and also developers of others kinds of software that might be affected by this are properly warned and enabled to make their software react properly to the new types of messages. So far, the only situation when an entity A can legally send something with null return path to another entity B is when A needs to make some kind of status report about an e-mail message (with non-null return path) which was sent by B. -- NB. From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 10:42:06 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA28110; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 10:36:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from CU.NIH.GOV (cu.nih.gov [128.231.160.111]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA28103 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 10:36:03 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199808011736.KAA28103@honor.greatcircle.com> To: nb@thinkcoach.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM cc: ERIC@VM.SE.LSOFT.COM From: "Roger Fajman" Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 13:37:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Ok, you are right that both DSNs and MDNs are further exceptions to the > general rule that e-mail messages are supposed to have a valid, non-null > reverse path. > > > Also note the following text in RFC 821: > > > > MAIL (MAIL) > > > > ... In some types of error > > reporting messages (for example, undeliverable mail > > notifications) the reverse-path may be null (see Example 7). > > > > This suggests that there could be messages other than bounces that > > have a null MAIL FROM. > > Sure. This leaves room for later RFCs to introduce other kinds of error > messages which can also be sent with a null reverse-path. > > But note the wording "In _some_ types of error reporting messages (...) > the reverse-path may be null". This does not give any arbitrary software > package the right to invent new types of error reporting messages and > send them with null reverse path without having the new type of error > reporting message properly reviewed and specified in an RFC so that > people who develop spam filters (like e.g. Ron) and those who develop > bounce-handlers (like e.g. me) and also developers of others kinds of > software that might be affected by this are properly warned and enabled > to make their software react properly to the new types of messages. > > So far, the only situation when an entity A can legally send something > with null return path to another entity B is when A needs to make some > kind of status report about an e-mail message (with non-null return > path) which was sent by B. > > -- NB. That is debatable, I think. There is no wording in RFC 821 that says that only types of messages authorized by a standards-track RFC may use a null MAIL FROM. When RFC 821 was written, spam did not exist, so the issue wasn't considered. But even the draft revision to RFC 821 does not take a firm position on this issue. See the document at http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-07.txt The mailing list for the working group is drums@cs.utk.edu. To be added, write to drums-request@cs.utk.edu. But the working group is trying to get both this document and the RFC 822 revision out the door, so it may well not want to consider this issue at this late date. From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 19:26:11 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA03428; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 19:10:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from camel8.mindspring.com (camel8.mindspring.com [207.69.200.58]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA03421 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 19:10:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from micron (pool-207-205-187-4.clev.grid.net [207.205.187.4]) by camel8.mindspring.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id WAA29996 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 22:16:53 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <199808012214410910.0038D6F5@mail.mindspring.com> X-Mailer: Calypso Version 2.40.41.05 Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 22:14:41 -0400 From: "ron40xc" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: ownership change? Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk how do we change ownership with a majordomo list? From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 19:40:38 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA03664; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 19:35:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA03657 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 19:35:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id VAA07576 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 21:42:04 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id VAA18819 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 21:42:02 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808020242.VAA18819@Venus.mcs.net> Subject: Re: individualized probe messages To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 21:42:01 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <000101bdbc98$d33c7ed0$017b7b0a@gillette> from "Tom Neff" at Jul 31, 98 11:35:20 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk When I wrote [about getting a bounce for an address that is not on to the list because a member must be forwarding it there], | > Probe messages work only if the refusing site sends you back the text, or | > sends you back your outgoing subject, or at least returns something that | > distinguishes one probe message from the others. Prodigy tells you only | > that such-and-such a user ID is not valid: no text, no Received: headers | > for the trip from your site to Prodigy, no trace of your Subject:, | > nothing... Tom Neff replied, | Actually there is a way around this problem if you have forwarding/alias | control at a site, i.e., you can configure your local mail transfer agent | (MTA) so that many addresses all deliver to you. Operative word: "if". Write it, as Lulu sang, across the sky with letters that would sore a thousand feet high. If you don't control the domain's addressing -- if you are a user on someone else's machine or a customer of an ISP whose MTA doesn't do VERPs or even suffixing -- then Tom's idea is something to dream, not to do. | Instead of (or in addition to) serializing the Subject header in each probe | message, you also serialize the From: and Errors-To: headers as follows: | | From: test01347@mybox.mydomain.com | Errors-To: errs01347@mybox.mydomain.com | Subject: List Test #001347 | | This is a list test message - please ignore it. Most MTAs ignore Errors-To:, but if you have control over the domain and can give yourself as many addresses in it as you like, you can use them as envelope senders; in other words, you're simulating qmail's VERPs, as I said before and as Dave Sill just mentioned. | Now even the most uncooperative Prodigy-class mail agent can't help revealing | which message it's bouncing, because each one will be delivered to a unique | "userid." Even if they omit a To: header in the bounce, you can examine the | Received: headers for the delivery address your local MTA saw. They do omit the To: header, but either their MTA or Smail on WWA was filling it into Apparently-To: as well as Received: ... for. By using my own logname and the list's aliases as envelope senders, I eventually tracked down the culprit. Skip the indented part and go to my next quote from Mr. Neff if you've read my previous posts of this story: Based on the timing of the bounces, I knew that the forwarder was a digest- mode subscriber who was not on the list's sublist. That left 1220 suspects. With seven envelope sender addresses at my disposal, I divided the 1220 into seven groups of 174 or 175 and sent out seven first-round probes, one to each group. About ten minutes later one of them bounced. The addressee of the NDN was all I had to go by, but it narrowed the field to 175 addresses. Some sub- scribers replied to probe #1 to assure me they received it, and I answered thanks, but they didn't have to. I divided them into seven groups of twenty-five and repeated the process, assuring recipients in the text that still being there in the second round didn't mean they were more suspect, just that they were less lucky. One second-round probe bounced, narrowing it to twenty-five people. I divided them into seven groups of three or four and sent the third round of seven probes. One bounced, and there were three people left. In the fourth round I wrote to them individually with three different envelope senders, and one bounced. Officer, arrest that woman! I booted her from the list. If only the NDNs from Prodigy had included the To: or Subject: or Received: or even Message-Id: of the undelivered piece (I could have blind carboned all probes to myself and had a list of which Message-Id: was on whose, or I could have encoded the addressee into the Message-Id:) it would have been completely unncessary. OK, so I'd still have had to send 1220 probes, but not 1220+175+24+3=1422. And I'd have had the answer far sooner and not had to spend all that extra time on line when I had other things to get done. | This is particularly easy to do with today's "virtual servers" that forward | anything@yourdomain.com to the same address. Not everyone has a personal domain, and I have no intention to shell out the costs of having one (not only for the registration but also for the MX ser- vice from an ISP) when I have no need for it except to cope with Prodigy's poor netizenship. From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 20:40:37 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA04139; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 20:25:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [140.174.78.69]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA04121 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 20:24:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA26699 Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 20:31:13 -0700 (PDT) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: ron40xc cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: ownership change? In-Reply-To: <199808012214410910.0038D6F5@mail.mindspring.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, 1 Aug 1998, ron40xc wrote: > how do we change ownership with a majordomo list? With the normal setup, where it is hard-wired into the system's mail aliases, you ask your Majordomo-Owner to do so. If eithr of the following optional extended setups is in use, you can do it yourself: - if the site is running MajorCool, you can change the owner field there. - if the site is using a separate unpublished mailing list as the list of owners, subscribe the new one and unsubscribe the old one. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG 2215-R Market Street #576 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 01:32:03 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA07916; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:48:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eagle.ns.net (eagle.ns.net [204.75.146.20]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA07909 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:48:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (rfg.ns.net [207.159.10.82]) by eagle.ns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA13650 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:55:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA06491 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:57:05 -0700 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 01 Aug 1998 01:17:07 -0400. <199808010513.WAA17158@honor.greatcircle.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 00:57:05 -0700 Message-ID: <6489.902044625@monkeys.com> X-Processed-By: Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter, Version 0.90 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <199808010513.WAA17158@honor.greatcircle.com>, "Roger Fajman" wrote: >This suggests that there could be messages other than bounces that >have a null MAIL FROM. > >LISTSERV's "probe failed" message sounds to me like an "error >reporting message". You are obviously using a VERY loose definition of the term. If I decide to write a letter (or have some automated bot do it for me) to some sysadmins somewhere, telling him that he's a bonehead for con- tinuing to run an open mail relay, is that an ``error reporting message'' also?? Well... you could call it that. Where do you draw the line? I believe that the only sensible place to draw it is to say that the term ``error reporting messages'' (in the context of the relevant SMTP RFCs) refers to error reporting messages having to do with (and/or generated by) the SMTP mail transport system itself, not by mere clients thereof. Other- wise, these ``error reporting messages'' become fair game, and _everybody_ can start calling _their_ messages ``error reporting messages''. (``You're a dork, and you ice isn't cold enough!'' There! Now _that's_ an error message! :-) Or how about ``Your request to Majordodo failed because it was unintelligible and unparsable.''? Or how about ``This is the vacation program. Joe will read your mail when he gets back from the Bahamas in two weeks. Until then, live in envy.''?) I am merely a client of the SMTP mail transport system. So are _all_ of the various mailing list packages, including Listserv. I don't screw around and go out of my way to make my messages look like bounces (even though doing so might appear to be convenient for me in some special cases... just as it appears to be for some spammers) and I don't believe that Listserv should be crossing this line either. Again, Listserv isn't a part of the SMTP transport system, it is a mere client of that system, as am I. -- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc. -- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/ -- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/ From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 02:59:27 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA09911; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 02:43:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [140.174.78.69]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA09904 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 02:42:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id CAA03607 Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 02:47:56 -0700 (PDT) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 In-Reply-To: <6489.902044625@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > Again, Listserv isn't > a part of the SMTP transport system, it is a mere client of that system, > as am I. Really? If it connects to an SMTP server directly and has an SMTP session with it, how is it any less "a part of the SMTP transport system" than the sendmail invocation that's called by Majordomo? -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG 2215-R Market Street #576 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 08:01:49 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA14604; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 07:40:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA14592 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 07:39:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newmicronpc (slip-32-100-103-114.ct.us.ibm.net [32.100.103.114]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id IAA10643; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 08:46:15 -0600 (MDT) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Re: individualized probe messages Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 10:55:15 -0400 Message-ID: <000001bdbe25$8edc1fa0$72676420@newmicronpc> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <199808020800.BAA08091@honor.greatcircle.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I appreciate the info on David Tamkin's personal access level, budget, plans and so forth, but the serialized-From technique has potential value to those listmanagers who, through whatever quirk of fate, do have a machine (if only a Linux box) whose mail they can configure, or who have access to a virtual domain (their own or a friend's). List-Managers is for the benefit of all members, not a private chatline, so I hope others get a chance to use the trick. I should emphasize (if it's not already obvious) that the From: addresses, machine and domain you use for the serialized probe need have nothing to do with the machine or domain that the mailing list itself emanates from. So you don't have to have full mail control over that (possibly commercial or centrally managed) host. Just your own little node, real or virtual. > From: "David W. Tamkin" > Operative word: "if". Write it, as Lulu sang, across the sky with letters > that would sore a thousand feet high. ... We all have our soar points... From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 10:01:55 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA15602; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 09:45:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eagle.ns.net (eagle.ns.net [204.75.146.20]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA15593 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 09:45:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (rfg.ns.net [207.159.10.82]) by eagle.ns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA26904 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 09:51:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA21563 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 09:54:07 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 02 Aug 1998 02:47:56 -0700. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 09:54:07 -0700 Message-ID: <21561.902076847@monkeys.com> X-Processed-By: Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter, Version 0.90 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , "Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote: >On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >> Again, Listserv isn't >> a part of the SMTP transport system, it is a mere client of that system, >> as am I. > >Really? If it connects to an SMTP server directly and has an SMTP >session with it, how is it any less "a part of the SMTP transport system" >than the sendmail invocation that's called by Majordomo? Does it do MX resolution? Does it cycle through the MXes, trying various ones until it finds a live one? Does it do queuing? Does it do retries? Does it connect to *non-local* SMTP servers? If the answers to all of the above are ``yes'', then heck! Let's just throw away our MTAs and use Listserv instead, because the MTAs are ob- viously just redundant excess baggage. -- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc. -- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/ -- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/ From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 13:00:40 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA17281; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 12:48:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dt053nd2.san.rr.com (dt053nd2.san.rr.com [204.210.34.210]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA17274 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 12:48:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dal.net (Studded@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dt053nd2.san.rr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA04230; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 12:54:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Studded@dal.net) Message-ID: <35C4C409.AEB8ECED@dal.net> Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 12:54:49 -0700 From: Studded Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.6-STABLE-0507 i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom" CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: "Reviewing" mailing list? (Was: Re: Lyris) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom wrote: > (3) inform me whenever someone attempts > to REVIEW any of my mailing lists (I have my lists configured to > disallow such things, but I still like to know when they try), You made the above statement in reference to praise of lyris. I am not familiar with the phrase "review a mailing list" and I was wondering if you could expand on what that means, how it is detected and why it is undesirable. Thanks for any help, Doug From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 13:15:46 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA17431; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 13:04:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA17424 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 13:04:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id PAA28045 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:10:57 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id PAA29678 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:10:57 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808022010.PAA29678@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: Re: individualized probe messages To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:10:56 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <000001bdbe25$8edc1fa0$72676420@newmicronpc> from "Tom Neff" at Aug 2, 98 10:55:15 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Background: I posted about a problem I had had to deal with without the facilities that many of you have at your disposal. Tom Neff then posted a follow-up that offered a solution I could not have used. When I responded that yes, others can do that, but I had to settle for a less efficient ap- proach, he rejoined, | ... the serialized-From technique has potential value to [many] | listmanagers ... Yes, no question. It has potential value to all who can use it. It certainly beats the heck out of what I had to do. | List-Managers is for the benefit of all members, not | a private chatline, so I hope others get a chance to use the trick. I hope so too, but by the same token that "all members" includes those whose situations are unlike mine, it also includes those whose situations are like mine. | I should emphasize (if it's not already obvious) that the From: addresses, | machine and domain you use for the serialized probe need have nothing to do | with the machine or domain that the mailing list itself emanates from. Yes, the From: address and the From_ address can differ from the true send- ing point and from one another. It was the From_ address that mattered that time, and that is not as easy to set for a non-admin as the From: address. While at the time I knew how to rig the local part of the From_ address, I did not yet know a reliable way to point From_ to a remote address (I do now). Had I known, there would have been nine available return addresses instead of seven and not 1422 probe letters but at most 1374. (The other providers where I had email addresses don't support plus-suffixing either.) | So you don't have to have full mail control over that (possibly commercial | or centrally managed) host. Just your own little node, real or virtual. But you do need to come up with as many distinct addresses as there are subscribers to whom you need to send the probe message, and they have to be such that mail to them will reach you. If you have your own domain, whether real or virtual, you can do that. If you have suffixed addressing available, you can do that. If you have neither available but you run a mailing list anyway, you still have a right to be on list-managers. | > Operative word: "if". Write it, as Lulu sang, across the sky with letters | > that would sore a thousand feet high. ... | | We all have our soar points... Oops ... sorry for the typo, and clever way to point it out, Mr. Neff. From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 15:59:24 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA18848; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:41:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nisto.com (nisto.com [207.34.64.161]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA18841 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:41:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.34.64.181] by nisto.com with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 1.2); Sun, 2 Aug 1998 16:51:58 -0600 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 16:51:32 -0600 To: list-header@list.nisto.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, ListMom-Talk@lists.SKYLIST.net From: Grant Neufeld Subject: List-Probe field proposal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Here are the relevant parts from a new internet-draft I'm preparing. The working form of the document itself can be found at http://www.nisto.com/listspec/#DOCUMENTS Please address all follow up to the list-header mailing list , or to me privately. Thanks. The List-Probe Message Header Field for Identifying Mail List Probe Messages Abstract This document defines the message header field "List-Probe" to be used in consistently identifying mail list probe messages. 1. Introduction Many MTAs (mail transfer agents - mail servers) in use today do not provide adequate details when failing to transfer mail messages. In particular, when email is automatically forwarded from a recipient address to a second address that is 'bouncing' incoming mail, the error response messages may not properly including the original (forwarding) recipient address. To help deal with this problem, many mailing list managers have taken to sending out individualized "probe" messages. The probes include enough identifying information - even if the original recipient address is not included in the error response - that the forwarding address can be properly identified. The drawback to this approach is that valid recipients will receive the probe messages in their mail - an unfortunate waste of time and resources. This document defines a message header field, List-Probe, which will allow MUAs (mail user agents - email clients) to identify and automatically discard probe messages so the user does not have to be involved in the process. If a probe message is received by a MUA, the recipient address is valid, so the probe does not need to be responded to (and can safely be discarded) since probes are only seeking error responses. 2. The List-Probe Header Field The List-Probe message header field MUST contain a single RFC822 format recipient address. The field MAY also contain round-bracket enclosed comments. For example, a probe message for the address user@some.host might look like: List-Probe: user@some.host To: user@some.host From: admin@server.host Errors-To: probe@server.host Subject: Probe message - Please ignore We are checking for invalid email addresses. Since you have received this message, your email is valid. Please discard this message - DO NOT REPLY. Our appologies for the interruption. 