And so wrote our friend Bill Silvert:
> Although compilation and installation was pretty easy, for someone
> who is not very knowledgable about mailers the setup is confusing
> and poorly documented. Quite a few people continue to have problems
> with lock files because of a very confusing situation with regard
> to ownership and permissions under different operating systems,
> and the common solution seems to be to throw up one's hands and
> make a lot of files and directories world writable.
>
> Other than this, Majordomo is very nice, and I have found many of
> the experts to be friendly and helpful.
I agree with Bill when he states that setup of MajorDomo would
be difficult for anyone who is not familiar with mailers, but the setup
of anything to do with mail would naturally be so. It would not be a
factor of Majordomo or LISTSERV, or any other list service program.
One of the most generalized assumptions that has to made when producing
software for the world to use is that people who at least know what
they want to do and have a general idea about how to get there will use
the software.
But, of course, then there is the idea of _learning_ how to set
up a mailing list and using it to learn about the mail system. Again,
any list serving program is going to be confusing because it will bring
up foreign concepts that the someone just has to grow accostomed to. I
am worried by the fact that someone would "throw up one's hands and
make a lot of files and directories world writable" because many List
Managers have been able to work around the problems that others are
facing, which means it is not a fault of the program--the documentation
perhaps, but I personally have not perused all the specs so I do not
know what is defined and what is not defined within them.
Another factor that must be considered in the pros and cons of
majordomo is this list. This mailing list is jut as much a part of the
package as the perl scripts. I have watched the traffic over this list
for quite a while and I must say that it has some of the most helpful
and willing people that I have seen. I am not sure that any question
has gone unanswered, and even some of the toughest questions have been
carried out to their successful resolution, no matter how long it took.
For someone learning how to use a mailing list, I would have to
say that monitoring this list (and reading the archives) could not
provide a better education (myself as an example. I learned
listservers and how to use majordomo through the qeustions of others)
of how to set up a list, and even general information about mailing
programs (sendmail, smail, etc).
I cannot offer an opinion on which service is better because I
am biased toward MajorDomo automatically because it is all that I have
worked with. However, I have read somewhat on LISTSERV, and it seems
extremely comparable in the functionality that it provides to the user
(list members), but setup I know nothing about. I just wish to offer
the advice that the ails of others should not be weighted heavily in
the decision because there are many people out here to help; a library
was not made to look at, but through for the answers to questions each
person has. The modern libraries of the interenet are the people
themselves; no longer do we have the time to write books to answer the
questions of mankind, but we still have the time to throw in our two
bits.
I can gurantee that anyone who first sets up a list will have
problems with it at some(many) stage(s). The advice that I would offer
is to make sure there is support (like this list) for whatever program
is chosen, it will save a lot of greif, frustration, and lonliness.
Darren McKee
Network Administrator
---
Darren McKee - Technical Staff | darren@inherent.com
Network Administration Center | Tel.: 503-224-6751
Inherent Technologies, Inc. | Fax: 503-224-8872
2140 SW Jefferson St. Suite 130 | sysadmin@inherent.com
Portland, Oregon USA 97201 |
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