
Subject: Starting a mailing list
By: Chuq Von Rospach (chuq@sun.UUCP); 11 Aug 1985
Last edit: Gene Spafford (spaf@cs.purdue.edu); 18 November 1987


There are three ways to manage a mailing list. Each has its own
advantages and disadvantages. All of this assumes a 4.?BSD environment,
but should be machine independent to a good degree.

The simplest way to manage a mailing list is to have all submissions
sent to your account. When they come in, they are redistributed by hand
by whomever is moderating the group. Address list maintenance is rather
simple: store a list of all accounts on the mailing list in a file
somewhere, each one on a separate line. When you want to mail a message
to the list, use the command:

	mail -s "subject" `cat file` <message

If your system is using "sendmail" you can also mail it as:

	mail -s "subject" ":include: file" < message

This is very simple and straightforward. it requires no support (or
cooperation, for that matter) from the system administration. When the
group becomes rather active, though, it can be disruptive to the
workflow of the moderator and some messages can get lost in the shuffle
in the moderator's mailbox. However, it is convenient and this method
should work regardless of race, creed, or version of Unix**.

The next, more complex method is to automatically redistributing
things. This assumes either "delivermail" or "sendmail" and the
existance of /usr/lib/aliases. If you can make modifications to
/usr/lib/aliases, you can add entries into that file to handle the
redistribution for you. For example, the mailing list mail.nuke-winter
has all contributions mailed to the addresss "nsc!nuke-winter" and all
administration messages to "nsc!nuke-winter-request." These addresses
are translated in "/usr/lib/aliases" as follows:

    nuke-winter:	:include:/usr/lib/mailalias/nuke-winter
    nuke-winter-request:	chuqui

the ":include:" does the same thing that the backquoted "cat" command
did in the first setup -- it includes the list of addresses to be
mailed to. You do not need to run "newaliases" when you change the
included file, so there is no more administrative overhead to this
setup than the previous, and things don't show up in the moderator's
mailbox until they've been sent.

Finally, if the mailing list volume suggests it, you can go to a digested
mailing list. To do this, the moderator would collect all of the messages
in a single place and occasionally edit them into a single article (for
examples, look at something like fa.info-mac). It would then be sent out
by some variation of the two setups shown above. What I normally do is 
add the following items to the aliases file:

    nuke-winter:	/somewhere/nuke-winter-storage
    nuke-winter-dist:	:include:/usr/lib/mailalias/nuke-winter
    nuke-winter-request:	chuqui

mail to nsc!nuke-winter would be stored in the file nuke-winter-storage 
somewhere in my directory structure. When I'm ready to distribute it,
I edit it into a digest, and then mail it to nuke-winter-dist.

** Unix is a trademark of AT&T Bell Labs.

Addendum by Mark Horton (cbosgd!mark); 12 Aug 1985

Note that your "portable" version assumes the -s option to Mail.
On System V this only works with mailx.  Otherwise they have to
leave off the -s or do
	(echo "Subject: $S" ; echo "" ; cat message) | mail `cat file`

You might mention that the /somewhere/ stuff won't notify you when
traffic comes in, you might want a copy for your mailbox.


Addendum by Gene Spafford (purdue!spaf); 18 November 1987

Once you have your submission addresses set up, send a short mail
message with that address, the name of the mailing list co-ordinator,
and a short paragraph about the purpose of the group, to:
spaf@cs.purdue.edu  Please have the subject line say something like
"info on new mailing list".  I'll make sure it gets added to the list
of mailing lists I publish.



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