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Majordomo's Command set

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Your mailing list is managed by an automated mailing list management program called Majordomo. Majordomo should free you from dealing with most of the administrivia usually associated with running mailing lists (adding users, dropping users, etc.).

To submit something to your list, you (or anybody else) should simply mail it to the list posting address.

To be added to your list, a user simply sends a message to majordomo. There are two ways to do it:

1. Send a message to  List-Name-request@pk.greens.org containing nothing but the word
   subscribe

   OR

2. Send a message to  majordomo@pk.greens.org containing nothing but the words
   subscribe  List-Name

Majordomo understands several commands, and is not limited to a single command per message (it will process commands until reaching end-of-message or the command ``end''). The command ``help'' will tell you about all the other commands.

Actually, it won't tell you about _all_ the other commands that Majordomo understands. There are several commands there for use by list owners such as yourself, which are not advertised to the public. All of these commands are password-protected on a list-by-list basis, but anyone with a valid list/password combination can invoke these commands. This is not exactly high-tech security, but it's more intended to keep annoyance to a minimum than to be foolproof.

The ``documented'' commands which Majordomo understands and which are for everyone to use are:

subscribe  List-Name  [address]
unsubscribe  List-Name  [address]
which  [address]
who  List-Name
info  List-Name
index  List-Name
get  List-Name
lists
help
end

The ``undocumented'' commands for use by list owners are:

approve  password  unsubscribe  List-Name  [address]
approve  password  subscribe  List-Name  [address]

This is so that you can approve subscription or unsubscription actions that need approval by the list owner. Note that this is just a standard ``subscribe'' or ``unsubscribe'' command prefixed with ``approve  password '' (where you substitute the password for your list, for  ``password'').

approve  password  who  List-Name

This allows you to get the list of addresses for your anonymous list. Without the password, even the list owner can not see who is on the list.

passwd  List-Name  Old-Password  New-Password

This is so you can change the password for your list, if you desire.

newintro  List-Name  password 

This is so that you can replace the information file that people get when they do ``intro List-Name'' or ``subscribe List-Name''. It reads everything after the ``newintro'' command to end-of-message or the word ``EOF'' on a line by itself as the new intro for the list.

newinfo List-Name  password 

This replaces the information file that people get when they do ``info List-Name''. (This file is also sent by ``subscribe List-Name'' if the intro file doesn't exist.) This reads everything after the ``newinfo'' command to end-of-message or the word ``EOF'' on a line by itself as the new info for the list.

config List-Name  password 

Retrieves a self-documenting configuration file for the list List-Name. The  password  can be the password contained in the file List-Name.passwd or the admin_password in the configuration file.

newconfig  List-Name  password 

Validates and installs a new configuration file. It reads everything after the ``newconfig'' command to end-of-message or the word ``EOF'' on a line by itself as the new info for the list. The config file is expected to be a complete config file as returned by ``config''. Incremental changing of the config file is not yet supported. As soon as the config file is validated and installed its settings are available for use. This is useful to remember if you have multiple commands in your mail message since they will be subject to the settings of the new config file. If there is an error in the config file (incorrect value...), the config file will not be accepted and the error message identifying the problem line(s) will be returned to the sender. Note that only the error messages are returned to the sender not the entire config file, so it would be a good idea to keep a copy of your outgoing email message.

writeconfig List-Name  password 

Write a new config file in standard form. writeconfig forces a rewrite of the config file with all default values in place (or current values if the config file already exists). It is useful to use after an upgrade of majordomo since it will add the new keywords for people to change. It also updates the documentation in the file if that has changed.

mkdigest <digest list name>  password 
mkdigest <digest list name> <digest outgoing alias>  password 

Generate a digest immediately without waiting to reach the max_length given in the config file. The first form will cause the digest to be sent to an alias found by appending ``-outgoing'' to the digest list name. Because this can be a security concern, the second form allows specification of the name of the alias that the outgoing digest will be sent to.