Cool sendmail /etc/aliases hack for Majordomo

[Brent Chapman <brent @ GreatCircle . COM>]

I was having a problem with the "resend" aliases getting too long in my
/etc/aliases file.  I think "sendmail" has a 254 character limit, and the
"resend" aliases for some of my lists were passing that because of all the
options to "resend".

What I discovered is that you can use backquote expansion in an alias, and
put all the arguments to "resend" in another file.  For instance, instead of

sample-list-name: "|/usr/local/mail/majordomo/wrapper resend
	-p bulk -M 10000
	-l Sample-List-Name -f Sample-Owner -h GreatCircle.COM
	-a /usr/local/mail/lists/sample-list-name.passwd
	-R -r Sample-List-Name -s sample-list-name-outgoing"

You could use

sample-list-name: "|/usr/local/mail/majordomo/wrapper resend
	`/bin/cat /usr/local/mail/lists/sample-list-name.resend`
	sample-list-name-outgoing"

And then put all the arguments in a file named
/usr/local/mail/lists/sample-list-name.resend:

	-p bulk
	-M 10000
	-l Sample-List-Name
	-f Sample-Owner
	-h GreatCircle.COM
	-a /usr/local/mail/lists/sample-list-name.passwd
	-R
	-r Sample-List-Name
	-s sample-list-name-outgoing"

This has the added advantage that you can change the "resend" arguments
for a list without having to change the /etc/aliases entry; I imagine
that would appeal to those of you running Majordomo at sites where you
don't have the "root" password, and want to bother your sysadmins as
seldom as possible for list-related stuff.


-Brent
--
Brent Chapman                                   Great Circle Associates
Brent@GreatCircle.COM                           1057 West Dana Street
+1 415 962 0841                                 Mountain View, CA  94041