3. Security Considerations Since the originating system is responsible for introducing the List-Probe field into the message, with the expectation that valid recipients will discard the message, it is expected that no unwanted message discarding will occur. There is a danger that senders of unwanted bulk email could make use of the List-Probe field in validating recipient addresses. To provide users with the option to avoid this, MTAs MUST provide an option to ignore the List-Probe field (not deleting the messages), allowing the user to see the probe messages. In the case of ignoring the List-Probe field, the MTA MAY hilite the message in some manner to alert the user that it is a probe message. Mail list processors SHOULD NOT allow user-originated List-Probe fields to pass through to their lists, lest they confuse the user and have the potential to create security problems. -- http://www.nisto.com/ O- <*> MIME PGP: http://www.nisto.com/grant/pgpkey.kagi.txt 838B 977B 080E 1B61 BA78 D159 6ABB 8CBA A825 0CDF From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 16:29:24 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA19112; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 16:12:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nisto.com (nisto.com [207.34.64.161]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA19105 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 16:11:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.34.64.181] by nisto.com with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 1.2); Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:23:08 -0600 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:22:43 -0600 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Grant Neufeld Subject: The List- headers are now an RFC Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This is a request for you to implement support for the List- header fields defined in RFC2369. This will make mail list access easier for your users. The List- fields provide you with a standard method by which you can consistently describe your mailing lists' command syntax so that client applications can implement an interface to make list access easier for users. As they are adopted and supported by email software developers, the List header fields will make it easier for users to interact with email lists. The currently defined fields are List-Subscribe, List-Unsubscribe, List-Help, List-Post, List-Owner and List-Archive. They describe commands for subscribing, unsubscribing, retrieving help information, posting to the list, contacting a human administrator and accessing message archives. As an example, for the list-managers list, the fields could be something like: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: List-Help: List-Post: List-Owner: List-Archive: , , Implementation guidelines for list managers and administrators are available at: Extended details on the List header fields are available from: A mailing list for discussion is available at: or Information on the format of mailto URLs: Thanks! -- http://www.nisto.com/ O- <*> MIME PGP: http://www.nisto.com/grant/pgpkey.kagi.txt 838B 977B 080E 1B61 BA78 D159 6ABB 8CBA A825 0CDF From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 17:44:24 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA19631; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:33:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dt053nd2.san.rr.com (dt053nd2.san.rr.com [204.210.34.210]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA19624 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:33:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dal.net (Studded@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dt053nd2.san.rr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA05452 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:40:08 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Studded@dal.net) Message-ID: <35C506E8.4405AB9D@dal.net> Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 17:40:08 -0700 From: Studded Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.6-STABLE-0507 i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: "Reviewing" mailing list? (Was: Re: Lyris) References: <35C4C409.AEB8ECED@dal.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Studded wrote: > > Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom wrote: > > > (3) inform me whenever someone attempts > > to REVIEW any of my mailing lists (I have my lists configured to > > disallow such things, but I still like to know when they try), > > You made the above statement in reference to praise of lyris. I am not > familiar with the phrase "review a mailing list" and I was wondering if > you could expand on what that means, how it is detected and why it is > undesirable. I got some answers to this already, thanks. The listserv (and others?) 'review' command does what 'who' does on majordomo. Doug From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 18:59:44 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA20194; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 18:39:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from quilla.tezcat.com (quilla.tezcat.com [204.128.247.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA20187 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 18:39:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [208.145.52.97] (adamb.tezcat.com [208.145.52.97]) by quilla.tezcat.com (8.8.5/8.8.5/tezcat-96091001) with SMTP id UAA14356 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 20:46:12 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199808030146.UAA14356@quilla.tezcat.com> Subject: Re: "Reviewing" mailing list? (Was: Re: Lyris) Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 20:47:08 -0500 x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998 From: Adam Bailey cc: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 8/2/98 2:54 PM, Studded wrote... >Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom wrote: > >> (3) inform me whenever someone attempts >> to REVIEW any of my mailing lists (I have my lists configured to >> disallow such things, but I still like to know when they try), > > You made the above statement in reference to praise of lyris. I am not >familiar with the phrase "review a mailing list" and I was wondering if >you could expand on what that means, how it is detected and why it is >undesirable. The REVIEW command/procedure, in some packages, produces a list of all the subscribers to a list. Back in The Good Old Days(tm) when the net was a reasonably safe place to be, anyone (or, at least, any subscriber) could find out who else was on the list, so they'd know who all they were talking to (individual subscribers would still have the ability to hide just their subscription). But with the rise of UBE and other forms of mass email abuse, most lists are now closed to any form of REVIEW (as well they should be). -- Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois adamb@tezcat.com | "Logic is the art of going wrong with adamkb@aol.com | confidence." - George Bernard Shaw Finger for PGP | http://www.tezcat.com/~adamb/ From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 19:55:36 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA20796; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 19:44:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA20789 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 19:44:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id VAA06317; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:50:35 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id VAA02722; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:50:35 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808030250.VAA02722@Venus.mcs.net> Subject: Re: "Reviewing" mailing list? (Was: Re: Lyris) To: Studded@dal.net (Studded) Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:50:34 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <35C4C409.AEB8ECED@dal.net> from "Studded" at Aug 2, 98 12:54:49 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Doug asked, | Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom wrote: | | > (3) inform me whenever someone attempts | > to REVIEW any of my mailing lists (I have my lists configured to | > disallow such things, but I still like to know when they try), | | You made the above statement in reference to praise of lyris. I am not | familiar with the phrase "review a mailing list" and I was wondering if | you could expand on what that means, how it is detected and why it is | undesirable. The word "review" has different meanings for different list packages. Vince appears to be referring to it as a command sent to certain listservers to request a copy of the membership roster. There was a time when few lists needed to disable that command; now many do, because of the spam problem, and the rest have to allow only members or privileged members to use it. In other software the word is used differently: a member of an unmoderated list is said to be on "review status" if his or her submissions are diverted for moderation rather than being sent right out, either because he or she is new to the list or because he or she has violated posting guidelines in the past. The ambiguities can be funny sometimes: once a member sent the following com- mand to me (at an address that reaches my eyes and does not interpret com- mands, but if I know what they mean I carry them out), apostrophes and all: request '*out*' Thinking it was a request to get out, but not being positive, I shut her subscription off without purging it and wrote to her to ask for clarifica- tion. She said no, she didn't want to unsub; she was trying to get a copy of the membership roster. I turned her subscription back on, sent her the list activity she had missed, and explained that I don't give the list out. About two years later another member sent this: request *out* with the same words and the same asterisks but no apostrophes. So as before, I shut her subscription off without purging it and asked her to elucidate, telling her about the previous incident. She replied that no, she wasn't trying to get the membership roster, she wanted to unsubscribe. So I thanked her for getting back to me and purged her subscription. From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 20:55:36 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA21516; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 20:50:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from CU.NIH.GOV (silkt.nih.gov [128.231.160.112]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA21509 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 20:50:48 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199808030350.UAA21509@honor.greatcircle.com> To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: "Roger Fajman" Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:54:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > In message <199808010513.WAA17158@honor.greatcircle.com>, > "Roger Fajman" wrote: > > >This suggests that there could be messages other than bounces that > >have a null MAIL FROM. > > > >LISTSERV's "probe failed" message sounds to me like an "error > >reporting message". > > You are obviously using a VERY loose definition of the term. > > If I decide to write a letter (or have some automated bot do it for me) > to some sysadmins somewhere, telling him that he's a bonehead for con- > tinuing to run an open mail relay, is that an ``error reporting message'' > also?? Well... you could call it that. > > Where do you draw the line? > > I believe that the only sensible place to draw it is to say that the term > ``error reporting messages'' (in the context of the relevant SMTP RFCs) > refers to error reporting messages having to do with (and/or generated by) > the SMTP mail transport system itself, not by mere clients thereof. Other- > wise, these ``error reporting messages'' become fair game, and _everybody_ > can start calling _their_ messages ``error reporting messages''. (``You're > a dork, and you ice isn't cold enough!'' There! Now _that's_ an error > message! :-) Or how about ``Your request to Majordodo failed because it > was unintelligible and unparsable.''? Or how about ``This is the vacation > program. Joe will read your mail when he gets back from the Bahamas in > two weeks. Until then, live in envy.''?) > > I am merely a client of the SMTP mail transport system. So are _all_ of > the various mailing list packages, including Listserv. I don't screw > around and go out of my way to make my messages look like bounces (even > though doing so might appear to be convenient for me in some special > cases... just as it appears to be for some spammers) and I don't believe > that Listserv should be crossing this line either. Again, Listserv isn't > a part of the SMTP transport system, it is a mere client of that system, > as am I. > > > -- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc. > -- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/ > -- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/ I believe that the original motivation for the presence of the null MAIL FROM in RFC 821 is the prevention of loops. That's why RFC 821 says that error messages should use it, why DSNs use it, and why MDNs use it. It doesn't matter what's generating the message. MDNs are generated by user agents, not SMTP servers. By your definition, they would not be allowed to use a null MAIL FROM. Now LISTSERV's probe failed message is not likely to cause a loop if it did not have a null MAIL FROM, but only because LISTSERV has other measures to keep that from happening. There are other cases when a list server might need to use a null MAIL FROM. For example, suppose that it forwards copies of error messages received as a result of messages sent from the command processing address to the list server maintainers. Such messages might cause a loop if they bounce and the MAIL FROM is not null. My main point is that there are things other than bounce messages that are specified by Internet standards track documents to use a null MAIL FROM. They can't be considered to be spam. From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 21:10:37 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA21752; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:08:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eagle.ns.net (eagle.ns.net [204.75.146.20]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA21745 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:07:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (rfg.ns.net [207.159.10.82]) by eagle.ns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA23115; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:14:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA10273; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:17:14 -0700 To: list-header@peyak.nisto.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, ListMom-Talk@lists.SKYLIST.net Subject: Re: List-Probe field proposal In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 02 Aug 1998 16:51:32 -0600. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 21:17:13 -0700 Message-ID: <10271.902117833@monkeys.com> X-Processed-By: Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter, Version 0.90 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Grant Neufeld wrote: >Here are the relevant parts from a new internet-draft I'm preparing. The >working form of the document itself can be found at >http://www.nisto.com/listspec/#DOCUMENTS > >Please address all follow up to the list-header mailing list > , >or to me privately. Thanks. > > The List-Probe Message Header Field for > Identifying Mail List Probe Messages > >Abstract > > This document defines the message header field "List-Probe" > to be used in consistently identifying mail list probe messages. > > >1. Introduction > > Many MTAs (mail transfer agents - mail servers) in use today do not > provide adequate details when failing to transfer mail messages. In > particular, when email is automatically forwarded from a recipient > address to a second address that is 'bouncing' incoming mail, the > error response messages may not properly including the original > (forwarding) recipient address. > > To help deal with this problem, many mailing list managers have taken > to sending out individualized "probe" messages. The probes include > enough identifying information - even if the original recipient > address is not included in the error response - that the forwarding > address can be properly identified. > > The drawback to this approach is that valid recipients will receive > the probe messages in their mail - an unfortunate waste of time and > resources. > > This document defines a message header field, List-Probe, which will > allow MUAs (mail user agents - email clients) to identify and > automatically discard probe messages so the user does not have to be > involved in the process. If a probe message is received by a MUA, > the recipient address is valid, so the probe does not need to be > responded to (and can safely be discarded) since probes are only > seeking error responses. A question if you don't mind... Isn't this basically the exact same sort of facility that the SMTP VRFY command is supposed to provide? If so, why write a new RFC? Why not just get people to implement the old one(s)? It seems to me that a lot of people out there disable the VRFY command in their MTAs out of a misplaced concern for ``security''. So even if you come up with a new way of verifying addresses as being really and truly alive and active, won't people just disable _that_ also? -- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc. -- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/ -- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/ From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 02:25:38 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA24975; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 00:58:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com (tan7.NCR.COM [192.127.94.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA24968 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 00:58:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from bhoule@localhost) by sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) id BAA20596; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 01:03:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Bill Houle Message-Id: <199808030803.BAA20596@sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com> Subject: Re: ownership change? To: rogerk@QueerNet.ORG (Roger B.A. Klorese) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 01:03:00 -0700 (PDT) Cc: ron40xc@mindspring.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: from "Roger B.A. Klorese" at Aug 1, 98 08:31:13 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Roger B.A. Klorese said: > > - if the site is running MajorCool, you can change the owner field there. To clarify, "there" is the list configuration [file]. And this is not a blanket statement, as implementation of the "owner" keyword is entirely optional and may not be present even if MajorCool is installed. --bill From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 02:40:42 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA24073; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:45:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA24063 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:45:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA03680 for ; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 07:04:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 2372 invoked by uid 3995); 31 Jul 1998 14:10:20 -0000 Message-ID: <19980731141020.2371.qmail@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Dave Sill To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: "probe failed" (was: Re: Unhelpful Bounce Of The Week) In-Reply-To: <30704.901867732@monkeys.com> References: <2.2.32.19980731024749.01086a74@pop.ma.ultranet.com> <30704.901867732@monkeys.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.34 under 20.3 "Vatican City" XEmacs Lucid Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote: > >Why does it make any sense to send yet another message to an address that >you already know and believe is dead? Because you don't know it's dead--you just know it's bouncing. I've seen several cases where bounced messages were *also* successfully delivered. If you don't send the user a message saying "Hey, your mail is bouncing", they may never realize it. -Dave From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 02:47:45 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA23842; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:42:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA23832 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:42:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.wavefront.com (ns.wavefront.com [204.73.244.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id NAA13012 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:36:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: by mail.wavefront.com (8.6.10/SMI-4.1.R931202) id PAA12110; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:46:58 -0500 Message-Id: <199807282046.PAA12110@mail.wavefront.com> Received: from pm3-47.wavefront.net(206.146.214.47), claiming to be "clift.wavefront.com" via SMTP by ns.wavefront.com, id smtpdAAAa12104; Tue Jul 28 20:46:48 1998 Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Steven Clift" Organization: Democracies Online To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:35:21 -0500 Subject: Major E-mail Announce Lists Reply-to: clift@publicus.net X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v2.54) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Does anyone have advice on reliable providers of e-mail announcement list services in the U.S.? A project I work with may need support for web based subscription to a one-way announcement list. It is hard to estimate the number of subscribers but to say between 5,000 to 50,000. About one message a week from mid-September into November would be sent. With a few extras around election time. I am interested in systems that ask the web form subscribers to verify their address by glancing at it on a confirmation page, but feel a confirm reply e-mail message might reduce the number of subscribers. I am also interested in systems that use the listserv "probe" feature or some other feature that can be used to clean out bad addresses. The list would potentially be used lightly in 1999 and regeared up for 2000 with non-partisan activities related to the Presidential election. Any suggestions on who to get a bid from on such a list? And who has the best track record with such matters? Thanks, Steven Clift ------------------------------------------------------- Steven Clift - Public Strategies for the Online World 3454 Fremont Ave S T: +1.612.822.8667 Mpls, MN 55408 USA E: clift@publicus.net Consulting and Home Page - http://www.publicus.net Democracies Online - http://www.e-democracy.org/do Read my new article "Democracy is Online" from link. ------------------------------------------------------- From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 02:55:50 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA23566; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:38:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA23556 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:38:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from out1.ibm.net (out1.ibm.net [165.87.194.252]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA25547 for ; Sat, 25 Jul 1998 19:14:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from slip129-37-51-83.ca.us.ibm.net (slip129-37-51-83.ca.us.ibm.net [129.37.51.83]) by out1.ibm.net (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id CAA24362 for ; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 02:19:21 GMT Message-ID: <35BA93BC.AD1@Qmail.com> Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 19:26:04 -0700 From: Thompson X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.04 (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Helpful Feedback for Newbies Who Err? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk - -------------- Quoting Chuq ----------- - > Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 21:36:32 -0700 > From: Chuq Von Rospach > Subject: Re: Some thoughts on user validation.... > > 7/23/98 [Mike]--- >> They don't know how to use an editor, so they send 2 or 3 line posts >> followed by the ENTIRE message they're responding to, and sometime >> the entire message that THAT one responded to, etc. >> >> We get posts that contain redundant data in HTML format, posts with >> Microsoft TNEF attachments on them, whatever the Bill Gates those are, etc. [Chuq]--- > That's why I built front end filters on things. It traps this stuff, > and sends back a useful message to the user that actually tries to > explain the situation. Wow, Chuq, would I like to see those messages! I wonder if they may be useful as templates for others of us to consider? Are they copyrighted? Steal-able? is there a way you could possibly make them available? Post them on a web site somewhere...? I'm a list maintainer, learning that I can't help zubscribers whose email tools are completely unfamiliar to me. I would love to have---and share with zubscribers---some helpful information on how/where to turn off html or QP or iso or whatever, in their email clients. Folks who don't read manuals and are completely unfamiliar with their own email tools, create key problems. And I can't help them with that, if I too am clueless about their client. That stymies me, time and again. Hmm, not only would I like to offer helpful information, I'd like to offer it in a way that doesn't reflect annoyance on my part. That would be a bonus. Thanks, Thompson From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 03:05:27 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA24041; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:44:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA24033 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:44:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from strato-fe0.ultra.net (strato-fe0.ultra.net [146.115.8.190]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA23433 for ; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 19:41:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from voyager (d233.dial-5.cmb.ma.ultra.net [209.6.68.233]) by strato-fe0.ultra.net (8.8.8/ult.n14767) with SMTP id WAA24217; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:47:02 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.32.19980731024749.01086a74@pop.ma.ultranet.com> X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:47:49 -0400 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" From: Stan Ryckman Subject: "probe failed" (was: Re: Unhelpful Bounce Of The Week) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 04:25 PM 7/30/98 -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >Speaking of ``probes'', I have just been dealing with a problem on my end >that is rather annoying and which seems to be due to some rather glaring >stupidity on the part of those folks who developed the Listserv package. >(Is that Lsoft, Inc.?) Yup (and I'm not speaking for them, but I'm "owner" of a LISTSERV list). [snip] >The problem is that 9apparently) Listserv cane be told (by the list owner) >to perform some sort of a ``probe'' on a given address which may be bad, >and it will then go and try to do that. It can also be told to do this routinely (at least recent versions). >Now get this... if the probe FAILS... which is to say if the address is >in fact bad... then it appears that Listserv then tries to send a ``probe >failed'' message TO THE ADDRESS THAT JUST FAILED! I think this give the subscriber's system one last chance to have recovered from one of those "transient permanent" errors. >No, I'm not making this up. > >That doesn't bother me so much as the WAY in which these idiotic ``probe >failed'' messages are sent... They appear to be sent with a null/empty >envelope return address, thus making them (in some ways related to spam >filtering) indistinguishable from ordinary Mailer-Daemon bounces for mail >which was sent *from* my system to someplace else. > >It seems to me that this is beyond moronic. Up till now I really believed >that there were only two uses for null envelope return addresses, i.e. for >sending back E-mail bounce messages and for spamming. > >If anybody wants to explain to me why my criticisms of Listserv are unfound- >ed, I'm all ears. Well, the null envelope return address just means that there is nobody who cares if the message can be delivered; it can be silently trashed. It is you who CHOSE to examine mail that said "discard if undeliverable." Its use predates spamming by decades. True, the most COMMON use is to avoid "bounce loops." When LISTSERV probes, it needs the bounce so it can remove the subscriber, so the probe itself has a non-null envelope return address. Once it has removed the subscriber, there is nothing more LISTSERV can do unless the subscriber rejoins by the normal process--so why tell the other system to generate another bounce, and then discard the bounce? Waste of traffic on both sides. LISTSERV generates null envelope return addresses for other messages as well. I believe an example of this may be a request to search an archive. If the search results can't reach the requestor, LISTSERV can do nothing with bounced search results. Maybe you disagree with the probe process or the "probe failed" message or the fact that it now happens to fall in your "mis-addressed spam" pile... but it hardly seems deserving of the term "beyond moronic." That's my opinion, anyway. Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 03:09:48 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA23624; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:39:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA23614 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:39:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lokkur.dexter.mi.us (lokkur.dexter.mi.us [148.59.2.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA09685 for ; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 19:14:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from scs@localhost) by lokkur.dexter.mi.us (8.8.8/8.8.8/lokkur-1.1-scs) id WAA17972; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 22:16:31 -0400 (EDT) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Path: lokkur.dexter.mi.us!not-for-mail From: scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons) Newsgroups: local.list-managers Subject: Unhelpful Bounce**2 Of The Week Date: 26 Jul 1998 22:16:30 -0400 Organization: Inland Sea Lines: 110 Distribution: local Message-ID: <6pgntu$hhh$1@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Oh, this one was great. Someone sent mail to a list with a member whose company receives mail via Compuserve MX. First there was the bounce message. Not the worst ever seen, but far from the best. I forwarded the bounce message to the postmaster (1st message below) and got a startling response. First, my message forwarding the bounce to postmaster@compuserve.com. Note the recipients name was *not* in the To: or Cc fields; Compuserve apparently created a plaintext bcc containing it. They also rewrote the case in the fulltext name, and inserted a fairly amazing number of %-directives into the
