Re: seeking help in archiving with majordomo

[Daniel Liston <dliston @ netscape . com>]

NEWLIST is a file that comes with the installation files in the 
majordomo tarball.  It is probably in your /usr/local/majordomo*
directory heirarchy somewhere, but I am attaching it anyway.

Also, here is a sample of my aliases for a list called "test"
which archives messages.

nobody: /dev/null
test:   "|/opt/mj1945/wrapper resend -l test test-outgoing,nobody"
owner-test:     dan,
test-owner:     owner-test
test-outgoing:  :include:/opt/mj1945/lists/test, test-archiver
test-archiver:  "|/opt/mj1945/wrapper archive2.pl -f /opt/mj1945/files/test/test -a -M"
test-request:   "|/opt/mj1945/wrapper request-answer test"
test-approval:	owner-test
dan:		me@my.domain

Now, to explain the aliases;

The nobody: alias is probably already defined this way, but
I include it because I reference the nobody address in the
test: alias.

I put the test-archiver address on the test-outgoing address
so administrative or BOUNCE emails do not end up in the archive.

test-archiver is self explanatory up to the -f option. 
archive2.pl has 3 parts,
1.  /opt/mj1945/files --- this must match the majordomo.cf
$filedir = "/opt/mj1945/files";
$filedir_suffix = "";

2.  /test/ --- is a hard coded subdirectory appended to
$filedir by majordomo for storing archives which matches the
name of your list being archived.  Majordomo will also append
any value in $filedir_suffix to this directory name if you
define it to anything other than empty/null with "".  For
example, if $filedir_suffix = ".archive", then /test/ above
would have to become /test.archive/

3.  test -a -M --- this is the basename of your archive.
The -a appends new messages to the file as they come in, and
the -M gives your filename an extension of YYYYMM date stamp
and automatically starts a new file/archive each month.

Note: If you are using sendmail newer than 8.7, the directory
structure above must not be group or world writable, and need
to match the ownerships defined in your Makefile for W_USER
and W_GROUP.

Dan Liston


Anthony Gonzalez wrote:
> 
> Daniel,
> Good afternoon!
> My name is Anthony and we're on release majordomo-1.94.4.
> We're also help with archiving, and I wanted to ask you if the information that you provided on the attached email pertains to our release.
> We looked in http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/majordomo-faq.html, but we could not find the NEWLIST.
> Any suggestions are appreciate it.
> Anthony
> ============================================================
> From: Daniel Liston <dliston@netscape.com>
> Date: 2001/08/10 Fri AM 10:18:38 EDT
> To: Saisab Pradhan <saisab@icimod.org.np>
> CC: majordomo-users@greatcircle.com
> Subject: Re: seeking help in archiving with majordomo
> 
> Have you read the FAQ and NEWLIST files that come with majordomo?  Section 2
> of the FAQ touches on a couple archiving questions, but the NEWLIST file has
> detailed examples of how to set up your aliases for archiving your lists.
> 
> Dan Liston
	      _  _ ____  _ ____ ____ ___  ____ _  _ ____
	      |\/| |__|  | |  | |__/ |  \ |  | |\/| |  |
	      |  | |  | _| |__| |  \ |__/ |__| |  | |__|

			    Release 1.94.4
			       NEWLIST
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------

List names must be of the form "[a-z0-9_-]+" (in other words, letters,
digits, underbars, or dashes only).  List may be of mixed or upper
case, but all references to the list name below must be specified
in lower case EXCEPT for the -l arguments of resend and majordomo.

To create a list:

1) Create an empty file called <list-name> in $listdir, mode 664.

2) Create a file called "<list-name>.info" in $listdir, mode 664, with
   the initial introductory info for the list in it.

3) Create the appropriate entries for the list in your Sendmail
   aliases file (/etc/aliases or a separate majordomo.aliases file.)

