Archive-Name: rec-autos/part6  [New article as of 4 February 1993 -- rpw]   Many people want to set up mailing lists for their favorite automotive topics; rather fewer know how to do it.  This article will provide the essential information for doing so on standard Unix systems.  A shell script and examples of alias file setups are included which presently run on a Sparc 2 here at balltown.cma.com for a number of mailing lists.  Note that if you do set up an automotive mailing list, please let me know of the -request address so that I can list it in the montly rec.autos posting.  Also inform the keeper of the Usenet list-of-lists (check news.answers for this monthly posting.)  First of all, to get anywhere, you need to either 1) be a sysadmin, or 2) have some measure of assistance from your sysadmin.  It is also important that you have reasonably good network connectivity; if it seems like you get everything several days after anyone else, or that you have trouble getting email through, then your network connectivity is probably not good enough.  Listserv:  There is a handy automated mailing list package named listserv, which is available from several ftp servers on the network.  Details of the installation and operation of listserv are beyond the scope of this article, but anyone who is considering running a large mailing list should probably  look at listserv carefully.  The Alias file:  On a typical unix system; there is a file named /usr/lib/aliases on whichever file server is your mail host; it contains lines such as:  foo:   bar, baz, bletch   which means that any email sent the name `foo' on that host is redistributed to users bar, baz, and bletch.  thus, the simplest possible email list is   my-favorite-car:  member1, member2, member3, my-address my-favorite-car-request: my-address  this has a couple of problems; the most noticeable one being that you have to be superuser to edit the alias file.  however, you can do the following, with the connivance of your sysadmin:  my-favorite-car: :include:/home/mydir/misc/autos/my-favorite-car-list my-favorite-car-request: my-address  Where the file specified is a list of comma and newline separated addresses.  This file can be in the list admin's home directory, owned by the list admin.  Bounced Mail:  this still has a problem; bounced mail usually gets distributed to all the members of the list, which is generally considered somewhat irritating. Therefore, the way that the driving school mailing list is set up is instructive (Thanks to harpal chohan of the bmw list for this setup, by the way.  I'm not sure where he got it from.)   school-request:   welty school-rebroadcast:  :include:/home/newwelty/misc/autos/school/list school: "|/usr/local/adm/bin/explscript school" owner-school: school-request owner-school-out: school-request   here's what is going on here:  the owner- and -request addresses are intended as traps for bounced mail coming from the network.  the -request address also serves as the point of contact for administrative duties.  school is what people send mail to; instead of pointing at addresses, it points at a shell script which rewrites headers before resending the email.  school-broadcast (of which nobody except me knows the name; the name has been changed here to protect my own sanity) points at the actual list members.  the shell script i use is as follows:  ----------------- #!/bin/sh cd /tmp sed -e '/^Reply-To:/d' -e '/^Sender:/d' -e '/^From /d' | \         (echo Reply-To: ${1}@balltown.cma.com; \          echo Errors-To: ${1}-request@balltown.cma.com; \          echo Sender: ${1}-request@balltown.cma.com; \          cat -) | \         /usr/lib/sendmail -om -f ${1}-request@balltown.cma.com \                 -F "The ${1} Mailing List" ${1}-rebroadcast exit 0 -------------------  note that this script does not know the name of the list; the name is passed in from outside, so that the script may be used for multiple lists (i run several out of this site.) the script excises Reply-To:, Sender:, and From lines from the incoming message, substitutes for Sender: and Reply-To:, and adds Errors-to: 99.9% of all email bounce messages end up being sent to the -request or owner- addresses if this header rewrite is done.  For digested lists, there is some digestification software around. Hopefully I'll be able to provide more information in a future version of this posting.  richard welty (welty@balltown.cma.com)