. ===================================================================== > The following bounce message has been occurring regularly for a person > at Ryder systems. When it departs here, the To: field is > dorsai@lokkur.dexter.mi.us and the envelope is for > . > By the time of the bounce, it seems to have been rewritten into the > odd bcc format below. > > In any case, ``Server's name changed'' is not a very informative > error message. If there's anything I can do on my end to rectify > this, please let me know. > > Steve > > ----- Forwarded message from Mailer-Daemon@sxhad.compuserve.net ----- > > Message-Id: <9807261730.AA1319@notesgw.compuserve.com> > To: scs > From: Mailer-Daemon@sxhad.compuserve.net > Date: Sun, 26 Jul 98 13:30:18 > Subject: Returned mail > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type: Multipart/Mixed; Boundary="-- message ----" > > ---- message ---- > > Router: Unable to open mailbox file CSERVE-82/SERVER/CSERVE mail.box: > Server's name changed > > ---- message ---- > Content-Type: Message/rfc822 > Content-Description: RFC822 > > To: dorsai > bcc: "name-removed-by-scs/rdl/rydersysteminc/us" /rydersysteminc/us%rydersysteminc%rydersysteminc%rydergate > @notesgw.compuserve.com> > From: cl29 > Date: 21 Jul 98 13:07:35 > Subject: beer > MIME-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type: Text/Plain > > ---- message ------ > > ----- End forwarded message ----- Imagine my surpise when a few seconds later this missive arrived: > Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 00:15:50 -0400 > Message-Id: <199807270415.AAA25003@postmaster.compuserve.com> > To: scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us > References: <19980726215333.A17452@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> > In-Reply-To: <19980726215333.A17452@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> > Precedence: addrb1 > X-Loop: postmaster@compuserve.com > From: CompuServe Postmaster > Subject: RE: Addressing Members > Reply-To: pmaster@postmaster.compuserve.com > Error-To: pmaster@postmaster.compuserve.com > Status: RO > Content-Length: 925 > Lines: 26 > > > All CompuServe addresses are either of the form 7xxxx,xxx or > 1xxxxx,xxx. (where each "x" signifies a digit from 0 to 7). > There can be from 2 to 4 digits following the comma. > > To send mail to such an address from the Internet, change the > comma to a period and attach "@CompuServe.com" as is shown > in the following examples: > > 74906.1610@CompuServe.com or 100906.1610@CompuServe.com > > All CompuServe alphanumeric addresses contain 2-32 characters. > Valid characters are A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and "_" (underscore). > There must be one alpha character, but not more than four of > the same character consecutively. To send mail to such an > address from the Internet, type the address and attach > "@CompuServe.com" as is shown in the following example: > > ID_123@CompuServe.com > > Please contact postmaster@compuserve.com if you need additional > formatting information for other types of addresses. > > Cordially, > > The Electronic Postmaster Note the From address is exactly the address I sent to! My brief and testy reply was sent to the reply-to, and it doesn't seem to have bounced. Let's see if a human being responds . . . -- "Where there's a will, there's a lawyer." Kinky Friedman, `God Bless John Wayne' From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 03:23:24 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA27478; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 03:03:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wubios.wustl.edu (wubios.wustl.edu [128.252.117.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA27471 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 03:03:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from phil@localhost) by wubios.wustl.edu (8.9.0/8.9.0) id FAA28239; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 05:09:37 -0500 (CDT) From: "J. Philip Miller" Message-Id: <199808031009.FAA28239@wubios.wustl.edu> Subject: Re: "probe failed" (was: Re: Unhelpful Bounce Of The Week) To: de5@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 05:09:36 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <19980731141020.2371.qmail@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> from "Dave Sill" at Jul 31, 98 10:10:19 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 PGP3 *ALPHA*] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > "Ronald F. Guilmette" wrote: > > > >Why does it make any sense to send yet another message to an address that > >you already know and believe is dead? > > Because you don't know it's dead--you just know it's bouncing. I've > seen several cases where bounced messages were *also* successfully > delivered. If you don't send the user a message saying "Hey, your mail > is bouncing", they may never realize it. > which is why the majordomo solution of placing "bouncing subscribers" onto a special "bounces" (list which sends the message that the subscriber has been removed for many days after they have been removed) work so well. -phil > -Dave > > -- J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067 Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis MO 63110 phil@wubios.WUstl.edu - (314) 362-3617 [362-2693(FAX)] http://www.biostat.wustl.edu/~phil From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 06:56:55 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA02854; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 06:13:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA02841 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 06:13:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newmicronpc (slip-32-100-104-62.ct.us.ibm.net [32.100.104.62]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id HAA27488; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 07:20:01 -0600 (MDT) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Re: individualized probe messages Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 09:29:04 -0400 Message-ID: <000001bdbee2$af2b9fc0$3e686420@newmicronpc> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 In-Reply-To: <199808030800.BAA25109@honor.greatcircle.com> Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk "David W. Tamkin" wrote: > Background: I posted about a problem I had had to deal with without the > facilities that many of you have at your disposal. Tom Neff then posted a > follow-up that offered a solution I could not have used... ... > | I should emphasize (if it's not already obvious) that the From: addresses, > | machine and domain you use for the serialized probe need have nothing to do > | with the machine or domain that the mailing list itself emanates from. > > Yes, the From: address and the From_ address can differ from the true send- > ing point and from one another. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if the LIST you wish to probe is hosted at BLACKIRONPRISON.COM and you have NO privileges there at all, it doesn't matter, because you can conduct your probe from LITTLEBOX.CUTEPUPPY.EDU or FRIEND.VANITY.COM or anywhere else you can either throw a real or virtual server on the Net, or borrow the service from someone else who has one. If other list-managers here use the serialized-From trick successfully, then one could just post a query "Need to conduct an individualized probe - will trade old Archie comix - private replies please" and someone could respond. You could even offer the service for money, hint hint. By the way, the suggestion was also made to use Unix "plus addressing", e.g., From: jsmith+12345@something.com - it's a great suggestion but after trying it on three separate sites, I haven't gotten it to work. Has Sendmail 8.9 broken this, perhaps? From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 13:26:29 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA03309; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 06:49:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA03302 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 06:48:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-4.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.74]) by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA19591; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:55:22 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA00561; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 16:35:10 +0200 Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 16:35:10 +0200 Message-Id: <199808031435.QAA00561@quill> From: Norbert Bollow Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: RAF@CU.NIH.GOV CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-reply-to: <199808011742.KAA24896@web.webcoach.com> (RAF@CU.NIH.GOV) Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I wrote: > > So far, the only situation when an entity A can legally send something > > with null return path to another entity B is when A needs to make some > > kind of status report about an e-mail message (with non-null return > > path) which was sent by B. Roger Fajman replied: > When RFC 821 was written, spam did not exist, so the > issue wasn't considered. You have a good point here. The issue should be considered and then clarified. I will stop arguing about obscure implications of RFCs on matters which were not considered when the original standard was written. > The mailing list for the working group is drums@cs.utk.edu. To be > added, write to drums-request@cs.utk.edu. Done. > But the working group is trying to get both this document and the RFC > 822 revision out the door, so it may well not want to consider this > issue at this late date. Actually IMHO the most logical place to clarify this matter would not be the revision of RFC 821, but a revision of RFC 1123. Do you know whether such a revision is planned or in progress? -- NB. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 14:22:49 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA10609; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:44:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from beltway.cd.com (beltway.cd.com [204.217.30.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id NAA10601 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:43:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bif.cd.com by beltway.cd.com (5.x/SMI-SVR4) id AA14435; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:49:39 -0500 Received: by bif.cd.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id PAA11797; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:46:35 -0500 From: richardm@cd.com (Richard Masoner) Message-Id: <199808032046.PAA11797@bif.cd.com> Subject: Re: individualized probe messages To: tneff@panix.com (Tom Neff) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:46:35 -0500 (CDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <000001bdbee2$af2b9fc0$3e686420@newmicronpc> from "Tom Neff" at Aug 3, 98 09:29:04 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > By the way, the suggestion was also made to use Unix "plus addressing", e.g., > From: jsmith+12345@something.com - it's a great suggestion but after trying it > on three separate sites, I haven't gotten it to work. Has Sendmail 8.9 broken > this, perhaps? Works for me with systems running sendmail 8.7 and 8.8.8. It doesn't work on the sendmail that comes with Solaris 2.6. I haven't tried it with a system running sendmail 8.9. sendmail that comes with various versions of IRIX also seem to break. sendmail which ships with IRIX 6.5, for example, is based on 8.8.8 code. Richard Masoner Champaign Illinois USA From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 14:55:01 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA10114; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:07:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA10106 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:07:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id PAA16612 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:13:51 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id PAA08481 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:13:51 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808032013.PAA08481@Venus.mcs.net> Subject: Re: individualized probe messages To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:13:50 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <000001bdbee2$af2b9fc0$3e686420@newmicronpc> from "Tom Neff" at Aug 3, 98 09:29:04 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Tom Neff wrote, | I'm saying that if the LIST you wish to probe is hosted at | BLACKIRONPRISON.COM and you have NO privileges there at all, it doesn't | matter, because you can conduct your probe from LITTLEBOX.CUTEPUPPY.EDU or | FRIEND.VANITY.COM or anywhere else you can either throw a real or virtual | server on the Net, or borrow the service from someone else who has one. Yes ... as long as the site is under your control or whoever controls it lets you. Thank you for clarifying; that is rather different from what I thought you meant (which was also true). | If other list-managers here use the serialized-From trick successfully, | then one could just post a query "Need to conduct an individualized probe - | will trade old Archie comix - private replies please" and someone could | respond. Of course; that is a good example of a way we can help one another out in addition to answering one another's questions. I asked a bigger favor on this very list this past spring and another member offered the service (which I will need for the last time later this month). | By the way, the suggestion was also made to use Unix "plus addressing", | e.g., From: jsmith+12345@something.com - it's a great suggestion but after | trying it on three separate sites, I haven't gotten it to work. Has | Sendmail 8.9 broken this, perhaps? Hmm. I'll try it from here. When my problem with a member who forwarded to a bad Prodigy address occurred, I had no plus addressing available, but I do now. Results to follow. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 17:59:38 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA14807; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 17:48:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA14778 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 17:48:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id TAA27262 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:54:48 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id TAA12150 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:54:48 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808040054.TAA12150@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: plus+addressing and probes To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:54:47 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <000001bdbee2$af2b9fc0$3e686420@newmicronpc> from "Tom Neff" at Aug 3, 98 09:29:04 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Tom Neff wrote, | By the way, the suggestion was also made to use Unix "plus addressing", | e.g., From: jsmith+12345@something.com - it's a great suggestion but after | trying it on three separate sites, I haven't gotten it to work. Has | Sendmail 8.9 broken this, perhaps? Hard to say ... I sent mail to an impossible address with the envelope sender pointing to a plussed address for me on a machine running Sendmail 8.9.0 -- but it will deliver mail for me that I can read on servers in the domain, I cannot log into the machine that runs 8.9.0 and honors plussing. It was bounced to the full plussed address. Then I tried sending mail to an impossible address on the 8.9.0 machine with the envelope directed to a plussed address for me here, where the Sendmail version appears to be 8.8.7. The plussing was honored for the bounce, but the item was refused in consultation and never got into the 8.9.0 machine. Perhaps someone who can log into a machine running 8.9.0 can throw more light on the subject. I'm assuming that the colon in Mr. Neff's "From:" is a typo and he was set- ting the envelope sender to the plussed address, not just the RFC822 From: field. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 20:17:10 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA15782; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 18:59:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from CU.NIH.GOV (cu.nih.gov [128.231.160.111]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id SAA15775 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 18:59:48 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199808040159.SAA15775@honor.greatcircle.com> To: nb@thinkcoach.com cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: "Roger Fajman" Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 22:04:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Actually IMHO the most logical place to clarify this matter would not be > the revision of RFC 821, but a revision of RFC 1123. Do you know whether > such a revision is planned or in progress? > > -- NB. None is in progress and I've not heard of any plans. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 23:17:05 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA18814; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 22:57:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [36.21.0.44]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id WAA18807 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 22:56:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 21544 invoked by uid 500); 4 Aug 1998 06:03:21 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: "probe failed" (was: Re: Unhelpful Bounce Of The Week) References: <2.2.32.19980731024749.01086a74@pop.ma.ultranet.com> From: Russ Allbery In-Reply-To: Stan Ryckman's message of "Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:47:49 -0400" Date: 03 Aug 1998 23:03:20 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 23 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Stan Ryckman writes: > Well, the null envelope return address just means that there is nobody > who cares if the message can be delivered; it can be silently trashed. > It is you who CHOSE to examine mail that said "discard if > undeliverable." Its use predates spamming by decades. True, the most > COMMON use is to avoid "bounce loops." If that's the true intention of the null envelope, then that's a *very* bad idea, as a null envelope doesn't actually mean anything of the sort. If a message with a null envelope bounces, that's a double-bounce, which can often indicate a more serious misconfiguration, and some MTAs will deliver the resulting double-bounce to the local postmaster. I find that feature valuable. Using a null envelope sender is not equivalent to saying that if the message can't be delivered it should be silently trashed. If that's the intention, you should use as the envelope sender an address that silently discards all mail sent to it. Most stock sendmail configurations come with an alias "nobody" that does this. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 4 13:30:04 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA03082; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 13:23:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from www.kxan.com (kxan.com [207.207.6.50]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA03075 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 13:23:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from micah@localhost) by www.kxan.com (8.8.5/8.8.b5) id PAA08789; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 15:30:11 -0500 (CDT) Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 15:30:05 -0500 (CDT) From: Micah Thompson To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Fastest List? In-Reply-To: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello, I just setup a majordomo list for a local weather Email Alert system, and need some tips. I need more speed! The list's objective is this: To get the alert out to all the subscribers in record speed. Actual subscribers cannot post to the list, so it's just a distribution list really. Currently I am running majordomo with a custom perl program written for me by a friend called "splitlist" but it's still too slow. (splitlist takes the subscriber lists, alphabetizes by reverse domain, and spawns off multiple parallel sendmail processes). It is way faster than majordomo alone, but still not enough. Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something like listserv? Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler radar). :) If the weather warning expires at 3:30pm, and a subscriber doesn't receive it until 4:30pm, they tend to get irrate. ;) Thanks, Micah Thompson Computer System Manager WebMaster KXAN-TV 36, NBC Affiliate, http://www.kxan.com KNVA-TV 54, WB Affiliate, http://www.knva.com Austin, TX From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 4 17:59:29 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA06433; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 17:42:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA06425 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 17:42:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-2.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.72]) by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA29482; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 02:49:24 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id DAA00561; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 03:47:39 +0200 Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 03:47:39 +0200 Message-Id: <199808050147.DAA00561@quill> From: Norbert Bollow Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: Detailed Revision/Update of Message Standards Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Clarification request: limits on use of null reverse-path Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Greetings, In the replacement for RFC821 I would like to see the issue clarified of when it is appropriate to use a null reverse-path. As I understand RFC821 and also draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-07, the intended meaning is that a null reverse-path should only be used in certain circumstances, namely when an entity A has sent an e-mail message to B, then B may use a null reverse-path when sending a notification about this message back to A. What I would like to see clarified is that it is not appropriate to use a null reverse-path merely because the sender does not want to be bothered with non-delivery notifications. Norbert Bollow (Zuerich, Switzerland) suggested additions to draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-07 ================================================== Add the following at the end of the second paragraph in section 4.1.1.2: : ... However, a null reverse-path SHOULD NOT be used merely because the : sender does not want to be bothered with non-delivery notifications. See : section ##6.4 for a discussion of when a null reverse-path is appropriate : and when it is not. Add the following after section 6.3: : 6.4 The importance of the null reverse-path for debugging mail problems : : There are several types of notification messages which are required by : the relevant standards to be sent with a null reverse path, namely : non-delivery notifications as discussed in section ##3.7, other kinds : of Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs, see [RFC 1894]) and also : Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs, see [RFC 2298]). All of these : kinds of messages are notification about a previous message, and they : are sent to the reverse-path of the previous mail message. If the : delivery of such a notification message fails, that usually indicates : a problem with the mail system of the host to which the notification : message is addressed. For this reason, at many hosts the MTA is set up : to forward such failed notification messages to someone who is able to : fix problems with the mail system, e.g. via the postmaster alias. This : is a valuable tool for debugging mail problems. : : For messages where the recipient address has been obtained from any : source other than the reverse-path of a previous message, a null : reverse path SHOULD NOT be used, so that the mail administrator of the : destination host will not be needlessly alerted if the message is : undeliverable. From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 05:51:38 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA16112; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 05:36:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from MAINE.maine.edu (maine.maine.edu [130.111.39.100]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id FAA16105 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 05:36:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from polaris.umpi.maine.edu [130.111.208.87] by MAINE.maine.edu (IBM VM SMTP Level 310) via TCP with SMTP ; Wed, 05 Aug 1998 08:41:56 EDT Received: from POLARIS/MERCURYQUEUE by polaris.umpi.maine.edu (Mercury 1.21); 5 Aug 98 08:43:04 EST Received: from MERCURYQUEUE by POLARIS (Mercury 1.21); 5 Aug 98 08:42:55 EST From: "Anthony J. Albert" Organization: University of Maine at PI To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 08:42:49 EST MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Fastest List? X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.42a) Message-ID: <3F5678287D@polaris.umpi.maine.edu> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 5 Aug 98 at 1:00, List-Managers-Digest wrote: >Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 15:30:05 -0500 (CDT) >From: Micah Thompson >Subject: Fastest List? > >Hello, > >I just setup a majordomo list for a local weather Email Alert system, and >need some tips. > >I need more speed! The list's objective is this: To get the alert out >to all the subscribers in record speed. Actual subscribers cannot post >to the list, so it's just a distribution list really. >If the weather warning expires at 3:30pm, and a subscriber doesn't >receive it until 4:30pm, they tend to get irrate. ;) > Well, one possible speed improvement would be to take Majordomo out of the loop entirely. Just set up an account on the machine which has the sole purpose of running a job every five or ten minutes, which can then distribute the mail in its inbox, if there is any. Admittedly, this is the next nearest thing to re-writing Majordomo, so that may not be the way to go. Also, you would lose the ability for people to subscribe themselves to the list, most likely, so, on second thought, this may really _not_ be the way to go. The real strategy here is to first determine what the bottleneck is. It could be one of a number of things: network connection(s), the load the machine is carrying for other tasks, or the time it takes to process the mailing lists via the perl script you mentioned. If possible, I would suggest having the perl script modified slightly so that when the next alert went out, it put the time-stamp for each message into a file. Then you could examine the file to see how long after the alert was first sent to majordomo it took for the mail to start to be distributed. The next thing to do would be to examine the logs for the httpd program. See if you can get information about how many hits it is getting during the time that the weather warning is being emailled. If it's getting lots of hits during the email distribution time, then you might begin to think about getting another machine to handle the email. If the machine is getting few or some hits during the email distribution, it might be a network limitation, and you might investigate to see where the limiting factor in network bandwidth is. Hope this helps, Anthony J. Albert ============================================================== Anthony J. Albert albert@polaris.umpi.maine.edu Systems and Software Support Specialist Postmaster Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle "The World Wide Web is just like its namesake, the spider's web - full of dirt and bugs!" From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 06:36:44 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA16510; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 06:25:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA16490 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 06:25:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-7.