The wonderful program qmail which you have heard so much about has a built-in mechanism which makes mailing list management very simple. You are probably already familiar with the idea that in an email address, instructions after an @ sign control what computer (or network) the mail will be delivered to, and instructions before the @ sign control how it will be delivered.
qmail expands on this idea by adding a new special character, the - sign. If the instruction before the @ sign has a - sign in it (as in culler-210@math.uic.edu), the text preceding the - sign (culler) controls who the mail will be delivered to, and the text following the - sign (210) controls how it will be delivered. In the example, qmail consults a file named .qmail-210 in the home directory of user culler for instructions on delivery.
You can create an email address with the property that messages sent to it are distributed to a group of email addresses -- for example, your math 210 class. To do this, you would create a file of your students' email addresses similar to the sample list shown here. If you name this file .qmail-210, any mail sent to mathid-210@math.uic.edu will be forwarded to all the addresses listed in the file, where mathid is your email address at math.uic.edu.
For example, Marc Culler has a file named .qmail-210 in his home directory which containing the addresses of all the math 210 instructors. Mail sent from anywhere to culler-210@math.uic.edu is delivered to all the math 210 instructors.
CAUTION: You may not put spaces in front of or comments after the email addresses in your .qmail files. Mailing addresses that start with anything other than a letter should be preceded by an &.
It is possible to create a full fledged mailing list server in your math department account. With an ezmlm mailing list, people can (if you allow them to) add themselves to and remove themselves from mailing lists. Messages sent to the list are archived, and subscribers to the list can request copies of archived messages at any time.
When you use ezmlm to create a mailing list like this, it will make a directory containing the list's archives, member list, and other attributes. You will then be able to tailor the member list and other attributes to your own satisfaction.
We encourage you set use mailing lists in your classes, to communicate with your research partners, and for general discussions of mathematical topics. We ask that you do not run high-volume mailing lists that are not math related on the math department computers.
The first thing you need to decide if you're going to create a list is the name listname of the mailing list. If your email address is mathid, mail sent to mathid-listname@math.uic.edu will go to all subscribers of the list. (This address is clumsy, but allows you complete control of the list. It is possible to make official department mailing lists like faculty@math.uic.edu -- send email to consult@math.uic.edu if you think you need such a list.)
The second thing you need to decide is the location of the directory that is to contain the archive and subscriber files. In the example below, this directory is indicated by LISTNAME, and is a subdirectory of your home directory. A more complicated example appears later.
Once you have made these decisions, log on to math.uic.edu and type the following instructions on to create your list (remember, mathid refers to your email address on math.uic.edu and LISTNAME refers to the directory which will contain list files.):
cd
to ensure that the .qmail control files are placed in your home directory.
pwdTo find out where your home directory is. It will be something like /home/N/mathid, where N is a number between 1 and 20. For example:
[burgiel@hopper burgiel]$ cd [burgiel@hopper burgiel]$ pwd /home/4/burgiel
ezmlm-make /home/N/mathid/LISTNAME /home/N/mathid/.qmail-listname mathid-listname math.uic.edu
to make the list.
ezmlm-sub /home/N/mathid/LISTNAME <list of email addresses>
to add subscribers to the list. You should test your mailing list by first adding just yourself and sending a few messages to see if they get through. A similar command, ezmlm-unsub removes subscribers from your mailing list.
You can find out who is on one of your mailing lists by typing ezmlm-list ~/LISTNAME.
By default, your list will be public; i.e. anyone can add themselves to the list by sending mail to mathid-listname-subscribe@math.uic.edu; similarly, they can unsubscribe themselves. However, if you remove the (empty) file LISTNAME/public the list becomes private and only you can add and delete users. List members can request copies of previous messages by sending to mathid-listname-get.<number>@math.uic.edu.
Editing the files in ~/LISTNAME/text changes the contents of the list managers automated email messages. See the ezmlm web page or the ezmlm man pages for more information.
It is possible to create a "moderated" mailing list for which you are the only one who can post messages to the list. This is done by editing ~/Listname/editor to route all incoming mail to you, then using ezmlm-send to process outgoing mail. Send email to consult@math.uic.edu if you need help with this.
A sample list creation: User burgiel has created a Lists subdirectory in her home directory. She wishes to create an archived mailing of the instructors of math 210. People will be able to post to this list by sending email to burgiel-math210@math.uic.edu. She types the following:
cd
ezmlm-make ~/Lists/MATH210 .qmail-math210 burgiel-math210 math.uic.edu
ezmlm-sub ~/Lists/MATH210 burgiel@math.uic.edu
After sending test messages to burgiel-math210@math.uic.edu and burgiel-math210-help@math.uic.edu, she starts to add the rest of the instructors by typing commands like:
ezmlm-sub ~/Lists/MATH210 culler@math.uic.edu pbrown@math.uic.edu
At that moment, Marc stops by and offers to save her some work. He sends her his file of instructor addresses, which she saves to a file named instructors. She then finishes making the mailing list by typing:
ezmlm-sub ~/Lists/MATH210 `cat instructors`
Five things that users of an ezmlm mailing list can do are:
You need not include any text in the subject and body of requests for subscription, etc., but it doesn't seem to hurt to include comments.