> paulh@hamjudo.mi.org (Paul Haas) writes:
> > chk@alias.com (C. Harald Koch) writes:
> > > paulh@hamjudo.mi.org (Paul Haas) writes:
> > > A progress report of my new commands for majordomo.
> > >
> > > Index does a cd to $listdir/$cleanlist.archive and then "/bin/ls -lRL".
> > > That should probably be configurable. ls's output is not the prettiest.
> > > Not all systems support "-L". I left "dir" as a synonym for "index", but
> > > I didn't mention it in the help message.
> >
> > I'd actually recommend the following:
> >
> > Most mail servers return a descriptive text file when given an "index"
> > command. This text file lists file names and a brief description of the
> > file, written by the archive maintainer. It's really frustrating to see
> > something like "src.tar.Z" appear in ls output; the file names aren't
always
> > descriptive enough.
> >
> > So, what I propose is to have the "index" command return this text file,
and
> > the "dir" command perform an "ls -lRL" (or whatever) on the archive
> > directory. This gives the best of both worlds...
>
> I prefer "get <list> README". The name README implies that the file
> has usefull information, but it doesn't obligate the list maintainer to
> provide a particular level of service. The problem with the text file
> directory approach, is that someone will have to maintain it. A busy
> list maintainer can choose to document as much or as little as they
> want to.
Just a few more cents... I tend to agree with Paul. One
could always "put" the file "index" to be retrieved with
"get <list> index". At many sites an index file is simply
'ls -lR'. At other sites it's a file with descriptions.
Maybe this can be better addressed by allowing easy
customization of the command run by "index" as Paul left
on his todo list - it could be 'cat index', 'ls -lRt' or
something completely different as appropriate for each
list.
In fact, an easy way to do this would be for the "index"
command to run $listdir/$cleanlist.archive/index.
The benefit of this would be that the command run by
"index" could be changed with a "put" by the maintainer of
each list with no interference from the majordomo
maintainer. The drawback is the same... one could "put" a
file that is later executed. In fact, taintperl won't let
you do it. It might be workable and secure if majordomo
changes to user "nobody" first and takes other
precautions - maybe fork and exec chroot??).
Barbara J. Dyker Department of Computer Science
Computer Systems Manager Campus Box 430B, ECEE00-69
barb@cs.colorado.edu University of Colorado
(303) 492-2545 Boulder, CO 80309-0430
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