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.77]) by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA32487; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 15:31:44 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA00735; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:09:40 +0200 Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:09:40 +0200 Message-Id: <199808051409.QAA00735@quill> From: Norbert Bollow Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: drums@cs.utk.edu, list-managers@greatcircle.com In-reply-to: (message from Philip Hazel on Wed, 5 Aug 1998 10:04:19 +0100 (BST)) Subject: Re: Clarification request: limits on use of null reverse-path Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I wrote: > What I would like to see clarified is that it is not appropriate to use > a null reverse-path merely because the sender does not want to be > bothered with non-delivery notifications. Philip Hazel replied: > That would leave no simple mechanism for a sender to achieve that > effect. I am not convinced that there are any situations where this effect is really appropriate except when sending some kind of notification to the return path of a previously-received message. However _if_ you really want to send a message so that you won't see any notifications about it (and I'm assuming that you have a legitimate reason for this, i.e. you're not a spammer), you can always set your envelope sender to a 'nobody' alias at the originating host which forwards to /dev/null or the equivalent. > (DSN is not simple, nor widely deployed.) The increasing use of > autoresponders means that is it important to have such a mechanism, as > otherwise the chance of autoresponder<=>autoresponder loops is > increased. If you're talking about an autoresponder which sends its response to the envelope sender of the incoming message, the text which I'm proposing does not forbid the autoresponder to use a null return path. (The "SHOULD NOT" in the proposed addition to section 4.1.1.2 does not apply because in this case the intention is to prevent loops and not just that someone does not want to be bothered. The "SHOULD NOT" in the proposed new section 6.4 does not apply either. If you're talking about an autoresponder which sends its response to the header From: address of the incoming message, then the appropriate action will _not_ be to use a null reverse path, but to use a non-null reverse-path that is a valid e-mail address at the host with the autoresponder, but which is guaranteed not to lead to such an autoresponder, e.g. something like . In my opinion the appropriate way to handle mail to this address would be a little perl script which checks incoming messages with null return path if there is a large number of such notifications from the same host (in which case postmaster would be alerted about the potential problem) and discards notifications otherwise, while messages with non-null return path would be forwarded to a human who is responsible for the autoresponder. However if you do not agree with this opinion and you prefer to handle all mail manually, or discard it all unread, there is nothing in my proposed text which would forbid either of those two options. Note that from the perspective of debugging obscure problems, an e-mail robot which sends messages with a reverse path like is better than one which uses a null reverse path not only because the reverse path helps avoiding unneccessary double bounces, but also because the reverse path helps with distinguishing between maillog entries from bounces and those from messages sent by an e-mail robot. The only reason why I have not included this point in my proposed text is that I don't think that a reverse path (which forwards to /dev/null and nowhere else) will ever be really appropriate. Loops between various e-mail rebots (not only autoresponders) should be fought with methods that do not make it impossible for the e-mail robot to look at bounces of messages which they send. It is true that the methods which are currently employed for preventing loops between various e-mail rebots are somewhat ad-hoc and unsatisfying. They could be greatly improved by a new, standardized Robots: header which would specify what kind of action an e-mail robot should take if the message is processed by one. The possible actions could be "discard", "bounce" or "process", with a default of "process" if the header is not there. > > : For messages where the recipient address has been obtained from any > > : source other than the reverse-path of a previous message, a null > > : reverse path SHOULD NOT be used, so that the mail administrator of the > > : destination host will not be needlessly alerted if the message is > > : undeliverable. > > In many cases it is the mail administrator of the sending host who would > be alerted, True. I will need to revise my proposed text a little. If there is a rough consensus in the DRUMS working group to include something similar in meaning to the "SHOULD NOT" which I'm proposing, I will be willing to work a little more on the explanatory text, at least to correct the minor error which you pointed out. (I currently feel that trying to discuss e-mail robots, or spam, automated bounce-handling in any detail would be outside of the intended scope of the document, though.) > but it does depend on the way the destination's MTA is > configured. Yes. > When the volume of mail on any system gets at all > substantial, mail administrators tend simply to ignore undeliverable > messages whose senders are "<>". 99% of those I see are the result of > spam. However if you take precautions not to expose most of the email addresses of your network on the Web or Usenet or in unprotected mailing list archives (i.e. those places where spammers go to harvest e-mail adresses) and you make sure that the addresses which you need to expose will never become invalid, you will not have this problem. (Of course another, and probably much more important, benefit of such a policy is that you can then install a spam filter on those addresses which you expose). -- NB. From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 07:20:54 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA16791; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 06:58:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from beltway.cd.com (beltway.cd.com [204.217.30.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA16784 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 06:58:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bif.cd.com by beltway.cd.com (5.x/SMI-SVR4) id AA12343; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 09:04:36 -0500 Received: by bif.cd.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA08467; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 09:01:36 -0500 From: richardm@cd.com (Richard Masoner) Message-Id: <199808051401.JAA08467@bif.cd.com> Subject: Re: Fastest List? To: micah@kxan.com (Micah Thompson) Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 09:01:36 -0500 (CDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: from "Micah Thompson" at Aug 4, 98 03:30:05 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Micah Thompson asked about ways to speed up distribution of his wx alert list: > Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something > like listserv? Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily > loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic > being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler > radar). :) The list-admin FAQ at ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/mail/list-admin/software-faq appears to answer your question. Here's an excerpt from the relevant section: --------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 2.05 Performance and system-load issues related to mail deliver The main issue in distributing to large lists is, how quickly can you get the mail out? Most MLM's leave routing and optimization decisions up to the MTA (Mail Transport Agent, usually Sendmail under Unix), but some other systems -- notably ListProc, LISTSERV, and SmartList -- take a more active approach in managing network load. To illustrate, let's look at the path mail takes to delivery in each of these four systems. --------------------------------------------------------------- Your technique of organizing recipients by domain and starting multiple sendmail processes is similar to what Listproc and SmartList (part of procmail) do. I've used Listproc, majordomo, and procmail; I'm not all that familiar with Listserv other than being on some lists served by Listserv. You'll want to read the FAQ for details, but from what I understand all Listserv servers cooperate with one another and list mail is distributed to other listserv servers for further distribution (if my explanation is messed up somebody please correct me). A few things to consider: 1) Use exploders. For example, if you have several subscribers at foo.com, send one message to an alias at foo.com, and let the MTA there handle distribution to multiple users @ foo.com. This requires the cooperation of the admin at foo.com, of course. 2) sendmail isn't exactly the quickest MTA in the world. Look at some of the alternative MTAs. 3) The time it takes to deliver a message is affected by factors other than the time it takes to leave your system. Your network connectivity can be a BIG factor if you have a large list, especially if you have a popular web server. I'm on the the tornado warning list hosted at the University of Illinois. It typically takes three or four minutes for a notice to get to me once it has left the UofI then through Chicago, mae-west, PSI.NET, and finally to my desktop. 4) Check your network connectivity with your upstream, ALTER.NET. I hear UUNET does things like sell you a T1, then overload it by sticking three other customers on the same T1. The small print will let you know what kind of bandwidth you have. IANAL and other disclaimers apply. 5) Does Austin have some sort of local NAP, and does your provider participate in it? That can also help in distribution to local customers. > If the weather warning expires at 3:30pm, and a subscriber doesn't > receive it until 4:30pm, they tend to get irrate. ;) If they require some sort of real-time notification, well, they need to understand that email is not a reliable method of notification. Richard Masoner Champaign Illinois USA From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 08:17:03 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA17831; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 08:03:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA17821 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 08:03:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-0.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.70]) by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA21480; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 17:09:55 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA00892; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 18:00:41 +0200 Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 18:00:41 +0200 Message-Id: <199808051600.SAA00892@quill> From: Norbert Bollow Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: ph10@cus.cam.ac.uk Cc: drums@cs.utk.edu, list-managers@greatcircle.com In-reply-to: (message from Philip Hazel on Wed, 5 Aug 1998 14:53:46 +0100 (BST)) Subject: Re: Clarification request: limits on use of null reverse-path Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I wrote: > > However if you take precautions not to expose most of the email > > addresses of your network on the Web or Usenet or in unprotected mailing > > list archives (i.e. those places where spammers go to harvest e-mail > > adresses) and you make sure that the addresses which you need to expose > > will never become invalid, you will not have this problem. Philip Hazel replied > I am sorry, but that is totally unrealistic. > > We are a University of over 20,000 people. There is no way we can stop > our users exposing their email addresses to the world. Several thousand I'm sorry that the words I used may indeed be read as sounding a little arrogant, or even insulting. I assure you that they were not meant like that! In fact I did not intend to claim that this scenario would be realistic for everyone or for you in particular. However there are situations (in more corporate environments) where it is possible to do this. The point which I wanted to make is that since in some situations it is possible to control the effects of spam (so that spam does not cause you to be flooded with masses of pointless double bounces) it makes sense to include a statement in the RFC which will prevent software packages from causing pointless double bounces. -- NB From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 11:46:55 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA20968; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 11:36:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cli.computerlogic.com (cli.computerlogic.com [204.216.123.193]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA20961 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 11:36:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jporter2.computerlogic.com (jporter2.computerlogic.com [204.216.123.126]) by cli.computerlogic.com (8.8.5/SCO5) with SMTP id OAA03501 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 14:43:58 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199808051843.OAA03501@cli.computerlogic.com> X-Sender: jporter@pop.computerlogic.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Demo Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 14:38:02 -0400 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: "Jimmy D. Porter" Subject: Re: Fastest List? In-Reply-To: References: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 03:30 PM 8/4/98 -0500, Micah Thompson wrote: >Hello, > >I just setup a majordomo list for a local weather Email Alert system, and >need some tips. > >I need more speed! The list's objective is this: To get the alert out >to all the subscribers in record speed. Actual subscribers cannot post >to the list, so it's just a distribution list really. In your list-name.config file there should be a line: # Put a precedence header with value into the outgoing # message. precedence = bulk I am not sure what the other options are but you may could try Priority or just comment the line out. This should/may cause the messages to spend less time in the queue. - ---------------------------------------------------------- - Jimmy Porter - - Internet Information Services Div. of: ComputerLogic, Inc. - jporter@computerlogic.com http://www.computerlogic.com - 912-474-5593 Ext 370 From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 12:45:58 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA21581; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 12:29:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkman.org (cpu1787.adsl.bellglobal.com [206.47.37.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA21574 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 12:29:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from george ([192.168.66.27]) by monkman.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id PAA15618 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 15:28:36 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from brian@monkman.org) Message-Id: <199808051928.PAA15618@monkman.org> From: "Brian Monkman" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 15:36:47 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Fastest List? Reply-to: brian@monkman.org In-reply-to: <3F5678287D@polaris.umpi.maine.edu> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk One possible bottle neck is the receiving mail relay. If you are running sendmail I think it spawns a single process to deliver a message regardless of the number of recipients. I have had the same sort of problem you are experiencing and while my mail is not as time critical as yours I wanted to figure out a workaround. What I did is send out a few test e-mails and ran a tail -f on the maillog file. By doing that I could tell what mail servers were delaying things. Doing it a number of times over the course of a few days eliminated - to some degree - temporary problems. What I then did was edit the list file and moved the offending e-mail addresses to the bottom of the file and I contacted the admins of the mail server. I know this isn't very technical but it did work for me. Probably not too helpful for a high volume, large subscriber list. Brian From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 17:31:00 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA24604; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:13:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA24596 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:13:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA04450 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 07:50:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 29140 invoked by uid 500); 3 Aug 1998 14:57:08 -0000 Message-ID: <19980803105708.I12173@blank.org> Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 10:57:08 -0400 From: "Nathan J. Mehl" To: Norbert Bollow , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, Eric Thomas Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821 References: <18600.901841159@monkeys.com> <199807311728.TAA00282@quill> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91 In-Reply-To: <199807311728.TAA00282@quill>; from Norbert Bollow on Fri, Jul 31, 1998 at 07:28:36PM +0200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In the immortal words of Norbert Bollow (nb@thinkcoach.com): > > I am surprised to see you leave the list-managers list in reaction > to Ron's criticism. He would hardly be the first to leave a list because rfg's presence rendered the signal-to-noise ratio untenable. List-managers would probably not be the first list it happened to, either. -n, who foolishly thought it was safe to come back after the _last_ rfg-centered pissfest. ------------------------------------------------------------ "Cyberterrorists may be difficult to capture in the act, but from what I know about people who are highly skilled with computers, they should be easy to beat up." (--The Onion) ------------------------------------------------ From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 17:45:52 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA24554; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:12:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA24544 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:12:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Thinkage.On.CA (thinkage.thinkage.on.ca [192.102.11.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA00285 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 03:57:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from thinkage.on.ca (ppp1.thinkage.on.ca [192.102.11.31]) by Thinkage.On.CA (8.9.1/Thinkage980518-8.9.0) with ESMTP id HAA15265; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 07:03:17 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <35C598D7.64405974@thinkage.on.ca> Date: Mon, 03 Aug 1998 07:02:47 -0400 From: Ken X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (WinNT; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Grant Neufeld CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: The List- headers are now an RFC References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Grant Neufeld wrote: > > This is a request for you to implement support for the List- header > fields defined in RFC2369. This will make mail list access easier for > your users. > List-Subscribe: Body=subscribe%20list-managers> i do subs/unsubs manually. and intend on keep doing so for my own reasons. how do i set the above header to say i require the following: your email address (because i dont believe headers work reliably enough) your human name (ie: firstname lastname, whatever) your contact phone number, including area/country codes and best time of day(including timezone info) also, i dont see the point of subscribe info, if the person is already a subscriber (by virtue of getting messages from me) oh okay, the rfc sez the user may want to resubscribe using an old copy of a message.... however on my list going away for temporary absences is done by requesting 'vacation status' not unsubscribing. for unsubscribing loses their posting-quota seniority. bring up the obvious thought: since i cant specify my unique "on vacation/suspend me for a while" ability in the headers, then placing a unsub header would encourage folks to use the *wrong behavior* for my lists... hmmmmmm... > List-Unsubscribe: Body=unsubscribe%20list-managers> how do i set the above to require the users unique PIN. --> ie: in general how do i tell those alleged automated conveniences i want information *specific to the user* rather than static string text? perhaps a generic prompt-get-answer syntax. oh well, i am the minority who doesnt use the prepackaged 'style' of list management. but i do wonder if others require user-specific info during regular admin functions... or *will* they be doing so as the future unfolds. many concepts i've implemented over the years got 'invented' by majordomo,etc 9 months later. quite often. -ken ps: no, my software is not packaged for public consumption. perhaps i should be evil and do so... thus making me less a minority :) From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 18:01:21 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA24816; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:15:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA24784 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:14:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.gcnet.com (mail.gcnet.com [206.252.184.11]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA29578 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 08:35:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pop.gcnet.com (pop.gcnet.com [206.252.184.10]) by mail.gcnet.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id KAA23479; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 10:42:18 -0500 Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 10:42:18 -0500 (CDT) From: Chris Owen To: Tasos Kotsikonas cc: sales@emailsol.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Your Company's Press Releases (fwd) In-Reply-To: <35C712B0.F4DCE4BE@emailsol.