At 10:12 AM 7/11/96 PDT, Sean Kamath wrote:
>
>I just got the alpha version of MajorCool. In it, it requires a new
>keyword in majordomo: The list "owner".
FYI, Majordomo'ers, Sean is referring to my "MajorCool" Web interface to
Majordomo. I had teased this list a few months ago about a pending
announcement, but so far have really only given it those who had contacted
me with a specific interest. It is available at
http://www.digitalmasters.com/~bhoule/. As Sean says, one of the Majordomo
modifications is to use a new "owner" keyword to help build the aliases:
>The way the contrib files in the MajorCool distribution uses the owner
>keyword is to have a program that runs through the listdir and builds
>an alias file.
>
>That's OK, but I'd like to allow people to
>dynamically "give" there list to someone (group?) of people.
On-the-fly rather than depending upon the aliases getting updated
frequently? Hmmm... Well, we also have a lot of -owners with a high
turnover, but a 15 minute alias update cycle has proven to be OK so far. But
I can see where maybe your idea would be worthwhile provided there is no
performance hit in the level of "dynamicism".
>I'm proposing using the "owner" keyword to have a "forward_to_owner"
>program, and then all the alias would look something like:
>
>test: "|/usr/test/majordomo-1.94/wrapper resend -l test test-list"
>test-list: :include:/usr/test/majordomo-1.94/lists/test
>owner-test: "|/usr/test/majordomo-1.94/wrapper resend -l test -o"
>test-owner: owner-test
>test-request: owner-test
>
>where '-o' would tell resend to forward this message to the list owner
>specified in the config file.
The only problem I see (compared to the way we do "owner") is that we do not
activate an alias until the "owner" is correct -- non-null, valid format,
and (if applicable) a locally verifiable address. We do this to ensure list
accountability. The dynamic aspect of what you propose would create a
condition where the list alias is always valid and active, but the "resend
-o" could become invalid.
To prevent this, you would then have to add "-o" checks to resend in its
distribution mode such that it would not allow postings unless the "owner"
was valid. But by then you may have introduced a performance hit by
validating "owner" on every list usage.
All in all, its a neat idea but I don't know if it will be worth it in the
long run. You can always tune your cronjob down to match your -owner
attrition rate. As I said, our 15 minutes more than makes up for most
comings and goings.
The other problem with your request is that it is for an enhancement to an
enhancement. I think we need to get Majordomo-workers to see that having an
"owner" keyword is good before we get them to make it dynamic. :)
PS: Having an "owner" keyword is not really a requirement for MajorCool. It
is really a "feature" of our Majordomo installation (which works very well,
BTW). MajorCool just happens to be built for this local enhancement, so it
assumes it is there. If someone wants to de-owner-ify MajorCool, that could
be done.
--
Bill Houle Bill.Houle@SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM
NCR Corporation (619) 485-4027
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