KB 92

How do I run a Majordomo list?

 Article ID: 92
 Created: Feb-15-2001

Question or Symptoms

   I'm new to mailing lists and would like to run one using Majordomo. Can you 
   give me some information?

Resolution

   Running a Majordomo mailing list is fairly easy once it's set up. You manage it
   by sending messages to majordomo. To get a Majordomo list created you'll need
   to contact the SWCP staff and let them know what you want the list name to be,
   who the owner of the list should be (their email address), and if you want a
   custom password, you can let them know that as well.

    The first thing you need to know is what email aliases are set up for your list.
   Suppose your list is named house-cats. To send a message to this list you'd send
   mail to house-cats@swcp.com

   As the owner of the house-cats mailing list there are two aliases that will reach
   you, owner-house-cats@swcp.com and house-cats-owner@swcp.com. 

   When you want to manage the list you'll send a message to majordomo@swcp.com and
   you'll need to refer to the list name in that message, since majordomo manages
   many different mailing lists.

   There is one more alias that you can use to save a little time, and that is the
   request address, for example house-cats-request@swcp.com. This alias talks to
   majordomo@swcp.com and tells it the list you're interested in is house-cats.

   So if you'd like to subscribe to the house-cats list you can send a message to
   majordomo@swcp.com with the following in the body of the message:

      subscribe house-cats

   or you can send a message to house-cats-request@swcp.com with the following in
   the body of the message:

      subscribe

   There are many options and ways to run a Majordomo list. These are all set in
   the configuration file for your list. To request a copy of your configuration
   file you'd send a message to majordomo@swcp.com that looked like:

      config house-cats my-list-password

   where my-list-password is the password we've given you when we set up the
   Majordomo list for you. You should receive a copy of this file when we first
   set up the Majordomo list.

   There are several things to be aware of with the configuration list:
   1. Lines that begin with a # are comment lines and usually give you documentation
      about configuration features.
   2. Options are set with lines that look like:
       option-name = value
      For example:
       moderate = yes
   3. Be careful with email programs that do word wrapping. Be sure you wrapping
      length is set to at least 80 characters otherwise a working configuration
      file can be made disfunctional when comment lines are wrapped. Majordomo is
      line oriented!

   Several common methods of setting up Majordomo lists are discussed in the next
   knowledge base article, see reference below.

   You may also want to consider using a Mailman list instead of Majordomo. 
   Mailman is a newer list server that's web based. If you're new to managing
   mailing lists, this would be what we'd recommend. See the URL below for more
   information.

Related Knowledge Base Articles

   KB 93 -- How do I restrict posts, moderate, or set up a digest with Majordomo?
   KB 106 -- How do a add or remove a user from a Majordomo list I'm moderating?
   KB 107 -- How do I approve a message on a moderated Majordomo list?