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Tasos Kotsikonas wrote: > Chris Owen wrote: > > > Are you related to this? We just blackholed the address and the > > enewsworks.net domain, but I'd hate to lose the listproc mailing list > > because banning the emailsol.com domain. > > Chris, this was a legitimate letter from our president. You've got to be kidding (I hope). You are condoning this blatent (and really, really indiscriminate, since half the addresses it was sent to don't even exist) spam? As a mailing list company you should be particularly sensitive to crap like this. This address was roboted off a web site and clearly was not solicited in any way. I love listproc (and have gone against the tide in not replacing it), love your work, and looked forward to the new product. However, if this is the type of company that is going to be releasing it, we definitely won't want to work with it. Chris > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:37:17 -0400 > > From: EWorks > > Reply-To: sales@emailsol.com > > To: sales@lists.hubris.net > > Cc: webmaster@lists.hubris.net, newsletter@lists.hubris.net, > > marketing@lists.hubris.net > > Subject: Your Company's Press Releases > > > > Hi; > > > > I just visited your web site and saw that you have your press releases > > on line. My company is about to release a software product that can > > automate your process of disseminating press releases and would > > dramatically enhance your customer relations. > > > > If you feel that your press release process is a critical function and > > potent marketing activity of your company then you will probably share > > these passions with other professionals in our field: > > > > o You don't want to depend on anyone to update your web site when > > an important press release needs to go out. > > > > o You have felt the pain of managing a growing list of editors and > > interested parties you want to distribute press releases to. > > > > o You realize that there will be times when your press release > > process is going to be under pressure to function rapidly and > > reliably. > > > > o You realize that if there were a way to efficiently manage the > > list of interested parties, that you could use your press > > releases as a vehicle to improve your customer and investor > > relations. > > > > o You are ready to aggressively deploy new internet technology to > > give you a competitive edge in your customer and investor > > relations. > > > > My company's new product, ENewsWorks, is a combination Web Server and > > Email List Management Program which can give your company the most > > advanced Press Release distribution capability in the world. Whenever > > your press release is ready, you simply submit it to ENewsWorks. > > ENewsWorks will then take that document and email out copies of it to > > everyone who is on the email distribution list. At the same time > > ENewsWorks will install that document into your Web site archive of > > press releases that it maintains and automatically update the index to > > those archives. > > > > What is revolutionary about ENewsWorks is the automated process that > > it embodies for distributing your press releases. You do not have to > > manage who gets your press releases because your interested editors, > > investors and customers can subscribe and unsubscribe themselves, and > > when each press release goes out it can automatically reach tens of > > thousands of people directly and simultaneously. You can use your > > press release process to build customer and investor loyalty. What is > > revolutionary about ENewsWorks is that it embodies both "Push" and > > "Pull" internet technology in one complete solution. On a individual > > basis, your investors and customers can opt to have you "Push" press > > releases to them by email, or "Pull" the information themselves by > > visiting your automatically updated, indexed and searchable web site > > archives. > > > > My vision is that ENewsWorks is the first of a new type of Internet > > application that will transform the very nature and function of Press > > Releases. Press Releases are poised to evolve from announcements made > > to broadcast media organizations into a direct communication between > > corporations and interested individuals (who will include > > representatives of the mass media). The internet and the systems > > embodied in ENewsWorks are the enabling technologies for this change. > > > > ENewsWorks Web Server Features: > > > > o Optional password protection allows you to control access to the > > Web Archives of past press releases. > > > > o Built-in search functionality allows your Web visitors to search > > your archive of press releases for phrases or keywords. > > > > o An index of Press Releases is automatically generated. Optional > > additional hierarchy into the Press Releases archive can be > > generated by time period of your choice: yearly, quarterly, > > monthly, etc. > > > > o Subscribers to your Press Release list can view and modify their > > preferences for how they receive your press releases. > > > > o The web site look and feel can be easily modified to match your > > corporate web site with selectable text color, text background, > > background image, your company logo image and your company > > banner image. > > > > ENewsWorks Email Features: > > > > o Your customers, editors and investors can specify how they want > > to receive your press releases. They can receive HTML or plain > > text versions by email, they can receive email notification with > > links only, or if you are generating a high volume of press > > releases, they can opt for compiled digests to be sent to them > > at regular intervals. > > > > o You can configure the email distribution list to be public or > > closed. > > > > o Public distribution lists can be subscribed, unsubscribed and > > configured by the public over your web site. You no longer need > > to manage the list of who gets your press releases, and because > > of this you can open it up to anyone who is interested, which > > will include important investors and customers. We have built > > in a process that assures that individuals can only subscribe > > and unsubscribe themselves: When a person subscribes to receive > > your press releases over the Web, they are automatically sent a > > confirmation to their email address which they have to respond > > to before their subscription goes into effect. > > > > o Closed Distribution lists can only be modified only by the > > people you designate to have Subscription Manager Privileges. > > Subscribers to these lists will not only get their press > > releases emailed to them, but they will also have password > > protected access to the archives over the Internet. > > > > You can read about the specifications of ENewsWorks, subscribe to our > > company press releases, subscribe to our company newsletter, or try > > out a running version of ENewsWorks by visiting our web site at: > > http://www.enewsworks.net > > > > You can email us at: sales@enewsworks.net. > > or call us at: (617) 868-9770 > > > > If you're interested in joining a community of industry professionals > > in your field, come join The Press Release Discussion List being > > hosted on our site at http://www.enewsworks.net. We also host the > > Corporate Newsletter Discussion List. > > > > I hope we can be of service to you. > > > > Sincerely, > > > > Robert Anue > > President, > > Email Solutions Inc. > > > -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chris Owen ~ Lottery: A stupidity tax PO Box 1985 ~ owenc@gcnet.com Garden City, KS 67846 ~ http://www.gardencity.net/~owenc/ Voice: (316) 275-1900 ~ ftp://ftp.gardencity.net/pub/owenc/ Fax: (316) 275-0313 ~ 88 FA CF C6 65 23 63 C1 6E 80 AE 0B 51 C0 22 36 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 21:02:49 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA28352; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 20:42:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from koobera.math.uic.edu (koobera.math.uic.edu [131.193.178.247]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA28345 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 20:42:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 27571 invoked by uid 666); 6 Aug 1998 03:49:32 -0000 Date: 6 Aug 1998 03:49:32 -0000 Message-ID: <19980806034932.27569.qmail@cr.yp.to> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: "D. J. Bernstein" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: The List- headers are now an RFC References: <35C598D7.64405974@thinkage.on.ca> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ken writes: > ie: in general how do i tell those alleged automated conveniences > i want information *specific to the user* Put the List-* fields into that user's confirmation message. It's up to the MUA to remember the latest List-* instructions for each mailing list. ---Dan Binary qmail distributions are allowed! http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail/dist.html From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 10 15:12:06 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA18736; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:10:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA18723 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:09:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from www.kimminau.org (dosgod.mi.org [207.158.154.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA04190 for ; Sun, 9 Aug 1998 18:24:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kimminau.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by www.kimminau.org (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id VAA01499 for ; Sun, 9 Aug 1998 21:31:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <35CE4D83.26281BC9@kimminau.org> Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 21:31:47 -0400 From: Eric Kimminau X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05C-SGI [en] (X11; I; IRIX 6.5 IP32) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Majordomo Log file reporting? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Howdy! Has anyone out there written a Majordomo Logfile statistical analyzer? Something that generates reports by member, message sizes and number, etc? Ive been searching for something like this but my only pointer so far was to LogAnalyzer1.0 on a website in Finland but it was something available for download. Thanks in advance! Eric. -- ========================================================================= Eric Kimminau eric@kimminau.org "I speak my mind and no one else's." "I am the downhill tumble and roll champ, king of the toad finders, captain of the high altitude tree branch vista club, second place finisher in the round the yard backward dash, premier burper state division, sodbuster and worm scout first order, and generalissimo of the mud and mayhem society." Calvin, 1995 Baroque (adj.): when you run out of Monet. In dog years, Im dead. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 10 15:26:36 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA18677; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:09:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA18667 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:09:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA21444 for ; Sat, 8 Aug 1998 18:18:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id UAA12390; Sat, 8 Aug 1998 20:25:48 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id UAA17939; Sat, 8 Aug 1998 20:25:47 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808090125.UAA17939@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: Re: The List- headers are now an RFC To: ken@Thinkage.On.CA (Ken) Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 20:25:47 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <35C598D7.64405974@thinkage.on.ca> from "Ken" at Aug 3, 98 07:02:47 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ken asked, | Grant Neufeld wrote: | > List-Subscribe: Body=subscribe%20list-managers> | | i do subs/unsubs manually. and intend on keep doing so for | my own reasons. | | how do i set the above header to say i require the following: | your email address (because i dont believe headers work | reliably enough) | your human name (ie: firstname lastname, whatever) | your contact phone number, including area/country codes and | best time of day(including timezone info) My best suggestion, since one may put comments into parentheses: List-Subscribe: (instructions will be sent back to you) List-Unsubscribe: (instructions will be sent back to you) If you do not require such details in a signoff request, then List-Unsubscribe: which, by the way, has been working out fine for my own list, where likewise by choice I maintain the membership rolls manually. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 10 15:41:42 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA18508; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:07:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA18498 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:07:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA09712 for ; Thu, 6 Aug 1998 07:19:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 24202 invoked by uid 500); 6 Aug 1998 14:26:23 -0000 Message-ID: <19980806102623.F12173@blank.org> Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 10:26:23 -0400 From: "Nathan J. Mehl" To: "Jimmy D. Porter" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Fastest List? References: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette> <199808051843.OAA03501@cli.computerlogic.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91 In-Reply-To: <199808051843.OAA03501@cli.computerlogic.com>; from Jimmy D. Porter on Wed, Aug 05, 1998 at 02:38:02PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In the immortal words of Jimmy D. Porter (jporter@computerlogic.com): > > In your list-name.config file there should be a line: > # Put a precedence header with value into the outgoing > # message. > precedence = bulk > > I am not sure what the other options are but you may could try Priority or > just comment the line out. This should/may cause the messages to spend > less time in the queue. No, no, no! This is an actively antisocial approach. Remote MTAs and MUAs also will do filtering based on Precedence headers. This is like saying "If you rewire everybody else's speedometer, your commute to work will go faster." If you want to speed up queue processing, just about every MTA in the world (certainly including sendmail and qmail) will allow you to locally tune the queue parameters locally. -n ------------------------------------------------------ "Television is going to change the world; it's got everything you need: sight, sound, motion and stupid white men." (--Nolanda Hill) ------------------------------------------ From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 10 15:56:35 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA18336; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:05:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA18307 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:05:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA17036 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 07:15:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 5210 invoked by uid 500); 5 Aug 1998 14:21:59 -0000 Message-ID: <19980805102159.W12173@blank.org> Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 10:21:59 -0400 From: "Nathan J. Mehl" To: Micah Thompson , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Fastest List? References: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91 In-Reply-To: ; from Micah Thompson on Tue, Aug 04, 1998 at 03:30:05PM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In the immortal words of Micah Thompson (micah@kxan.com): > > I need more speed! > Currently I am running majordomo with a custom perl program written for > me by a friend called "splitlist" but it's still too slow. (splitlist > takes the subscriber lists, alphabetizes by reverse domain, and spawns > off multiple parallel sendmail processes). It is way faster than > majordomo alone, but still not enough. You probably want to look into the following: 1. bulk_mailer, a majordomo add-on that does some of the same things as your script does, and a bit more. 2. qmail (www.qmail.org), vmailer (www.vmailer.org), or another higher-performance MTA. (LSMTP may or may not fit the bill; I've never used it, so cannot comment.) 3. Rob Kolstad of BSDI presented a paper on tuning high- use mailing lists at the last USENIX LISA conference. The paper may be available somewhere on www.usenix.org. 4. The majordomo-users@greatcircle.com mailing list. :) > Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something > like listserv? As a rule, the MTA tends to be the speed limiting factor, not the MLM. However, if your list is large enough, or you run a great number of lists, Listserv might be a win for you on other considerations. "Your Mileage May Vary." > Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily > loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic > being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler > radar). :) Split your web machine from your mail machine. Really. Or at a minimum make sure it's a multiprocessor machine and that the mail spools and web directories live on different drives or better yet different SCSI controllers. But really, split the functions into two different machines. :) -n ------------------------------------------------------------ Remember when they told you there'd be no future? Well, this is it. ------------------------------------------------ From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 13 12:42:12 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA23159; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 12:29:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA23152 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 12:29:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA08036 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 14:38:18 -0500 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA00550 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 14:38:13 -0500 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199808131938.OAA00550@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Duplicate messages from hotmail? To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 14:38:13 -0500 (CDT) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Is anyone else having problems with duplicate messages coming from subscribers on hotmail? It seems to happen sporadically, and the duplicates have different Message-ID headers so I can't filter them out that way. It looks like hotmail is using qmail, I don't know if that is a factor. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 13 19:49:50 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA28275; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 19:38:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from commedia.cnds.jhu.edu (commedia.cnds.jhu.edu [128.220.231.250]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA28268 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 19:37:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bigfish.cs.jhu.edu (root@bigfish.cs.jhu.edu [128.220.13.193]) by commedia.cnds.jhu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA27540 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 22:46:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from dshaw@localhost) by bigfish.cs.jhu.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) id WAA06900; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 22:31:40 -0400 Message-ID: <19980813223137.31335@bigfish.cs.jhu.edu> Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 22:31:37 -0400 From: David Shaw To: List Managers Subject: Re: Duplicate messages from hotmail? References: <199808131938.OAA00550@celery.tssi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88 In-Reply-To: <199808131938.OAA00550@celery.tssi.com>; from Mike Nolan on Thu, Aug 13, 1998 at 02:38:13PM -0500 Organization: Computer Science Department, The Johns Hopkins University X-PGP-Fingerprint: 3CB3B415/2048/4D 96 83 18 2B AF BE 45 D0 07 C4 07 51 37 B3 18 X-URL: http://www.jabberwocky.com/ X-Phase-Of-Moon: The Moon is Waning Gibbous (59% of Full) X-Current-Email-Backlog: 26 X-Pointless-Random-Number: 157 X-Silly-Header: It sure is. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Aug 13, 1998 at 02:38:13PM -0500, Mike Nolan wrote: > Is anyone else having problems with duplicate messages coming from > subscribers on hotmail? It seems to happen sporadically, and the > duplicates have different Message-ID headers so I can't filter them out that > way. It looks like hotmail is using qmail, I don't know if that is a factor. I haven't seen duplicates, but hotmail seems to do weird things every other day. Most of the time, they seem to hard bounce mail for no particular reason (sometimes the error message is for excessive load, sometimes it's "user unknown" when I *know* the address is good - and turning around a mailing again will go through fine.) They're just plain flaky... David -- David Shaw | dshaw@cs.jhu.edu | WWW http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~dshaw/ +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 14 01:53:39 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA01015; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 23:06:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA01005 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 23:06:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cat.salemcarriers.com (cat.salemcarriers.com [208.134.81.42]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA11673 for ; Wed, 12 Aug 1998 21:34:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yost (Janeway-38.netunlimited.net [208.128.132.87]) by cat.salemcarriers.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id AAA01806 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 00:40:07 -0400 Message-ID: <199808122130280520.0158A488@mail.salemcarriers.com> In-Reply-To: <19980805102159.W12173@blank.org> References: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette> <19980805102159.W12173@blank.org> X-Mailer: Calypso Version 2.40.35 Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 21:30:28 -0400 From: "Spencer Yost" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Bounces Script Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I am looking for the "Bounces" set of perl scripts that will automatically delete list members whose mail continually bounces. Basically this software will add list members whose mail is bouncing to a special "Bounce" mailing list. The software will then permanently remove the subscriber from the regular list and the bounces list if their mail continues to fail in delivery. While I only know of one site that uses it, I have run across many references and discussions about it over the last year or two, enough times to lead me to believe this software is openly distributed. I have tried to contact one list manager whom I know is using it and received no response. I have also searched through the list-manager archive and used the Internet search engines, both to no avail. Thanks in advance, Spencer Yost Owner, ATIS Plow the Net! http://www.atis.net *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 8/10/98, at 10:52 PM, Nathan J. Mehl wrote: >In the immortal words of Micah Thompson (micah@kxan.com): >> >> I need more speed! >> Currently I am running majordomo with a custom perl program written for >> me by a friend called "splitlist" but it's still too slow. (splitlist >> takes the subscriber lists, alphabetizes by reverse domain, and spawns >> off multiple parallel sendmail processes). It is way faster than >> majordomo alone, but still not enough. > >You probably want to look into the following: > >1. bulk_mailer, a majordomo add-on that does some of the > same things as your script does, and a bit more. > >2. qmail (www.qmail.org), vmailer (www.vmailer.org), or > another higher-performance MTA. (LSMTP may or may > not fit the bill; I've never used it, so cannot comment.) > >3. Rob Kolstad of BSDI presented a paper on tuning high- > use mailing lists at the last USENIX LISA conference. > The paper may be available somewhere on www.usenix.org. > >4. The majordomo-users@greatcircle.com mailing list. :) > >> Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something >> like listserv? > >As a rule, the MTA tends to be the speed limiting factor, not >the MLM. However, if your list is large enough, or you run >a great number of lists, Listserv might be a win for you on >other considerations. "Your Mileage May Vary." > >> Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily >> loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic >> being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler >> radar). :) > >Split your web machine from your mail machine. Really. Or at a minimum >make sure it's a multiprocessor machine and that the mail spools and >web directories live on different drives or better yet different >SCSI controllers. But really, split the functions into two different >machines. :) > >-n > >------------------------------------------------------------ > Remember when they told you there'd be no future? Well, this is it. >--------------------------------------------- --- From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 14 19:38:10 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA22503; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 19:26:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cyberq.quality.org (cyberq.quality.org [199.181.80.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA22496 for ; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 19:25:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (help@localhost) by cyberq.quality.org (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id WAA04266; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:34:40 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:34:40 -0400 (EDT) From: "Bill Casti (System Admin)" To: Spencer Yost cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Bounces Script In-Reply-To: <199808122130280520.0158A488@mail.salemcarriers.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Look at SmartBounce. See http://www.smartbounce.com On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Spencer Yost wrote: > I am looking for the "Bounces" set of perl scripts that will automatically > delete list members whose mail continually bounces. Basically this > software will add list members whose mail is bouncing to a special "Bounce" > mailing list. The software will then permanently remove the subscriber > from the regular list and the bounces list if their mail continues to fail > in delivery. > > While I only know of one site that uses it, I have run across many > references and discussions about it over the last year or two, enough > times to lead me to believe this software is openly distributed. I have > tried to contact one list manager whom I know is using it and received no > response. I have also searched through the list-manager archive and used > the Internet search engines, both to no avail. > > Thanks in advance, > > Spencer Yost > Owner, ATIS > Plow the Net! > http://www.atis.net > > *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** > > On 8/10/98, at 10:52 PM, Nathan J. Mehl wrote: > > >In the immortal words of Micah Thompson (micah@kxan.com): > >> > >> I need more speed! > >> Currently I am running majordomo with a custom perl program written for > >> me by a friend called "splitlist" but it's still too slow. (splitlist > >> takes the subscriber lists, alphabetizes by reverse domain, and spawns > >> off multiple parallel sendmail processes). It is way faster than > >> majordomo alone, but still not enough. > > > >You probably want to look into the following: > > > >1. bulk_mailer, a majordomo add-on that does some of the > > same things as your script does, and a bit more. > > > >2. qmail (www.qmail.org), vmailer (www.vmailer.org), or > > another higher-performance MTA. (LSMTP may or may > > not fit the bill; I've never used it, so cannot comment.) > > > >3. Rob Kolstad of BSDI presented a paper on tuning high- > > use mailing lists at the last USENIX LISA conference. > > The paper may be available somewhere on www.usenix.org. > > > >4. The majordomo-users@greatcircle.com mailing list. :) > > > >> Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something > >> like listserv? > > > >As a rule, the MTA tends to be the speed limiting factor, not > >the MLM. However, if your list is large enough, or you run > >a great number of lists, Listserv might be a win for you on > >other considerations. "Your Mileage May Vary." > > > >> Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily > >> loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic > >> being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler > >> radar). :) > > > >Split your web machine from your mail machine. Really. Or at a minimum > >make sure it's a multiprocessor machine and that the mail spools and > >web directories live on different drives or better yet different > >SCSI controllers. But really, split the functions into two different > >machines. :) > > > >-n > > > >------------------------------------------------------------ rg> > > Remember when they told you there'd be no future? Well, this is it. > >--------------------------------------------- > --- > > From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 17 16:59:21 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA12328; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:31:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA12320 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:31:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from moat.ieee.org (moat1.ieee.org [199.172.136.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id IAA20517 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 08:46:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aries.ieee.org by moat.ieee.org via smtpd (for honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) with SMTP; 13 Aug 1998 16:07:24 UT Received: from mako.ieee.org by aries.ieee.