Server Utilities, Major Domo for mailing lists
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Majordomo is a Perl program written by Brent Chapman of Great Circle Associates to handle routine administration of Internet mailing lists.

Interfaces
The Web Hosting Web Development Team has prepared a version of the majordomo interface Majorcool to be installed on the Virtual Servers.

Alternatives
Majordomo is certainly not the be-all, end-all solution for managing mailing lists. For example, Actcase offers BetterLetter to which Coolcom Server Clients are entitled to a free license. Betterletter is easier to use and offers more features.

Installing Majordomo
To install Majordomo, Telnet or SSH to your Virtual Server and do the following:

1.Install Perl5 on your Virtual Server.

2. Untar the Majordomo tar file located in the /usr/local/contrib directory of your Virtual Server host machine. 

% cd    (this will put you in your home directory)
% tar -xvf /usr/local/contrib/majordomo.tar

3. Change the permission on the directories usr, usr/local, usr/local/majordomo and usr/local/majordomo/Lists to 755: 

% chmod 755 usr
% chmod 755 usr/local
% chmod 755 usr/local/majordomo
% chmod 755 usr/local/majordomo/Lists

4. In the majordomo.cf file, change the definition of the $whereami variable from YourCompany.COM to your domain name (see line 2). You can do this by using pico, a simple, easy to use UNIX text editor: 

% pico ~/usr/local/majordomo/majordomo.cf

Feel free to edit any other configuration variable in
  usr/local/majordomo/majordomo.cf to your liking.

5. Edit your etc/aliases and add aliases like the following: 

# Majordomo Stuff
majordomo: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper majordomo"
owner-majordomo: list_manager_e-mail_address
majordomo-owner: list_manager_e-mail_address

6. Run the command vnewaliases to update the aliases database: 

% vnewaliases

Now that you have installed Majordomo on your Virtual Server, it would be very wise to read the documentation before you attempt to create mailing lists.

Documentation
Majordomo is not for the faint at heart. Please review the following files before you attempt to use Majordomo.

NOTE: All questions sent to the Support Staff with regard to Majordomo mailing list configuration will be answered with a URL to this page.

list-owner-info
has information for list owner to get them started using majordomo and the config files.

majordomo.ora
This file is the chapter about Majordomo from the Nutshell Handbook Managing Internet Information Services, written by Jerry Peek. The chapter is (c) Copyright 1994 by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., and was included in the Majordomo distribution by permission of the publisher.

This chapter is a good introduction to setting up the majordomo software, be warned that it does not cover much of the list operation details under 1.90 that deal with config files. Then again the config files are supposed to be self documenting. A newer version of this chapter that has been updated for 1.90 is in the works, and should make it into the "Managing Internet Information Services" book. This newer chapter should be available via ftp in due time. Stay tuned to the majordomo-announce or majordomo-users mailing list for details.

Configuring a Majordomo E-Mail List
Do the following for each list you want to create:

1. Create an empty file named for the list (my-list in the examples below) in your usr/local/majordomo/Lists directory and make sure the file mode is 644:

% touch usr/local/majordomo/Lists/my-list
% chmod 644 usr/local/majordomo/Lists/my-list

2. Create a file called my-list.passwd in your usr/local/majordomo/Lists. This file will contain the list manager's "approve" password for the list (file mode 600). For example, you can use cat (or your favorite UNIX editor): 

% cat > usr/local/majordomo/Lists/my-list.passwd
  mypassword
  ^D   (control-D)
% chmod 600 usr/local/majordomo/Lists/my-list.passwd

Substitute a mailing list administrator password for mypassword above.

 

  1. Create a file called my-list.info. This file will contains the initial introductory info for the list. To create this file using cat again:
% cat > usr/local/majordomo/Lists/my-list.info
  This list is for discussions about my list.
  ^D   (control-D)
  1. Add something like the following to your etc/aliases file:
# "My-List" list
my-list: 
  "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper resend -h mydomain.com -l my-list my-list-outgoing"
my-list-outgoing: :include:/usr/local/majordomo/Lists/my-list
owner-my-list: list_manager_e-mail_address_here
my-list-request: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper request-answer my-list"
my-list-approval: list_manager_e-mail_address_here
  1. Run vnewaliases to update the aliases database: 
    % vnewaliases
  2. Give your new list a try.

Interfaces
The Web Hosting Web Development Team has prepared a version of the majordomo interface Majorcool to be installed on the Virtual Servers.

Alternatives
Majordomo is certainly not the be-all, end-all solution for managing mailing lists. For example, Actcase offers BetterLetter to which Coolcom Server Clients are entitled to a free license.