I run about thirty mailing lists for PBS and CPB... also some
extracurricular ones, like the NYC Motorcyclists list. I used Kotsikonas'
LISTSERV and LISTPROC for years and until recently so I have some basis for
comparison. I decided to abandon LISTPROC when it was sold to a commercial
entity, which has forbidden Kotsikonas from making any more bug fixes to the
"freeware" version. Unfortunately, the latest LISTPROC had some nasty
alligators and, although I enjoy a good hacking challenge, the code isn't
well-documented and I don't have as much time as I used to for this kinda
fun.
The LIST* learning curve was very high for me, and I'm a software engineer
(OTOH, maybe that's why). I first tried running it with SCO's MMDF and ran
into a brick wall because of problems with SCO's piped aliases that stripped
the first line off message headers, which are critical under LIST*. SMAIL
fixed that problem. I also had problems with the server daemon dying until
I learned to decipher the voluminous logging that LIST* maintains. File
permissions are extremely critical with LIST*.
Subscriber and manager security is extremely good with LIST*. The user's
subscription address is yanked from the first line of the internet header
rather than from the "From: " address, which makes it difficult (although
not impossible) to spoof. OTOH, unless you're running mailing lists for the
DoD, I don't know why such heavy subscription security is necessary. It was
very problematic for the PBS list managers, some of whom lived on the road
and had to manage lists from many different addresses. PBS finally asked me
to investigate mailing list alternatives to LISTPROC because of the griping
from content managers.
Majordomo observations from a novice:
>From what I've seen of MAJORDOMO so far, I like; although it also doesn't
win prizes for its learning curve either. It would really help if there was
just one tutorial source for building the sofware rather being directed to
scattered info among the README file, Doc/majordomo.ora,
Doc/majordomo.lisa6.ps, resend.README, etc. I now know the README file is
the key installation doc but for those of us who methodically approach these
things by printing out every text file in sight, it's confusing, especially
when there is conflicting information.
There is an inconsistency in the $mailer definition from majordomo.cf.
Programs like 'digest', 'resend' and 'bounce-remind' ignore it and make
hardwired calls to /usr/lib/sendmail anyway. UUCP-only SMAIL sites won't
have /usr/lib/sendmail, although linking /bin/smail to /usr/lib/sendmail,
which is what you do for SMTP support, fixes this. This SMAIL note should
probably be put in the manual somewhere.
I got the first MAJORDOMO digest of the NYC Motorcyclists list sent out last
night but this morning was hammered by daemon error messages from uupsi3.com
"Execution request failed" with no explanation given. This is obviously an
SMAIL problem but I've never seen it before. Anyone have a clue??
One final note, 'resend' isn't removing its /tmp/resend.NNN.in and
/tmp/resend.NNN.out files. Anyone have an easy way to check why this is
happening?
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