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id LAA13337 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:52:13 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199808131552.LAA13337@aries.ieee.org> X-Sender: gsantiag@pop.ieee.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:56:32 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Gilberto Santiago Subject: List Size Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi Everyone, How can I limit the number of subscribers to a list? Let's say 1000 per list. Let's assume that these lists are open. Anyone knows the answer? Any help will be appreciated... ========================================================================== Gilberto Santiago Sr. Systems Administrator IEEE, Information Technology Department (732) 562-3975 E-mail: g.santiago@ieee.org ========================================================================== From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 17 17:26:41 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA12594; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:35:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA12581 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:35:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM (tan7.NCR.COM [192.127.94.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA25273 for ; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:22:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jabberwocky (jabberwocky.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM [153.64.69.123]) by ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM (8.8.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id WAA20261 for ; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:56 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199808150530.WAA20261@ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM> X-Sender: @ X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:06 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Bill Houle Subject: vacation autoresponders Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I was just about to turn on my procmail-based vacation autoresponder when I decided to check first which senders might theoretically get bombarded with such messages. We all know what trouble a poorly done vacation program can cause, so I thought I'd look first. My program: ignores mailer daemons ignores Precedence bulk/junk ignores loops to myself and only responds if To/Cc me This mimics the Berkeley vacation program and in theory should be pretty darn safe. But I found a number of "mailing lists" that would get hit. These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a list address) and do not utilize Precedence headers. My question: is this a "they screwed up" situation, or is there something else I could be doing to be more net-friendly? --bill From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 02:41:42 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA23934; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 02:08:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA23926 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 02:08:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-11.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.81]) by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA27310; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 11:16:47 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA00760; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:15:42 +0200 Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:15:42 +0200 Message-Id: <199808181015.MAA00760@quill> From: Norbert Bollow Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: bhoule@conveyanced.com CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-reply-to: <199808150530.WAA20261@ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM> (message from Bill Houle on Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:06 -0700) Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Bill Houle wrote: > cause, so I thought I'd look first. My program: > > ignores mailer daemons > ignores Precedence bulk/junk > ignores loops to myself > and only responds if To/Cc me [..] > up" situation, or is there something else I could be doing to be more > net-friendly? Make sure that the autoresponder will never send more than one reply to any given address. (You'll need a simple database for this.) This will defeat most loops. Make sure that the autoresponder does not reply to messages with null reverse path, since those are likely to be bounces, and you don't want to bother remote postmasters with your vacation messages. Finally, if something does go wrong in spite of all the precautions, people will want to alert the postmaster at your host about the problem. Therefore, please make sure that someone is handling postmaster mail even during your absence. And then, have a great vacation! Norbert. -- Norbert Bollow, Zuerich, Switzerland. Backup e-mail address: NB@POBOX.COM From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 12:53:31 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA03767; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:42:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns.intelenet.net (intelenet.net [204.182.160.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA03760 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:42:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from boris.intelenet.net (bob@boris.intelenet.net [207.38.65.11]) by ns.intelenet.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA20665 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:51:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from bob@localhost) by boris.intelenet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA05284 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:51:15 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199808181951.MAA05284@boris.intelenet.net> From: bob@intelenet.net (Bob Myers) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:51:14 -0700 X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:06 -0700 > From: Bill Houle > Subject: vacation autoresponders > > I was just about to turn on my procmail-based vacation autoresponder when I > decided to check first which senders might theoretically get bombarded with > such messages. We all know what trouble a poorly done vacation program can > cause, so I thought I'd look first. My program: > > ignores mailer daemons > ignores Precedence bulk/junk Precedence list, too. -- Bob Myers InteleNet Communications, Inc. Email: bob@InteleNet.net 18101 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 550 Phone: 714-851-8250 x227 Irvine, CA 92612 Fax: 714-851-1088 http://www.intelenet.net/ From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 15:21:53 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA05295; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 15:02:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA05288 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 15:02:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id RAA04210; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:11:29 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id RAA28972; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:11:23 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808182211.RAA28972@Venus.mcs.net> Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders To: bhoule@conveyanced.com (Bill Houle) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:11:23 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <199808150530.WAA20261@ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM> from "Bill Houle" at Aug 14, 98 10:30:06 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Bill Houle asked, | My program: | | ignores mailer daemons | ignores Precedence bulk/junk | ignores loops to myself | and only responds if To/Cc me | | ... But I found a number of "mailing lists" that would get hit. | These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a list address) | and do not utilize Precedence headers. My question: is this a "they screwed | up" situation, or is there something else I could be doing to be more | net-friendly? In my viewpoint, it's a they-screwed-up situation, but it's one you have to deal with. The best bet is to put your vacation routine after those that file your mail from lists, especially those lists, or to postpone those lists or sign off them while you're away. Norbert Bollow's reminder that you should keep a cache of addresses notified and not send more than one vacation message to any given address during a given absence doesn't help if those lists direct replies to the poster, un- less you subscribe to them in digest format. From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 17:03:05 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06552; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:50:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sagarmatha.com (chomolongma.sagarmatha.com [209.110.136.129]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA06522 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:49:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from james@localhost) by sagarmatha.com (8.8.8/8.8.8.special) id QAA20691 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:58:22 -0700 From: "James C. Armstrong" Message-Id: <199808182358.QAA20691@sagarmatha.com> Subject: Copyright Issues on a list To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:58:21 -0800 (PDT) Reply-To: james@sagarmatha.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've got something of a dilemma developing on some of the mailing lists I maintain, and was wondering if anyone here has faced a similar situation. I maintain some lists for professional sports teams in the UK. I run these lists in California. (Rangers football club, Scottish football) Some members of the lists have occasionally posted copyrighted material. My intro statement for members strongly discourages this, but I do not manually approve all postings, nor do I attempt to censor after the fact. One of the publishers has recently requested that I stop all copyrighted material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal action. I don't want to moderate the list, I do not have the time. So, I can't effectively prevent the list members from posting, I can only retroactively unsubscribe them (but does such a retroactive unsubscribe open me up for any legal liability? I'd be censoring list members, and isn't this similar to what Prodigy did?) Any experience with this? Any opinions? -- James C. Armstrong, Jr. | "Using Windows NT, which is known to james@sagarmatha.com | have some failure modes, on a warship | is similar to hoping that luck will | be in our favor." Anthony DiGiorgio, | on the US Navy's decision to use | Windows NT instead of UNIX. From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 17:22:36 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06664; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:59:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA06657 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:59:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.0/8.9.0/best.sh) id RAA16682; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:08:34 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:08:34 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199808190008.RAA16682@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, cnorman@best.com In-reply-to: <199808182211.RAA28972@Venus.mcs.net> (dattier@Mcs.Net) Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I have a similar predictament. I love the Berkeley vacation program but I use procmail for other things. Is there a way to simply call the vacation program on my mail without disabling procmail while I'm away? I'm on a UNIX system and read my mail here. Why reinvent the wheel? Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.consultclarity.com _________________________ Owner of the Immune Lists http://www.best.com/~immune From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 19:21:33 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA08378; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 19:07:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA08371 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 19:07:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id VAA02739; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:17:06 -0500 (CDT) To: Bill Houle Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders References: <199808150530.WAA20261@ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM> Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.100) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Jason L Tibbitts III Date: 18 Aug 1998 21:17:05 -0500 In-Reply-To: Bill Houle's message of "Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:06 -0700" Message-ID: Lines: 9 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.6.24/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >>>>> "BH" == Bill Houle writes: BH> These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a BH> list address) and do not utilize Precedence headers. What does the envelope sender look like? I'd ignore anything matching /owner|request|error/i (and probably a few more). - J< From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 20:22:37 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA09013; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 19:50:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA09001 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 19:49:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA27173; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:59:20 -0500 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA28386; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:59:20 -0500 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199808190259.VAA28386@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list To: james@sagarmatha.com Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:59:20 -0500 (CDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <199808182358.QAA20691@sagarmatha.com> from "James C. Armstrong" at Aug 18, 98 04:58:21 pm Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > One of the publishers has recently requested that I stop all copyrighted > material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal > action. Civil action is much more likely. To get a criminal case going, the publisher would probably have to convince some DA that you were stealing sufficiently valuable material to make it worth pursuing, and I don't know that there are many prosecutors out there looking to pursue the Internet as a serious source of white collar crime based on copyright infringement. > Any experience with this? Any opinions? Opinions we all have in abundance. :-) Most of us are in similar straits, performing moderation after-the-fact, or as I prefer to label it, moderation by intimidation. Peer pressure, public rebukes, and swift and sure punishments by the list manager will IMHO deal with most copyright problems on lists, though if your subscribers are used to getting away with it, you've got an uphill battle on your hands regaining some measure of control. Keep in mind it is YOUR list. If anybody gets sued, YOU are at the top of the chart. And when you get the usual 'freedom of the press' or 'freedom of speech' moans, remember that freedom of the press guarantees only apply to those who own the printing press, which in the case of a mailing list means YOU, and freedom of speech doesn't mean that YOU have to pay for or build someone else's soapbox. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 22:51:31 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA11079; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:34:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA11071 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:33:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA14254 ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:45:08 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: chuqui2@plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199808182358.QAA20691@sagarmatha.com> Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:04:40 -0700 To: james@sagarmatha.com, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:58 PM -0700 8/18/98, James C. Armstrong wrote: > I maintain some lists for professional sports teams in the UK. I run > these lists in California. (Rangers football club, Scottish football) > Some members of the lists have occasionally posted copyrighted > material. My intro statement for members strongly discourages this, > but I do not manually approve all postings, nor do I attempt to > censor after the fact. My intro statement doesn't discourage it -- it says "don't. Period". (in more words than that, but that's the effect). When people do do it, I post to the list telling people not to, and refer to the rules. The rules specifically say that repeat offenders will be kicked off the list. > One of the publishers has recently requested that I stop all copyrighted > material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal > action. And that's why. Mistakes happen. But if you allow them to happen, you're responsible for them. And if you don't stop them, you're party to the infringement. You have every right to say "no. period", because what they're doing is illegal, can get everyone involved sued, and the list shut down. > I don't want to moderate the list, I do not have the time. So, I > can't effectively prevent the list members from posting, I can only > retroactively unsubscribe them (but does such a retroactive unsubscribe > open me up for any legal liability? I'd be censoring list members, > and isn't this similar to what Prodigy did?) Tell them to stop, and if they don't, nuke them. Retroactively unsubscribing opens you up to a lot LESS legal liability than allowing content piracy does. think about that one... If your rules make it clear it's against the rules, and they break the rules, what grounds do they have to complain? -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 23:03:04 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA11284; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:51:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from califia.sub-rosa.com (califia.sub-rosa.com [207.96.1.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id WAA11277 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:51:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 19072 invoked by uid 1000); 19 Aug 1998 06:00:32 -0000 Message-ID: <19980819020032.J8825@califia.sub-rosa.com> Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 02:00:32 -0400 From: Michael Handler To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Cc: cnorman@best.com Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders References: <199808182211.RAA28972@Venus.mcs.net> <199808190008.RAA16682@shell7.ba.best.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.94.2i In-Reply-To: <199808190008.RAA16682@shell7.ba.best.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Cyndi Norman writes: > I have a similar predictament. I love the Berkeley vacation program but I > use procmail for other things. Is there a way to simply call the vacation > program on my mail without disabling procmail while I'm away? Sure, you can pipe your mail through arbitrary programs (like vacation) via commands in your .procmailrc. At the end of your .procmailrc, after all of your mailing list sorting recipes and the like, add this: -- begin -- :0 c * !^FROM_DAEMON |/path/to/vacation -- end -- The c flag on the first line makes the recipe a non-delivering carbon-copy recipe; the message is sent through vacation, but then procmail continues delivery instructions afterward, so that the mail ends up saved in your normal inbox. -- handler@sub-rosa.com if you cannot conceive of better lines and better times then let silence bury you -- midnight oil From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 19 10:58:11 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA24275; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 10:35:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sportsurf.net (sportsurf.net [192.41.36.58]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA24264 for ; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 10:35:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.204.56.156] (sss.pittsburgh.net [192.204.56.156]) by sportsurf.net (8.8.5) id LAA18208; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 11:44:57 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199808191744.LAA18208@sportsurf.net> Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list Date: Wed, 19 Aug 98 12:51:12 -0500 x-sender: mark@sportsurf.net x-mailer: Claris Emailer 1.1 From: Mark Rauterkus To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi, A few suggestions: --- to go along with the other bits of great advice posted so far: Ask list members to post only POINTERS to the whole article and not the article itself. Ask list members to make their comments exceed 2x the length of the posted article so as to add lots of value to the article. This is a thin attempt at "fair use." Ask the publisher to post all their articles to the list -- and give them a chance to put a tag line of advertisement along with their article. This way you get in bed with copyright holders. Ask the publisher to post all their articles to another list that you set up for them, free of charge. Or, allow for others to post their articles to that list if the publisher isn't swift to publish the news themselves. Get permission for this to occur. Then have this "joint-ownership" so that they can't get you in trouble. So, readers can post articles from the paper to this list. Then subscribers would have to get on multiple lists. Mark Rauterkus List-Clerk@SportSurf.Net From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 19 14:16:01 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA26766; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 13:09:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA26756 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 13:08:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from elvis.vnet.net (elvis.vnet.net [166.82.1.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA18756 for ; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 20:36:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (murr@katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by elvis.vnet.net (8.8.8/8.8.4) with ESMTP id XAA22923 for ; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 23:46:08 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id XAA01761 for ; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 23:46:07 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 23:46:07 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: List Size In-Reply-To: <199808131552.LAA13337@aries.ieee.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Gilberto Santiago wrote: > How can I limit the number of subscribers to a list? Let's say 1000 > per list. Let's assume that these lists are open. Simply make the lists not open to new subscriptions when they are full. Most common mailing list software packages have the option of using owner approved subscriptions. The list admin must manually approve each new subscription. With this option switched on, it would be quite simple to limit subscriptions at whatever number you deem appropriate. When you reach the limit, you stop approving new subscriptions. For specifics, consult your server manager or the manual for the software you use to distribute your lists. - murr - From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 23 12:09:56 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA00479; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 11:57:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com (tan7.NCR.COM [192.127.94.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA00472 for ; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 11:56:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from bhoule@localhost) by sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) id MAA18955; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 12:05:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Bill Houle Message-Id: <199808231905.MAA18955@sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com> Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders To: tibbs@hpc.uh.edu (Jason L Tibbitts III) Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 12:05:39 -0700 (PDT) Cc: bhoule@conveyanced.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: from "Jason L Tibbitts III" at Aug 18, 98 09:17:05 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jason L Tibbitts III said: > >>>>> "BH" == Bill Houle writes: > > BH> These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a > BH> list address) and do not utilize Precedence headers. > > What does the envelope sender look like? I'd ignore anything matching > /owner|request|error/i (and probably a few more). procmail has a built-in FROM_DAEMON test that covers this scenario as well. I'm back now, with no nastygrams in my mailbox, so at least the autoresponder did not go completely haywire while I was out... I've noticed a trend toward PC-based "mail merge" style list manager software. This software creates individual messages addressed directly to each subscriber, with the headers looking no different than if they had sent the mail one-on-one directly. These were the ones I was worried most about. Neglecting to follow standards, such as the lack of even a Precedence or Sender header, pretty much make this a case of "they screwed up" as I had theorized before I left. --bill From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 23 14:09:53 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA01482; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 13:32:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA01474 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 13:32:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from korovev.stm.it (korovev.stm.it [195.62.33.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA15634 for ; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 02:46:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gianni (ppp02-23.dial-access.stm.it [195.62.37.87]) by korovev.stm.it (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA15631 for ; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 11:56:14 +0200 (ITADST) Message-ID: <004001bdcb57$71b32100$57253ec3@gianni> From: "G.Romanelli" To: Subject: Majordomo on NT Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 11:55:02 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I want to install Majordomo on Windows NT 4.0 server (intel) There are somebody who have made this ? How I can do ? I'm not able to modify the Unix version... Any tips are welcome. Thanks in advance. G.Romanelli g.romanelli@agora.stm.it From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 23 14:23:54 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA01678; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 13:35:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA01670 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 13:35:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from beltway.cd.com (beltway.cd.com [204.217.30.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA13936 for ; Thu, 20 Aug 1998 07:25:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bif.cd.com (bif [204.217.30.130]) by beltway.cd.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id JAA13611 for ; Thu, 20 Aug 1998 09:34:55 -0500 (CDT) Received: by bif.cd.