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Introduction to Subscriber Management In an ideal world, people who subscribe to your mailing list would never need your attention. In practice, sometimes you will need to assist people who cannot help themselves. This document explains some ways to make this job easier, such as... * searching the list of subscribers * unsubscribing several addresses with one command * seeing which subscribers are not receiving mail The examples in this document assume that you know how to use your list's administrative password. Please review "help admin_passwords", if you have not already done so. In each example, replace LISTNAME with the name of your mailing list, and ADDRESS with the e-mail address of a subscriber. ADDRESS can include the name of the subscriber, for example, John Doe <anonymous@example.com> Viewing the subscriber list --------------------------- The who command will display the list of subscribers. The simplest use of this command, who LISTNAME will show every e-mail address that is subscribed to the list. Using the "enhanced" command mode will cause the delivery class and personal settings for each subscriber to be displayed. For example, the command who-enhanced LISTNAME might show the following result: Judy <sister@example.com> PRSbd digest-daily-text Joe <brother@example.com> CSd each The letters in the second column are "flags," abbreviations for personal settings. The words in the third column are the "delivery class." The "help who" document shows a table of the flags and their abbreviations. The "help set" file describes each of the flags. "help admin_delivery" presents a simple introduction to delivery classes. If there are many addresses subscribed to a mailing list, some of them inevitably will have trouble receiving mail. Error messages about delivery problems are called "bounces," and the addresses that are experiencing such problems can be seen with the who-bounce command: who-bounce LISTNAME This command displays a count of error messages over the past week and month, the sequence numbers of the messages that bounced, and in some cases a diagnostic message that indicates why the delivery failed. It is also possible to search the subscriber list using the who command with a pattern (see "help patterns" for more information). For example, the command who LISTNAME edu would display a list of all subscribers with "edu" in their name or e-mail address. For more details, see "help who". Adding and removing subscribers ------------------------------- The simplest way to add or remove an address is with a one-line command: subscribe LISTNAME ADDRESS unsubscribe LISTNAME ADDRESS List owners can also use a here document to add or remove addresses, to save some typing. The following command... subscribe LISTNAME <<DONE John <john@example.net> Fred <fred@example.net> Martha <martha@example.net> DONE ...would add three addresses to the mailing list. Addresses can also be removed using a pattern. For example, unsubscribe-pattern-allmatching LISTNAME edu would remove all addresses containing "edu" from the mailing list. See "help subscribe", "help unsubscribe", "help here_document", and "help patterns" for more details. Personal settings ----------------- Several personal settings are available to customize how messages are delivered to each subscriber. The settings of new subscribers are often determined by the default_class and default_flags configuration settings. However, the subscribe-set command allows the default settings to be overridden. For example, new subscribers who wish to receive messages in digests can be placed in the "digest" delivery class with this command: subscribe-set LISTNAME digest ADDRESS The personal settings of subscribers can be changed with the set command. For example, set LISTNAME each,noselfcopy ADDRESS would set the delivery class to "each", turn off the "selfcopy" setting, and leave the other personal settings unchanged. Settings for more than one address can be changed with one command using a here document or a pattern. For example, set-pattern-allmatching LISTNAME nomail <<LMN /washington.edu/i /oregon.edu/i LMN would change the delivery class of all washington.edu and oregon.edu subscribers to "nomail". For more information, see "help configset_default_flags", "help set", and "help configset_default_class". Examples of how the personal settings affect delivery may be found in "help admin_delivery". Welcome and farewell -------------------- When people join a mailing list, they are usually sent a welcome message with instructions for leaving the list. When people leave the list, they usually do not receive a farewell message. However, it is possible to do things differently. For example, to subscribe someone without sending a welcome message, use this command: subscribe-nowelcome LISTNAME someone@example.com and to unsubscribe someone with a farewell message, use this command: unsubscribe-farewell LISTNAME someone@example.com For details on how to customize the welcome and farewell messages, see "help admin_documents". Restricting access ------------------ Any rules for the set, subscribe, unsubscribe, or who command in the access_rules configuration setting take precedence in determining who has access to the commands. If none of the access rules is applicable, the policy or access setting for the command holds sway. For more information, see the following documents: help admin_config help configset_access_rules help configset_set_policy help configset_subscribe_policy help configset_unsubscribe_policy help configset_who_access Aliases and address changes --------------------------- Some subscribers may want to post messages to a mailing list from more than one address. The alias command can be used to tell Majordomo that two addresses belong to the same person. A site or domain administrator can issue these commands to create an alias. default user OLDADDRESS alias NEWADDRESS The OLDADDRESS must already have been subscribed to at least one mailing list, and the NEWADDRESS must not already be registered. The alias applies to all of the subscriber's subscriptions. Some subscribers may change their e-mail address, and want to move all of their subscriptions to the new address. A site or domain administrator can issue these commands to change the address: default user NEWADDRESS changeaddr OLDADDRESS The password, aliases, and subscription settings will be transferred from OLDADDRESS to NEWADDRESS. If both addresses are subscribed to a mailing list, the subscription for OLDADDRESS will be discarded. Do not use a list's administrative password with the alias or changeaddr command. Only a domain or site password (level 3 or above; see "help admin_passwords" for details) or the subscriber's personal password will help. This is true because the changes apply to all mailing lists, but a list's password only has the power to make changes for one mailing list. See "help alias" and "help changeaddr" for more details. See Also: help admin help admin_commands help admin_config help admin_delivery help admin_documents help admin_moderate help admin_monitor help admin_passwords help alias help changeaddr help configset_welcome help configset_welcome_files help set help subscribe help unsubscribe help who This is the "admin_subscribers" 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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