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Managing Virtual Domains Each Majordomo installation is capable of supporting one or many virtual domains. Each domain, likewise, is capable of supporting one or many electronic mailing lists. In an attempt to make management easier, some characteristics are shared by all of the mailing lists within a domain. However, there is at present no sharing between different domains at the same site. There are two ways to add virtual domains. The first way is to reinstall the software entirely, answering the questions about each virtual domain that the site manager wishes to support. The second way is to run the "make domain" shell command from the Majordomo source directory. Each domain has two special pseudo-lists, GLOBAL and DEFAULT. The GLOBAL pseudo-list is used to manage Majordomo commands which are not specific to any one mailing list. These commands include accept, alias, changeaddr, createlist, password, register, reject, rekey, sessioninfo, show, tokeninfo, unalias, unregister, and which. The DEFAULT pseudo-list is used to provide default configuration settings to all of the mailing lists except the GLOBAL pseudo-list. When Majordomo attempts to determine the current value of a configuration setting for a mailing list, it first checks the table of settings for the list itself. This table will only contain values if the list owners have explicitly added them with the configset command. In contrast, the configdef command is used to remove values from the table. If a configuration setting has no entry in the list's table, the DEFAULT list is checked next. If the setting has no entry in table for the DEFAULT list, the installation values are used. For regular lists, the installation values are supplied by the DEFAULT:_install configuration settings. For the GLOBAL pseudo-list, installation values are supplied by the GLOBAL:_install settings. It is possible to change the installation defaults, but any changes will be lost when you upgrade the software. The DEFAULT list is valuable because it allows you to change the settings of all of the mailing lists within a domain at once. It has been suggested that one DEFAULT list is not enough. If your site has two or more basic styles of mailing list (discussion lists and announcement lists, for example) for which you would like to provide default settings, it would be helpful to choose which set of default values to use for each list. Unfortunately, this has not yet been implemented. The most important use of the DEFAULT list is to configure each domain to supply at least one digest to each mailing list, using the "digests" configuration setting. Majordomo does not define any digests by default (see "help configset_digests" for more details). The DEFAULT list can also be used to make files available to all of the mailing lists within a domain. See "help configset_file_share" and "help get" for more details. There is also a Stock directory for files that are supplied by Majordomo, like this help file. These files can be obtained using the get command, and replaced using the put command; however, there is no way to overwrite the files in the Stock directory. If you use the get and put commands to edit and improve the files, your changes will be saved in the file space for one list. Even DEFAULT files are only available to lists within one domain at a site. If you wish to make changes to Stock files that affect all domains, you will need to edit the files in the Majordomo source distribution and reinstall the software. Each domain has several databases which apply to all of the mailing lists within that domain. * The subscriber registry that keeps the personal password and other information about each e-mail address that is subscribed to a mailing list at that domain. This registry is separate from the individual subscriber database for each mailing list. * The token identifiers for requests that have been delayed, or require confirmation or approval from the moderators of a mailing list. * The alias database, which allows subscribers to tell Majordomo that two e-mail addresses should be treated the same. * The duplicate databases, which store data about every message that is delivered to a mailing list within the domain. This allows subscribers to avoid cross-posted messages, using the "unique" delivery class (see "help set" for an explanation of delivery classes). The GLOBAL list shares the values of (only) six configuration settings with all of the other mailing lists in the same domain. The six settings are admin_body, admin_headers, noarchive_body, noarchive_headers, taboo_body, and taboo_headers. These settings are combined with a mailing list's individual settings when Majordomo attempts to find prohibited content in posted messages. There are also a number of GLOBAL configration settings which can be managed only by site or domain administrators. For a complete list, see the "Settings for the GLOBAL pseudo-list only" section of the "help topics" document. For security reasons, some list-specific configuration settings can only be changed by site or domain administrators. Please see the help page for each setting for more details: help configset_aliases help configset_archive_dir help configset_config_access help configset_debug help configset_delivery_rules help configset_priority Majordomo automatically maintains the GLOBAL:owners auxiliary list, which contains the addresses of all mailing list owners within a domain. A site or domain owner who wishes to contact all of the list owners at once can do so with the announce command. In addition, a list of these addresses, together with the names of the mailing lists that each administrates, can be seen with the following command: who-owners GLOBAL If you feel ready to begin creating mailing lists and configuring them, the following help pages are recommended: help admin_passwords help createlist help admin_config Domains do not have to be valid Internet domain names. Like valid domain names, they must contain only letters, digits, hyphen, or period. However, within those limits, you can call domains anything you like. This feature can be used to segregate lists that fall within the same domain. For example, you could have five lists on the same host divided into two domains, "rodent" and "tree": rodent ------ mouse@example.com squirrel@example.com tree ---- maple@example.com oak@example.com magnolia@example.com Make certain that the whereami setting for each list is set to the actual internet domain name, for example: configset GLOBAL whereami = example.com Session and event information ----------------------------- Majordomo2 stores information about every email or command line processed in files called sessions. These are files containing all pertinent information about the session (email headers, CGI environment, selected environment variables, etc. as appropriate) as well as a log of all commands executed during that session. When a token is rejected, information about the session that generated it is automatically mailed to the list and site owners (if they elect to receive such information). Old session files are automatically deleted after the number of days indicated by the 'session_lifetime' GLOBAL configuration setting. In addition, information about every command that Majordomo receives is stored in an event log. Old events are removed after the number of days in the "log_lifetime" GLOBAL configuration setting. To find the session number for a particular event, use the "report-full" command. To see information about a session, use the "sessioninfo" command. See "help report" and "help sessioninfo" for more details. Commands available to site and domain administrators ---------------------------------------------------- Site and domain administrators can use any of the commands for list administrators (as listed in "help admin_commands") and any of the commands for subscribers (as shown in "help commands"). There are also two commands that are usually available only if a site or domain administrative password is used. createlist LISTNAME [OWNER] The createlist command is used to create or destroy a mailing list. It can also be used to display the aliases for one mailing list or every mailing list within a domain. See "help createlist" for more details. rekey The rekey command has two purposes. The first purpose is to alter the addresses in the subscriber databases according to the transformations in the addr_xforms configuration setting. The second purpose is to verify that the subscriber databases and global registry are consistent with one another. Please see "help configset_addr_xforms" and "help rekey" for more information. Customizing the appearance of Majordomo --------------------------------------- Nearly every aspect of Majordomo's appearance can be customized using the get and put commands. Three kinds of document affect the appearance of Majordomo: error files Short messages that indicate what went wrong when an error occurs. format files Display the results of Majordomo commands and the formatting for the WWW interfaces. reply files Acknowledgement messages, welcome messages, confirmation messages, informational notices, and so on. See "help get" and "help put" to learn how to retrieve and customize these documents. See "help error_files", "help format_files", and "help reply_files" to learn more about each document category. See Also: help accept help admin help admin_commands help alias help announce help auxiliary_list help changeaddr help configdef help configset help configset_admin_body help configset_admin_headers help configset_noarchive_body help configset_noarchive_headers help configset_taboo_body help configset_taboo_headers help configset_whereami help createlist help error_files help format_files help get help password help put help register help reject help rekey help reply_files help sessioninfo help show help tokeninfo help unalias help unregister help which This is the "admin_domain" help document for Majordomo 2, version 0.1201103110. For a list of all help documents, send the following command: help topics in the body of a message to majordomo@openbsd.org.
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