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA22313; Thu, 20 Aug 1998 09:31:43 -0500 From: richardm@bif.cd.com (Richard Masoner) Message-Id: <199808201431.JAA22313@bif.cd.com> Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list To: list-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 09:31:43 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <199808191744.LAA18208@sportsurf.net> from "Mark Rauterkus" at Aug 19, 98 12:51:12 pm X-From: Richard F. Masoner X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Mark Rauterkus suggested: MR> Ask the publisher to post all their articles to the list -- and give MR> them a chance to put a tag line of advertisement along with their MR> article. This way you get in bed with copyright holders. Typically, list members post copyrighted from a number of sources. Asking the whole range of publishers who publish on the web to post their articles with advertising on your list is unrealistic. IANAL, but if the list is unmoderated all you are doing is providing a free-speech forum. You are not acting as an editor, and thus you are protected from liability. Only the person posting -- the copyright violator -- is liable. AFAIK, this is untested in regard to mailing lists. There have been cases against the online providers and their chat rooms which may have some relevance. Also, just because they might not win doesn't mean a copyright holder can't initiate legal action against you. Defending yourself in a civil action can be expensive. Furthermore, copyright laws in the U.S. are criminally actionable, i.e. you can be arrested if a prosecutor wants to make an issue of it. It may indeed be prudent to take the chicken route and remove posting privileges from repeat offenders. Like I wrote before, IANAL, so the above is my personal, non- professional opinion only. Consult a real attorney with malpractice insurance for the real scoop. Richard Masoner Champaign Illinois USA From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 23 14:37:38 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA01470; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 13:32:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA01460 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 13:32:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkman.org (cpu1787.adsl.bellglobal.com [206.47.37.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA15187 for ; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 02:18:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from george ([192.168.66.27]) by monkman.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id FAA05058 for ; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 05:25:16 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from brian@monkman.org) Message-Id: <199808190925.FAA05058@monkman.org> From: "Brian Monkman" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 05:29:08 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list Reply-to: brian@monkman.org In-reply-to: <199808182358.QAA20691@sagarmatha.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 18 Aug 98, at 16:58, James C. Armstrong wrote: > I don't want to moderate the list, I do not have the time. So, I > can't effectively prevent the list members from posting, I can only > retroactively unsubscribe them (but does such a retroactive unsubscribe > open me up for any legal liability? I'd be censoring list members, > and isn't this similar to what Prodigy did?) I have a list that is currently running in test mode. I have done a fair bit of researchi nto this area. Keep in mind that I am from Canada so there will be some differences - though I think more similarities then differences. What you want to do is make sure you are not viewed as a publisher. That is an entity that controls content. So you do not want to moderate or otherwise control what is posted (what if you miss something?). You want to be more like Bell - a carrier. Bell is only responsible for the transmission - not the content. To that end I put a header in every message that containes the senders e-mail address and I put the following footer at the end of every message: <<< === (c) 1998 === This message, and all e-mail to test-l is copyrighted by its original author. Any copying, posting or other form of re-transmission to anywhere other then test-l without the expressed consent of the author is a violation of this copyright. In addition, the owners and operators of monkman.org, test-l@monkman.org and any affiliated entity do not necessarily share the opinions expressed by the author of this message. The opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of the author. >>> This should help you avoid legal entanglements. Keep in mind you probably will get hassled by the lawyers - they often work on the fear factor, makes their job easier. Hope this helps. Brian --- Brian Monkman - Nepean, Ontario brian@monkman.org http://www.monkman.org Faith and reason are like the shoes on your feet. You can walk with one, but it is easier to travel farther with both. From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 23 14:52:44 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA02643; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 14:41:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wubios.wustl.edu (wubios.wustl.edu [128.252.117.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA02636 for ; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 14:40:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from phil@localhost) by wubios.wustl.edu (8.9.0/8.9.0) id QAA03082; Sun, 23 Aug 1998 16:50:56 -0500 (CDT) From: "J. Philip Miller" Message-Id: <199808232150.QAA03082@wubios.wustl.edu> Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list To: richardm@bif.cd.com (Richard Masoner) Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 16:50:55 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-Managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: <199808201431.JAA22313@bif.cd.com> from "Richard Masoner" at Aug 20, 98 09:31:43 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 PGP3 *ALPHA*] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Mark Rauterkus suggested: > > MR> Ask the publisher to post all their articles to the list -- and give > MR> them a chance to put a tag line of advertisement along with their > MR> article. This way you get in bed with copyright holders. > > Typically, list members post copyrighted from a number of sources. > Asking the whole range of publishers who publish on the web to post > their articles with advertising on your list is unrealistic. > not only that, but many publishers have signed contracts which require that the articles ONLY be published on a particular site. They could be sued for breach of contract for allowing it to be published elsewhere. > > IANAL, but if the list is unmoderated all you are doing is providing a > free-speech forum. You are not acting as an editor, and thus you are > protected from liability. Only the person posting -- the copyright > violator -- is liable. > > AFAIK, this is untested in regard to mailing lists. There have been > cases against the online providers and their chat rooms which may have > some relevance. > AFAIK, I agree. > Also, just because they might not win doesn't mean a copyright holder > can't initiate legal action against you. Defending yourself in a civil > action can be expensive. Furthermore, copyright laws in the U.S. are > criminally actionable, i.e. you can be arrested if a prosecutor wants > to make an issue of it. It may indeed be prudent to take the chicken > route and remove posting privileges from repeat offenders. > There also may be an issue of removing offending articles from your archive (if you have one). > Like I wrote before, IANAL, so the above is my personal, non- > professional opinion only. Consult a real attorney with malpractice > insurance for the real scoop. > amen > Richard Masoner > Champaign Illinois USA > > -- J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067 Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis MO 63110 phil@wubios.WUstl.edu - (314) 362-3617 [362-2693(FAX)] http://www.biostat.wustl.edu/~phil From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 24 00:42:29 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA10937; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 00:20:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA10928 for ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 00:20:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA32732 ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 00:31:36 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: chuqui2@plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199808201431.JAA22313@bif.cd.com> References: <199808191744.LAA18208@sportsurf.net> from "Mark Rauterkus" at Aug 19, 98 12:51:12 pm Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 00:21:56 -0700 To: richardm@bif.cd.com (Richard Masoner), list-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:31 AM -0700 8/20/98, Richard Masoner wrote: > IANAL, but if the list is unmoderated all you are doing is providing a > free-speech forum. You are not acting as an editor, and thus you are > protected from liability. Only the person posting -- the copyright > violator -- is liable. In theory, ti's a nice theory. In practice, I know of a number of mailing lists that have been shut down over copyright issues, after the list owner was notified of the infractions and chose not to stop them. Now, you might well win a court fight over this, but can you afford to win it? (and frankly, I don't think you would, any more than an editor of a publication can simply blame his authors for plagiarism in a magazine. There is due diligence aspects involved -- and if it's brought up to you, and you do nothing, you can't claim ignorance. you ARE responsible at some level for the content of the list you run...) -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 24 14:40:02 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA23663; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 14:14:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA23648 for ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 14:14:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id QAA25490 for ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 16:24:58 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id QAA01889 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 16:24:58 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808242124.QAA01889@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a List To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 16:24:58 -0500 (CDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk When Richard Masoner wrote, | > IANAL, but if the list is unmoderated all you are doing is providing a | > free-speech forum. You are not acting as an editor, and thus you are | > protected from liability. Only the person posting -- the copyright | > violator -- is liable. Chuq Von Rospach replied, | In theory, ti's a nice theory. In practice, I know of a number of | mailing lists that have been shut down over copyright issues, after the | list owner was notified of the infractions and chose not to stop them. That, in my view (IANALE), is the key: "after the list owner was notified ... and chose not to stop them." One copyright violation goes through your unmoderated list, you swear you had no idea that such a thing could happen, and perhaps you get off scot-free. But then you have then seen that there is a problem that you can stop, but you choose to take no action, and your list distributes a second copyright violation. You could have made the list moderated after the first incident, but by not closing the barn door before another horse is stolen, you can't use that defense the second time. James Armstrong has determined that he hasn't the extra time necessary for moderating the list, and the list is already violating copyrights. He'll have to decide among finding the time to moderate the list, finding a moderator (and perhaps a new listowner) for it, closing the list, or taking the risks of being held responsible for the ongoing copyright violations. From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 24 18:12:56 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA25889; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 17:44:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA25880 for ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 17:44:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA14544; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 19:52:43 -0500 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id TAA08364; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 19:52:40 -0500 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199808250052.TAA08364@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a List To: dattier@Mcs.Net (David W. Tamkin) Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 19:52:40 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <199808242124.QAA01889@Mars.mcs.net> from "David W. Tamkin" at Aug 24, 98 04:24:58 pm Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk David W. Tamkin wrote: > ... and chose not to stop them." One copyright violation goes through > your unmoderated list, you swear you had no idea that such a thing could > happen, and perhaps you get off scot-free. But then you have then seen that > there is a problem that you can stop, but you choose to take no action, and > your list distributes a second copyright violation. My policy, based on consultation with my attorney, is that for ANY apparent copyright violation I immediately suspend the posting privileges of that individual for a period of time (usually 3-4 days) and issue a reprimand by private e-mail. A 2nd violation by that individual (and I don't recall having ever had one in the five years or so I've been using this procedure), would get the individual kicked off my list. I also send out the posting guidelines, including a fairly clear (IMHO) statement prohibiting copyright violations, monthly, this goes to all subscribers, and all new subscribers receive a copy of these guidelines when they are first admitted to the list. I will generally post a note to the subscribers reminding them of copyright requirements when some transgression occurs, maybe 3-5 times a year. Most of them come from new subscribers who don't understand intellectual property rights. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 24 21:41:54 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA27821; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 21:28:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA27814 for ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 21:28:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA29230 ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 21:40:44 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: chuqui2@plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199808250052.TAA08364@celery.tssi.com> References: <199808242124.QAA01889@Mars.mcs.net> from "David W. Tamkin" at Aug 24, 98 04:24:58 pm Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 21:09:30 -0700 To: nolan@tssi.com, dattier@Mcs.Net (David W. Tamkin) From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a List Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:52 PM -0700 8/24/98, Mike Nolan wrote: > My policy, based on consultation with my attorney, is that for ANY > apparent copyright violation I immediately suspend the posting privileges > of that individual for a period of time (usually 3-4 days) and issue a In my case, a violation gets a warning (posted to the list). Repeats are a banning offense. My opinion is that honest mistakes happen, and a policy of enforcement goes a long way. Almost always, it's a "didn't think" problem, so I don't go overboard on it. If someone won't cooperate, though, that's when we have a problem. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 25 05:12:34 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA04589; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 04:56:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sagarmatha.com (chomolongma.sagarmatha.com [209.110.136.129]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA04582 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 04:56:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from james@localhost) by sagarmatha.com (8.8.8/8.8.8.special) id FAA11246; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 05:06:15 -0700 From: "James C. Armstrong" Message-Id: <199808251206.FAA11246@sagarmatha.com> Subject: Copyright Issues, followup and our resolution To: football-admin-l@helios.net, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 05:06:14 -0800 (PDT) Reply-To: james@sagarmatha.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I appreciate the feedback and wish to thank everyone who has made a contribution. We already had a warning about the use of copyrighted material, and did followup with warnings/expulsions, etc, when people did send copyrighted material to the list. The contention of the lawyer for the Press Association was that this was not enough, any posting of their material would be considered a violation. So even the "no warning, you are immediately expelled into the darkness forever" approach seemed like it would not satisfy. After extended email with their lawyer, I was able to cut through the legalese and reach the issue that bothered them. It wasn't the question of publishing the material, but it was how we said it. We listed some publishers who had already conversed with us, and who had asked us not to forward their material. (Back about three years ago, I attempted to contact several newspapers. Some wrote back that they thought it would be OK, a couple wrote back and said no, and most ignored my mail.) I had explicitly listed those firms who had asked us not to forward their content. Their lawyer was concerned that The Press Association was not listed there. I suspect she thought this meant we were encouraging the forwarding of their material. We changed the wording of the FAQ to explicitly ban all copyrighted material without listing any specific publishers. Now, why they couldn't get to this point without threats of criminal action, and the like, I don't know. I guess that is how some lawyers operate. (Of course, I have my doubts that they could successfully prosecute me, a Californian operating solely within California, under British law, but then again, Tennessee has done this with some success.) -- James C. Armstrong, Jr. | "Using Windows NT, which is known to james@sagarmatha.com | have some failure modes, on a warship | is similar to hoping that luck will | be in our favor." Anthony DiGiorgio, | on the US Navy's decision to use | Windows NT instead of UNIX. From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 25 05:42:19 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA04967; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 05:25:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sagarmatha.com (chomolongma.sagarmatha.com [209.110.136.129]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA04955 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 05:24:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from james@localhost) by sagarmatha.com (8.8.8/8.8.8.special) id FAA11537 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 05:34:52 -0700 From: "James C. Armstrong" Message-Id: <199808251234.FAA11537@sagarmatha.com> Subject: Another question, if I may To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 05:34:51 -0800 (PDT) Reply-To: james@sagarmatha.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Any of you have experience with the commercial list hosting sites? Any of them any good? Background: I've been asked to find a site to host a business list, it needs to add a footer to each message, and have a digest available. The client is willing to pay for list hosting. -- James C. Armstrong, Jr. | "Using Windows NT, which is known to james@sagarmatha.com | have some failure modes, on a warship | is similar to hoping that luck will | be in our favor." Anthony DiGiorgio, | on the US Navy's decision to use | Windows NT instead of UNIX. From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 25 06:27:46 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA05388; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 06:00:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from moat.ieee.org (moat1.ieee.org [199.172.136.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA05379 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 06:00:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aries.ieee.org by moat.ieee.org via smtpd (for honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) with SMTP; 25 Aug 1998 13:23:11 UT Received: from mako.ieee.org by aries.ieee.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id JAA03260 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 09:07:27 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199808251307.JAA03260@aries.ieee.org> X-Sender: gsantiag@pop.ieee.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 09:12:04 -0400 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Gilberto Santiago Subject: Re: Performance - list size Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk If you're are setting a system for the first time, What would you say will be the maximum number of entries on a list that you would allow so that system performance would not be affected? I have seen some site providing list management services having their limit at 1000 entries. I am new working with this, so your input is greatly appreciated. Thanks. ========================================================================== Gilberto Santiago Sr. Systems Administrator IEEE, Information Technology Department (732) 562-3975 E-mail: g.santiago@ieee.org ========================================================================== From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 25 07:12:10 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA05763; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 06:41:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from imo21.mx.aol.com (imo21.mx.aol.com [198.81.17.65]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA05756 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 06:40:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Halfdan@aol.com Received: from Halfdan@aol.com by imo21.mx.aol.com (IMOv14_b1.1) id QCXDa03888; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 09:51:18 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 09:51:18 EDT To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, nolan@tssi.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a List Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 214 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In a message dated 8/24/98 10:58:55 PM Central Daylight Time, Mike Nolan nolan@celery.tssi.com writes: > I also send out the posting guidelines, including a fairly clear (IMHO) > statement prohibiting copyright violations, monthly, this goes to all > subscribers, and all new subscribers receive a copy of these guidelines > when they are first admitted to the list. > > I will generally post a note to the subscribers reminding them of copyright > requirements when some transgression occurs, maybe 3-5 times a year. Most > of them come from new subscribers who don't understand intellectual > property rights. Would you be willing to post an example of this monthly guidelines and general reminder note for us to see or use? Does anyone else have good copyright notice disclaimers that they would be willing to post that might be good to use in message footers? I would like to see examples of copyright notices in order to add some kind of copyright disclaimer in my message_footers, and maybe in the list rules and as a quarterly reminder note as well. But I would like to see examples of what others are using in order to come up with the best version for my list. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Dan Meyer NPSAI@usa.net NPSAI-List - Nashville Pop Songwriters Association International http://www.NPSAI.com From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 25 11:27:08 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA09039; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 11:02:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id LAA09032 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 11:02:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 32034 invoked by uid 3995); 25 Aug 1998 18:13:06 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 14:13:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Dave Sill To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Performance - list size In-Reply-To: <199808251307.JAA03260@aries.ieee.org> References: <199808251307.JAA03260@aries.ieee.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.43 under 20.4 "Emerald" XEmacs Lucid Message-ID: <13794.64624.140682.67937@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M >If you're are setting a system for the first time, What would you say will >be the maximum number of entries on a list that you would allow so that >system performance would not be affected? First off, even a list of one user will affect performance. It'll probably be negligible unless many messages/day are sent to it, though. But the real answer depends upon, at least: o which list management software you're using o which MTA you're using o what kind of connectivity you have o what OS you're running o what hardware you're running on o how busy the system is with other lists and other functions >I have seen some site providing list management services having their >limit at 1000 entries. Some list managers have arbitrary limits, especially for "lite" versions. There are probably more expensive versions available that can handle larger lists. 1000 isn't all that large. -Dave From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 25 12:56:38 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA09880; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 12:30:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from elvis.vnet.net (elvis.vnet.net [166.82.1.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA09865 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 12:29:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (murr@katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by elvis.vnet.net (8.8.8/8.8.4) with ESMTP id PAA07908 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 15:40:28 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id PAA12072 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 15:40:26 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 15:40:25 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Mailing List Host Sites In-Reply-To: <199808251234.FAA11537@sagarmatha.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brian Edmonds maintains a list of mailing list service providers. - http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/ml-providers.txt - send email to majordomo@edmonds.home.cs.ubc.ca with the following line in the body of the message: get faq ml-providers.txt Vivian Neou maintains a similar list of host sites along with additional useful information about mailing lists such as her venerable "List of Lists" and a web page describing various mailing list software packages. - http://www.catalog.com/vivian/ The list host providers offer very wide range of services including: discussion lists, announcement lists, digests, archiving, web interfaced search engines, full service list management, etc. Prices for hosting services range from free to hundreds of dollars a month. To have your mailing list host services listed on these pages contact Brian Edmonds or Vivian Neou . - murr - From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 25 13:12:07 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA10020; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 12:43:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from elvis.vnet.net (elvis.vnet.net [166.82.1.