Disclaimer: I am not a professional writer or programmer.
Please report any/all discrepencies in this document to me
via the majordomo-users or majordomo-docs mailing lists at
greatcircle.com.
Majordomo list owners often have trouble setting up a digest
version of their list. I am writing this in hopes of clearing
up some of this confusion. Successfully archiving your lists
could be a side effect of implementing the knowledge gained
from the examples included.
Assumptions:
Majordomo version 1.94.5
Sendmail version 8.8 (or higher)
You have root permission on the server
to create users,
modify the aliases file, and
rebuild the aliases database.
You have created a
majordomo user and
majordomo group.
The majordomo $HOME directory is
/usr/local/majordomo and this is owned by
user majordomo and
group majordomo.
The smrsh directory (if used) is
/etc/smrsh and holds a
link owned by root to
/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper.mytld
There are no group or world "writable" directories in the path
to /usr/local/majordomo, including / (root).
Sendmail "trusts" majordomo. You have a Tmajordomo line in
sendmail.cf and submit.cf or these files use the
/etc/mail/trusted-users file.
Sendmail only recognizes one "/etc/aliases" file.
Others are allowed but outside the scope of this note.
Sendmail uses the "always_add_domain" feature.
The majordomo config file is /etc/majordomo.cf
The majordomo.cf variables are defined statically. No
$whereami = "`/bin/dnsdomainname`";
it should be
$whereami = "myhost.mydomain.tld";
You already have a working list that utilizes resend.
eg. wrapper resend -l <listname> <listname>-outgoing
Your aliases file contains
nobody: /dev/null
Preface:
The directories above may be different, but in that case, you
will modify anything stated further to match your installation.
To set up a digest, you must also have a handle on archiving.
Digest has some dependencies, or I should say, makes some
assumptions. One of these is that you have an archive directory
configured to hold the digestified message before delivery, and
another is that you will call your digest delivery address
<list>-digest-outgoing.
Your digest and archive directories are defined in the majordomo.cf
file as $digest_work_dir and $filedir. $filedir_suffix is also used
for defining the location of your archives. For the purpose of this
recipe, I will keep these in the same directory tree as my other
majordomo data files and directories. The sample.cf gives an example
of /usr/local/mail/digest when lists are in /usr/local/lists and
archive files are in /usr/local/mail/files.
Here are my suggested settings based on the assumptions above;
$homedir = "/usr/local/majordomo";
$digest_work_dir = "$homedir/digests";
$listdir = "$homedir/lists";
$filedir = "$homedir/archives";
$filedir_suffix = "";
What is not explained very well, is that you will need to create
these directories (if you haven't already) as the majordomo user,
or change ownership to the majordomo user if you created them as
root.
Make sure these directories are not group or world writable, to
prevent sendmail from complaining.
You will also have to reference these directories in your
/etc/aliases
so mail is passed to these scripts that will be doing the actual
work. In some (if not all) cases, there will also be
subdirectories involved that will need the same ownerships and
permissions as their parents.
A "test" mailing list that does archives AND digests will have
aliases that look like this;
owner-test: test-owner
test: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper resend -l test test-outgoing,nobody"
test-owner: someone@your.domain,
test-request: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper majordomo -l test"
test-approval: moderator@your.domain ### could also be pointed to test-owner
test-outgoing: :include:/usr/local/majordomo/lists/test,test-archiver,test-digestify
test-archiver: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper archive2.pl -f /usr/local/majordomo/archives/test/test -a -M"
test-digestify: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper digest -r -C -l test-digest test-digest-outgoing"
owner-test-digest: test-owner
test-digest: test,
test-digest-owner: test-owner
test-digest-request: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper majordomo -l test-digest"
test-digest-approval: test-approval
test-digest-outgoing: :include:/usr/local/majordomo/lists/test-digest,nobody"
The -approval addresses are not required, and will default
to owner-<listname>(-digest), and
the -request addresses could just be pointed to the
owner/moderator alias depending on your specific needs
or requirements.
Some of the "owner" aliases are redundant, but safe.
Let me also explain that you do not need to enable archiving
to use a digest version of your list, but you WILL need the
majordomo.cf and archives directory properly configured for
digestification to happen. The digest script also "assumes"
your outgoing address for the digest is called
<listname>-digest-outgoing.
In the case above, test-digest-outgoing.