   Each list requires several aliases.  For an example list called
   'test', these aliases are required:

       test		 The list alias itself
       owner-test	 The owner of the list (who should get bounces)
       test-request	 The address for administrative requests.
       test-approval	 The person who approves postings to the list
                         (for moderated lists as well as unmoderated ones)

   These would look like this:

       test:		 :include:/usr/test/majordomo-1.94.3/lists/test
       owner-test:	 you,
       test-request:	 "|/usr/test/majordomo-1.94.3/wrapper request-answer test"
       test-approval:	 you

   It's more likely that the outgoing messages to the list will be
   passed through "resend" to catch Majordomo commands, as well as
   give other useful features.  A typical set of aliases without anything
   fancy, such as archiving or digesting, would look like this:

       test:    "|/usr/test/majordomo-1.94.3/wrapper resend -l test test-list"
       test-list:  :include:/usr/test/majordomo-1.94.3/lists/test
       owner-test:   you,
       test-owner:   you
       test-request: "|/usr/test/majordomo-1.94.3/wrapper majordomo -l test"

   Finally, a more complete set of aliases that provides digestification,
   archiving, and header manipulation would look like:

       test:"|/tools/majordomo/wrapper resend -l test -h cs.umb.edu test-outgoing"
       test-digest:test

       # I put the digest and archive programs on the outgoing list so that
       # messages bounced by resend don't end up in the digest or archive
       # unless I send them through resend explicitly. 
       test-outgoing: :include:/usr/local/Lists/test,
	  "| /tools/majordomo/wrapper digest -r -C -l test-digest test-digest-outgoing",
          "| /tools/majordomo/wrapper archive2.pl -a  -m
	   -f /usr/local/mail/archive/test/test.archive"
       # archive produces a monthly archive with the -m flag.

       test-digest-outgoing::include:/usr/local/Lists/test-digest

       owner-test:you,
       owner-test-outgoing:owner-test

       # note that the "-digest" and "-digest-outgoing" suffixes
       # are required to allow the majordomo mkdigest command, and the
       # config code to work properly.
       owner-test-digest:owner-test
       owner-test-digest-outgoing:owner-test

       test-request: "|/tools/majordomo/wrapper request-answer test"
       test-digest-request: "|/tools/majordomo/wrapper request-answer test-digest"

       test-approval:you,
       test-digest-approval:test-approval

   As you can see, setting up a list can be quite complex.  

   You can run majordomo at the -request address (recommended), and it will
   handle requests such as:

	subscribe
	unsubscribe
	signoff

   without requiring the user to supply a list name. To do this set up an
   alias similar to:

        test-request: "|/tools/majordomo/wrapper majordomo -l test"

   Where the argument to -l is the name of the list.

   Hopefully in a future release of majordomo archive2.pl will be
   integrated into majordomo so that the frequency of archive rollover
   (daily, monthly, yearly) will be controllable via the config file
   mechanism.

	***** NOTE: CONVERTING FROM A PREVIOUS MAJORDOMO VERSION *****
	For those who are converting from an earlier version of
	majordomo, note that resend has very few command line
	arguments. If you don't strip the command line arguments from resend,
	the comments in the configuration file that deal with default
	values for resend will be incorrect.


   More examples of alias setups can be found in the file majordomo.aliases.
   For sendmail users, don't forget to run 'newaliases' to rebuild the
   alias database.


4) If the list will be archived, create an archive directory in the
   location specified by the $filedir and $filedir_suffix variables.

5) If the list has a digest, create a digest work (incoming) subdirectory
   under $digest_work_dir.  Use the same name as the digest list (example:
   test-digest).  You also must create an archive directory for the digest
   list as explained in step 4.

6) Finally, make sure everything is owned by user majordomo, group
   majordomo, and writable by both owner and group (i.e., mode 664 for
   files and mode 775 for directories).

7) Now issue a 'config <listname> <listname>.admin' command to
   Majordomo. This will cause it to create a default configuration
   file for the list, and send it back to you.  Make any desired
   changes, SUCH AS CHANGING THE DEFAULT PASSWORDS, as well as adding
   a description, and send it back with the 'newconfig' command.


Now send a test subscribe and unsubscribe, just to further verify that
the list is working.