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA10013 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 12:43:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (murr@katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by elvis.vnet.net (8.8.8/8.8.4) with ESMTP id PAA11030; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 15:53:27 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id PAA12467; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 15:53:26 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: katie.vnet.net: murr owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 15:53:25 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Halfdan@aol.com cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, nolan@tssi.com Subject: Sample Copyright Warning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 25 Aug 1998 Halfdan@aol.com wrote: > Would you be willing to post an example of this monthly guidelines > and general reminder note for us to see or use? Here is a copyright warning which I posted a few days ago. All or part of this article may be recycled as you see fit. This has NOT been checked by a lawyer. I have sent many private notes about this problem. This is my second public notice in as many months. Do not repost copyrighted articles on XXX unless you have the copyright owner's permission. If you find something interesting on the web, post a brief description and the web address. Note that there need NOT be a formal copyright notice. In the US, anything written is copyrighted by default as soon as it is affixed to a permanent media (such as a hard drive). Brief quotes or extensive paraphrasing of an article is fine if properly attributed. Wholesale copying without permission is not OK. Please show the same courtesy to other authors as you would expect for your own work. John "Murr" Rhame XXX Admin From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 25 16:41:59 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA12657; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 16:19:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA12650 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 16:19:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA08420 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 18:30:16 -0500 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA09626 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Tue, 25 Aug 1998 18:30:13 -0500 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199808252330.SAA09626@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Another sample copyright notice To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 18:30:13 -0500 (CDT) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Here's the copyright portion from my list guidelines. Anyone who wants the whole document, plus the FAQ, can send e-mail to unlfaq@tssi.com and it will be sent automatically. 8. Absolutely no violations of copyrights, trademarks, service marks, logos, etc. will be permitted. Do not repost news stories from wire services or online services, material you found on web sites, or type in stories or someone's column from your local newspaper. The author of private e-mail also holds a copyright on it, and has a right not to have that e-mail reposted anywhere without consent. However, e-mail sent to the List Manager will be treated like mail sent to 'letters to the editor' at a newspaper. For a brief introduction to the issue of copyrights, especially in cyberspace, see http://www.clarinet.com/brad/copymyths.html. Posting the URL of web pages with Husker content on them is generally permitted and encouraged, but posting the text from someone's web page without explicit permission is a copyright violation and is not permitted. The issue of whether links violate copyright is as of yet undecided, though, so this could change based on future court rulings. Posters are strongly encouraged to give a short summary of the information to be found on a web page when posting its URL, both as a courtesy to those subscribers who do not have web capability and as an aid for those with limited time, so that they only need hit the sites that they are the most likely to find informative. If you must quote from a published source, do so very sparingly, paraphrasing is better. Raw facts cannot be copyrighted, so game statistics are permitted, but analysis of those statistics would be an 'intellectual act' and thus protected under the copyright law. Posts which violate the law or encourage someone else to violate the law are also forbidden. Significant copyright violations, whether inadvertent or otherwise, may result in immediate sanctions against the poster. From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 26 14:04:42 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA27641; Wed, 26 Aug 1998 13:51:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA27597 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 26 Aug 1998 13:50:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from strato-fe0.ultra.net (strato-fe0.ultra.net [146.115.8.190]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA27453 for ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 20:42:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from voyager (d29.dial-1.wal.ma.ultra.net [146.115.77.29]) by strato-fe0.ultra.net (8.8.8/ult.n14767) with SMTP id XAA26603 for ; Mon, 24 Aug 1998 23:52:40 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.32.19980825035240.0151b6a8@pop.ma.ultranet.com> X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 23:52:40 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Stan Ryckman Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a List Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk When Richard Masoner wrote, >| > IANAL, but if the list is unmoderated all you are doing is providing a >| > free-speech forum. You are not acting as an editor, and thus you are >| > protected from liability. Only the person posting -- the copyright >| > violator -- is liable. Chuq Von Rospach replied, >| In theory, ti's a nice theory. In practice, I know of a number of >| mailing lists that have been shut down over copyright issues, after the >| list owner was notified of the infractions and chose not to stop them. Then David W. Tamkin responded, >That, in my view (IANALE), is the key: "after the list owner was notified >... and chose not to stop them." One copyright violation goes through >your unmoderated list, you swear you had no idea that such a thing could >happen, and perhaps you get off scot-free. But then you have then seen that >there is a problem that you can stop, but you choose to take no action, and >your list distributes a second copyright violation. > >You could have made the list moderated after the first incident, but by not >closing the barn door before another horse is stolen, you can't use that >defense the second time. > >James Armstrong has determined that he hasn't the extra time necessary for >moderating the list, and the list is already violating copyrights. He'll >have to decide among finding the time to moderate the list, finding a >moderator (and perhaps a new listowner) for it, closing the list, or taking >the risks of being held responsible for the ongoing copyright violations. Following the tradition, IANALEE. But I think moderating the list may be more likely to incur responsibility, should you happen to slip up. I view it more like making a photocopy machine available... if you let people use it, they are responsible. But if you inspect its output, now you have more responsibility for what goes out. And shutting it down doesn't help the copyright holder's cause, since there are millions of photocopy machines to be had (and in the case of lists, there are many ways a determined copyright violator can get his bytes out onto the Internet). If copyright violations can indeed shut down unmoderated lists, then say goodbye to any interesting ones... if Gill Bates, head of MacroHard company, doesn't like an unmoderated list discussing his products, often unfavorably, he just hires a couple of shills to quote his copyrighted manuals onto the list and then goes after the list. Not that threats don't work--I would be surprised if there aren't some lists that have been forced out by threats (especially against the resource provider rather than the list owner). Yet I would also be surprised if there is any definitive case law (if for no other reason, I've never seen any cited it when this sort of issue comes up). Whatever happened with the digital audio tape issue?... that's probably as close as anything to this. It was KNOWN that selling digital audio recorders and tape would lead to copyright violations. Was that finally settled out of court beforehand? Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 26 16:18:30 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA28900; Wed, 26 Aug 1998 15:39:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kitsune.swcp.com (swcp.com [198.59.115.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA28893 for ; Wed, 26 Aug 1998 15:39:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from lazlo@localhost) by kitsune.swcp.com (8.8.8/1.2.3) id QAA29720 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 26 Aug 1998 16:49:56 -0600 (MDT) Message-ID: <19980826164955.A29259@swcp.com> Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 16:49:55 -0600 From: Lazlo Nibble To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a List Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: <2.2.32.19980825035240.0151b6a8@pop.ma.ultranet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980825035240.0151b6a8@pop.ma.ultranet.com>; from Stan Ryckman on Mon, Aug 24, 1998 at 11:52:40PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Aug 24, 1998 at 11:52:40PM -0400, Stan Ryckman wrote: > Whatever happened with the digital audio tape issue?... that's probably > as close as anything to this. It was KNOWN that selling digital audio > recorders and tape would lead to copyright violations. Was that finally > settled out of court beforehand? The media and hardware manufacturers cut a deal with the RIAA: for each blank DAT or "Audio-Only" CD-R (for use in the new standalone CD-R home stereo components) you buy, the record biz gets a percentage kickback by way of "compensation". -- ::: Lazlo (lazlo@swcp.com; http://www.swcp.com/lazlo) ::: Internet Music Wantlists: http://www.swcp.com/lazlo/Wantlists From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 27 07:40:08 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA12610; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 07:20:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA12593 for ; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 07:19:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA10152 for ; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 09:30:52 -0500 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA29023 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 09:30:50 -0500 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <199808271430.JAA29023@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Copyright issues To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 09:30:50 -0500 (CDT) Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk It's curious that I should have someone post a jpeg of a wire service photo taken from a commercial web site to my mailing list right around when we had the discussion on copyright rules. Of course, in complaining about my sanctions the user invoked the old "I didn't know it was wrong" argument. For the benefit of those who encounter this logic, here is what John Selden wrote on the subject, in 1689: "Ignorance of the law excuses no man; nor that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him." ('Table Talk, Law') Has anyone read Mike Godwin's book "Cyber Rights - Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age"? I'm curious to know if it's worth $28. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 27 09:23:40 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA13639; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 09:07:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from exchhost.hdrinc.com (omaha.hdrinc.com [206.52.156.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA13632 for ; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 09:05:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: by exchhost.hdrinc.com; id LAA04961; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 11:16:02 -0500 (CDT) Received: from exchhost.hdrinc.com(199.240.228.248) by omaha.hdrinc.com via smap (3.2) id xma004747; Thu, 27 Aug 98 11:15:26 -0500 Received: by ntascsg5.intranet.hdr with Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) id ; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 11:15:30 -0500 Message-ID: From: "Tegels, Kent" To: "'list-managers@greatcircle.com'" Subject: Mailing List Software Recommendations Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 11:16:15 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello all, I've been asked to make a short list of recommendations about List Serving products for our company and could use your help in identifying products we would consider. Here's our parameters: * Must support essentially an unlimited number of subscribers on 64 or more lists. * Must run on Microsoft Windows NT server * Commercially supported products will have preference over share/freeware. We're already looking at Lyris and MetaInfo/CheckPoint's SendMail products. If you are kind and helpful enough to reply, please include some information (e.g. hyperlink) on where we can get additional information about the product. TIA, > Kent Tegels > ktegels@hdrinc.com > > Systems Engineer/Web Analyst > www.hdrinc.com > From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 27 21:18:54 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA22707; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 21:11:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA22700 for ; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 21:11:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70]) by plaidworks.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA14198 ; Thu, 27 Aug 1998 21:24:47 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: chuqui2@plaidworks.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199808271430.JAA29023@celery.tssi.com> Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 21:06:21 -0700 To: nolan@tssi.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM (List Managers) From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Copyright issues Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:30 AM -0700 8/27/98, Mike Nolan wrote: > Of course, in complaining about my > sanctions the user invoked the old "I didn't know it was wrong" argument. Answer: why not? the list rules we mailed you explicitly explain this. So does the site you stole this from. you missed BOTH places telling you not to do this? How? And you're right. "I didn't know" isn't an excuse. It's simply a way of saving face for "I didn't think", which is a whole different issue. -- Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? ) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) + From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 28 13:49:16 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA04953; Fri, 28 Aug 1998 13:22:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA04946 for ; Fri, 28 Aug 1998 13:22:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id PAA19732 for ; Fri, 28 Aug 1998 15:33:35 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id PAA22379 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 28 Aug 1998 15:33:33 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808282033.PAA22379@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: owner- alias becomes a problem To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 15:33:33 -0500 (CDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk For the first time in my scattered periods of dabbling in list maintenance I'm running one on hardware that uses true sendmail instead of Smail or some other substitute. My misconception about owner-listname aliases was that they were invented for NDNs on mail *from* the list -- and indeed they are very commonly used that way -- and that some MTAs receiving distributions for subscribers might somehow sense that the item was a mailing list distribution and seek to send an NDN (for failure to deliver to a subscriber address on their site) to owner-listname@sending.site regardless of the envelope sender address on a list distribution, so it was a bad idea not to have an owner-listname alias. [Stephen van den Berg advises in SmartList's documentation that owner- aliases are incompatible with the package, and now I can guess why.] The sendmail(8) man page has always stated something to the effect that if alias1 and owner-alias1 are both valid aliases, NDNs for failure to deliver *to* alias1 will go to owner-alias1 instead of the sender of the message. I didn't quite grasp that until I ran into it. All these years of happy use of owner-listname in the envelopes of outgoing distributions and I finally learn what it is supposed to do, and I really dislike the way it does it. You see, under sendmail-8.9.0 and SunOS 5.6, when a subscriber submits to the list and the article is *successfully* delivered to the submission alias, sendmail clobbers the original envelope sender on the UNIX From_ line with the address to which owner-listname expands (or with owner-listname itself if it expands to a pipe). The owner- magic doesn't kick in only after failures to reach listname; it also does its red heifer act on perfectly healthy deliveries. Since newer sendmail versions do not add Return-Path: any more, the original envelope sender information is lost. If it did add Return-Path:, I'm not sure whether that header would retain the original envelope sender's address either; Return-Path: might be added after owner-listname clobbering, or it might also be clobbered, so it may just repeat or its expansion, same as the From_ line. If this sounds as though I were about to digress into a sendmail question, sorry. This truly is going to end up as a list management question. I've found that a large contingent of my subscription base cannot for their lives learn the difference between listname@site and listname-request@site. Not only do they send subscription service requests to the submission address but also they regularly send articles to -request. Thus I have an autore- sponder on the -request address explaining how mail to it is handled, in- cluding a reminder that if what the person sent was an article for the mem- bership, he or she needs to remail it to the submission address. Some make that mistake again and again and need to be told again and again, so there is no cache of who has already seen the acknowledgment; it goes out in response to every piece of mail the -request address receives except blind carbons. Sometimes experienced subscribers have reasons to write to -request, and they don't need to get yet another copy of the automated acknowledgment. They know what they're doing and they did it right. So I've offered to them that they could write to owner-listname and get mail to me without receiving another copy of the acknowledgment. I have subscribers who write to owner-listname frequently for that very reason. Now, I dislike not being able to find out the envelope sender. It sometimes uncovers reasons to trust or not to trust the source of a submission (I moderate the list) as being who or what it says it is. Granted, many envelope senders are forged addresses anyway, but I find that mostly on mail to listname-request, which has been publicized and receives spam, rather than on mail to listname. Thus, I'm asking the list-managers list for advice or suggestions. I have thought of some answers, and you folks can tell me the merits or drawbacks of them and suggest others. 1. I could live with it. I'm not happy with that idea; it would be good to learn the actual envelope sender of an article. 2. I could start to use listname-owner as the envelope sender of distributions and to encourage advanced subscribers to write to me there instead of owner-listname, and get rid of owner-listname when the last NDNs have had time to come in for distributions sent before I made the change. [That isn't very soon, because some sites keep retrying a locked-out ID or an account that is over its quota for three weeks or even a month before they give up and return failure to the sender.] 3. I could change the submission address from the traditional listname to listname-post and turn the listname alias into an autoresponder. At first listname would forward to the new address with an autoresponse to use the new address in the future; later it would return the post with instructions to submit it to the new address; eventually it would be removed as an alias and mail to it would bounce. Problem: listname-post or whatever is very, very non-standard ... but are there any standards any more? As long as listname-request works to satisfy the RFC that was under discussion here in July, does the submission address have to be just plain listname? 4. Before rushing into anything else, I could see if the sysadmin can reconfigure sendmail to insert Return-Path: headers on incoming mail; maybe, just maybe, Return-Path: can retain the original envelope sender address from MAIL FROM:. Comments? Suggestions? Advice? Thank you. David Tamkin From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 29 10:25:20 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA19854; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 10:09:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pike.sover.net (pike.sover.net [204.71.16.17]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA19847 for ; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 10:09:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Default (usr1a92.burl.sover.net [207.136.201.220]) by pike.sover.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id NAA12746 for ; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:21:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:21:05 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199808291721.NAA12746@pike.sover.net> X-Sender: dowser@sover.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: kenbannister@groundwater.com (Bannister Research & Consulting) Subject: Looking for service to archive my list Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dear List Members, I am new to this list so I hope my post is on topic. I operate a mailing list about groundwater. There are ~ 3500 subscribers, the list is run by majordomo off a server that is part of my regular dial-up account. Thus I do not actually do any of the programming of the server, I just own the list, and take care of all of the admin. The sysop who works for the college where my account is has been helpful, but he has alot on his plate. To get a digest version,we set up a separate list on the same server. We now have over 1000 digests stored on the server since Jan 1 1996 (our launch date). Back issues can of course be obtained using the 'get' command, however there is no way to know what is on each digest until you 'get' it. Reference.com offered to archive my list for me and provide a search function for the digest, too which i agreed last fall. I have discovered however that they will only go back a few months so that earlier digests that may have relevent information will not show up in a search. Now that I have bored you to death, here is my question: Is there a service that will archive my whole set of digests and provide a search function, and/or is there some software that I can install myself that will do this. Again, I am not the sysop, just a lowley owner who has a hard enough time keeping bad addresses off the list. Thus I would prefer an outside service unless there is something I can have the sysop install without too much work or that does not require a lot of ongoing activity on his part. Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance to all who reply. Your fellow list-owner. Ken Bannister --------------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth E. Bannister President BANNISTER RESEARCH & CONSULTING 1897 Middle Road Bridport, Vermont USA 05734-9552 kenbannister@groundwater.com http://www.groundwater.com Curiosity has its own reason for existence. Albert Einstein ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 29 11:41:14 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA20582; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 11:27:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA20575 for ; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 11:27:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id NAA06945 for ; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:39:09 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id NAA00946 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:39:09 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808291839.NAA00946@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: man page reference correction To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:39:09 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <199808282033.PAA22379@Mars.mcs.net> from "David W. Tamkin" at Aug 28, 98 03:33:33 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Small correction to my post of Friday: | The sendmail(8) man page has always stated something to the effect that if | alias1 and owner-alias1 are both valid aliases, NDNs for failure to deliver | *to* alias1 will go to owner-alias1 instead of the sender of the message. Sorry, that is in the aliases(5) man page, of course. From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 29 11:58:58 1998 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA20557; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 11:24:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA20550 for ; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 11:23:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id NAA06852; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:35:14 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id NAA00888; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:35:14 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199808291835.NAA00888@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: Re: owner- alias becomes a problem To: tv@pobox.com (Todd Vierling) Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:35:14 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com In-Reply-To: from "Todd Vierling" at Aug 29, 98 11:20:02 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Todd Vierling wrote this in response to my post on the captioned topic, V> Are you sure this isn't the mailing list manager at work? Typically _they_ V> change the envelope sender such that bounces won't loop. Dead-on 100% positive, as there is no mailing list manager. The list runs under my own homebrew procmail recipes (without SmartList). Moreover, it has [for historical reasons] two submission addresses and an owner- alias for only one of them. Envelopes are not clobbered on mail to the other submission address, and for the one whose envelopes are rewritten, changes to the expansion of the owner- alias change the results of the clobbering. T> Since newer sendmail versions do not add Return-Path: any more, the original T> envelope sender information is lost. V> Huh? Sendmail 8.9.0 (and now 8.9.1) adds a Return-Path: here. And I have V> several owner- addresses. I'm not a system administrator, but as a user I've seen three installations of recent sendmails, and zero of the three add Return-Path:. If Todd says it can be done, I believe him, so when the sysadmin of my list host returns to town Monday I'll ask her to try that first.