To continue with our example, we now have a dependency on
subdirectories for archiver and the digestify. We need to
create these before we run "newaliases" or "sendmail -bi".
mkdir /usr/local/majordomo/archives/test
mkdir /usr/local/majordomo/archives/test-digest
mkdir /usr/local/majordomo/digests/test-digest
The above need to be owner:group majordomo:majordomo and
chmod 755. Loose security could be tightened up, but that
is a different HOW-TO. :)
The test-archiver: alias will stamp the archive with a
4 digit year and 2 digit month.
If you notice your archive showing up as 1901xx instead of
2001xx, please apply the folllowing patch to archive2.pl
===========================================
--- archive2.pl.orig 2000/01/07 11:00:49
+++ archive2.pl.new 2000/05/15 00:55:00mkdir /usr/local/majordomo/archives/test
@@ -152,7 +152,11 @@
local($junk, $addr, $dow, $moy, $dom, $time, $year, @rest);
($junk, $addr, $dow, $moy, $dom, $time, $year, @rest) = split(/\s+/,$from);
- &open_archive($FH, $year % 100, $MoY{$moy}, $dom);
+ if ($year =~ /\d{4}/) {
+ &open_archive($FH, $year -1900, $MoY{$moy}, $dom);
+ } else {
+ &open_archive($FH, $year % 100, $MoY{$moy}, $dom);
+ }
}
sub open_archive {
===========================================
NOTE: To do digesting without the standard archive, there
are two changes to the aliases.
test-outgoing: :include:/usr/local/majordomo/test,test-digestify
and you do not "need" the test-archiver: alias. If this is the
case, you also do not need to create the
/usr/local/majordomo/archives/test
directory. Leaving them in, even though they are never used, does
not really hurt either. It is all a matter of calling or not
calling the test-archiver: alias via the test-outgoing: alias.
The final steps in making your digest happen daily/nightly, is to set
your test-digest.config file variables high enough that digestification
does not try to happen automatically, and to create a crontab entry that
will make majordomo execute the digest script.
In your test-digest.config file, depending on how busy you expect
your list to be, adjust these variables appropriately high. I have
not tried it, but maybe they can all be left blank.
digest_maxdays = 30
digest_maxlines = 9999
maxlength = 500000
The maxlength is in bytes, not Kbytes. The other two are self
explanatory. You only have to set one value, but you will have
to experiment to get it right. A good starting point, might be
to set digest_maxdays to 7, and leave the other two blank.
Otherwise, you will probably have to tinker with the maxlength
in hundreds of thousands or millions of bytes.
As long as we are in the test-digest.config file, don't forget
about the other digest_* variables either.
digest_archive =
digest_issue = 1
digest_name = test-digest
digest_rm_footer = test
digest_rm_fronter = test
digest_volume = 1
digest_work_dir =
To keep your digests clean, it is also a good idea to use
purge_received = yes
on your regular list (test.config) as well as the digest.
However, this does make tracking problems more difficult.
Then you can get a little fancy and set your fronters and footers,
message_fronter << END
-
Include in this issue:
_SUBJECTS_
END
message_footer << END
unsubscribe instructions,
copyright message
etc.
END
If your security uses cron.allow or cron.deny, install the appropriate
setting for <user>. Your crontab entry should not be owned by root or
majordomo to avoid "Majordomo ABORT" messages. I typically fill in
<user> with the uid of the list-owner. Now to access the crontab...
crontab -u <user> -e
SHELL=/bin/sh
MAILTO=""
30 4 * * 5 echo mkdigest test-digest <passwd> | mail majordomo
#| | | | | ^here to % or EOL is field 6 for commands
#| | | | +-- 3 letter day of week or 0-7 0=Sun
#| | | +-- 3 letter month or 1-12
#| | +-- day 1-31
#| +-- hours 0-23
#+-- minutes 0-59
The 5th line above sends majordomo an email forcing it to make a
digest and send it to the default test-digest-outgoing alias every
Friday at 4:30AM. If your delivery address is not
test-digest-outgoing, that line can be changed to something like
30 4 * * 5 echo mkdigest test-digest test-digest-whatever <passwd> | mail majordomo
If you want the list to go out daily, change the "5" above, to a "*".
Having a password stored in the crontab is probably not a good idea
either, but it does get the job done.
Dan Liston
PS. Please feel free to add comments/criticisms about this document.
It is after all my first revision at explaining the steps necessary
to archive/digest a mailing list. It is possible that I may have
still omitted something useful.
|
|
