COURIERMLM(1) Double Precision, Inc. COURIERMLM(1) NAME couriermlm - The Courier mailing list manager SYNOPSIS couriermlm {command} {directory} [arg...] DESCRIPTION couriermlm is the Courier mail server's mailing list manager. This command sets up, maintains, and manages mailing lists. couriermlm automatically handles requests to subscribe and unsubscribe list members, detects unde- liverable addresses and removes them from the subscription rolls. Mailing lists managed by couriermlm require zero human administrative oversight. couriermlm supports digests, write-only posting aliases, and moderated mailing lists. CREATING A MAILING LIST Anyone can use couriermlm, not just the system administrator. The Courier mail server mail server translates an address list-name@domain as a local address with a corresponding dot-courier(5)[1] file. Anyone who can install a dot-courier(5)[1] file, and can schedule cron(8) jobs, can run a couri- ermlm mailing list. Note that the system administrator can optionally remove the dot-courier(5)[1] support from the the Courier mail server. couriermlm will not work in that case. Setting up a mailing list consists of the following steps: Run couriermlm create Use this command to create a directory where couriermlm keeps all mail- ing list related files. Configure the mailing list The couriermlm create command initializes the mailing list subdirectory with some default template responses. It is necessary to customize them for your mailing list, and it may be necessary to issue some additional commands in order to configure appropriate mailing list options -- such as enabling unrestricted posting privileges, and enabling moderation. Create dot-courier(5)[1] files Set up to run couriermlm to distribute mailing list messages, and process requests. Set up cron(8) You need to set up cron(8) jobs to run the couriermlm hourly and couri- ermlm daily commands, which perform regular mailing list maintenance. Enable SMTP pre-filtering This step configures a hook that runs couriermlm as part of the SMTP transaction when receiving mail to a mailing list address, and rejects the mail if it would not be accepted to the mailing list instead of re- ceiving the message and then generating a non-delivery report. This is an optional step that adds some complexity, but reduces mailing list management issues. Back up subscription lists As part of your daily job you should also run the export command, in order to back up the mailing list subscriber information. In the event that the mailing list database gets corrupted or lost, you can restore it from this backup file. See the export command for more information. Note Setting up a digest for the mailing list requires additional steps. See "Setting up a mailing list digest[2]" below for more information. The first step is to run the following command: couriermlm create directory ADDRESS=list@domain directory is the mailing list directory that will be managed by couriermlm. This directory should not be created in advance, this command creates this directory, and initializes it. list@domain is the mailing list's address, the address that sends messages to the mailing list. An additional setting, URL may also be specified: couriermlm create directory ADDRESS=list@domain URL=url "url" would be the URL of the WebMLM web page for this mailing list. See webmlmd(1)[3] for more information. The directory created by couriermlm create is initialized to contain a num- ber of text files that couriermlm sends back as replies to administrative commands. It is necessary to edit these template files and adjust the text in those files for this mailing list. All template filenames end with .tmpl, and their contents are self explanatory. Some important template files are: help.tmpl This text is returned in response to the help command. This text must be modified depending upon whether this mailing list is a moderated mailing list, has a digest version, or if any other non-default config- uration options are set for the mailing list. sub.tmpl This is the reply that's sent back in response to a subscription re- quest. Less important is unsub.tmpl, which is the response to a request to unsubscribe. sub2.tmpl This is the successful subscription confirmation. A brief overview of the mailing list might be appropriate here. couriermlm has rudimentary support for non-English templates. The couri- ermlm create command has a single, optional parameter, --lang=suffix The option must be specified after the mailing list directory's name: couriermlm create directory --lang=es ADDRESS=list@domain URL=url The templates for the stock text files come from /usr/lo- cal/share/courier/couriermlm. This directory contains all the *.tmpl and *.html template files that couriermlm create installs in the new mailing list directory. Translated versions of template files are installed in the same directory, /usr/local/share/courier/couriermlm. The translated version of file must be installed as file.suffix, for example: help.tmpl.es is the translated ver- sion of help.tmpl, with the "es" suffix. The --lang=suffix option installs the the .suffix version of each text tem- plate file, if available. If not, the stock English template file gets copied, as usual. Note Do not remove the English template files, even if you never use them. They must be left in place, in /usr/local/share/courier/couriermlm, for couriermlm create to work correctly. Example: couriermlm create /home/lists/users-list --lang=es ... This example installs the *.es versions of mailing list template files. Only the stock, English template files come with the Courier mail server. This mechanism only provides an easy integration ability with template files from other sources. There are some additional configuration files that can be modified to suit your taste: headeradd This file can be initialized to contain any mail headers that will be automatically added to every mailing list message. The contents of this file are simply prepended to every message that goes out. Blank lines are not allowed. headerdel This file lists any headers that will be automatically removed from every mailing list message before it's sent. List each header one per line, including the : character. For example, to remove all Received: and Date: headers from every message, initialize this file to contain the following two lines: Received: Date: Both the headeradd and headerdel files can be used to implement a popular feature of setting the replies to every message to go to the mailing list. Having "Reply-To:" in headerdel, removes any existing Reply-To: header, and then having "Reply-To: list@domain" in headeradd appends a fixed Reply-To: header to every message. The create command also creates the following subdirectories in the mailing list directory: sublist This subdirectory has the database files that contain the mailing list's subscription list. unsublist This subdirectory stores files that contain information about addresses that have been unsubscribed from the mailing list. This information might be of some use when tracking down an old subscription. The con- tents of this directory are not automatically purged, you must set up your own purging mechanism for this directory. commands, commands.dat These directories store temporary files that contain pending (uncon- firmed) commands for the mailing list manager. The couriermlm commands hourly and daily must be executed regularly in order to periodically purge stale entries. modqueue Messages awaiting moderator approval (for moderated lists). archive Messages received by this mailing list will be stored here, in addition to being forwarded to subscribers. couriermlm does not automatically do any purging on this subdirectory, you must set up your own archiving mechanism that cleans out this subdirectory. The last step involves installing a couple of dot-courier(5)[1] files that run couriermlm to receive mailing list messages and administrative com- mands. The mailing list address, list@domain, corresponds to some dot- courier(5)[1] file. For example, if your system account is john, and your mail domain is example.com, then the dot-courier(5)[1] file for the mailing list <john-list@example.com> is $HOME/.courier-list. Let's say that the dot-courier(5)[1] file is $HOME/.courier-list. To prop- erly support the mailing list, the following dot-courier(5)[1] files will have to be initialized as follows: $HOME/.courier-list This file should be initialized to contain the following delivery in- struction: | /usr/local/bin/couriermlm msg directory directory is the created mailing list directory. Note Messages to "POST=subscribers" lists from non-subscribers get re- jected by couriermlm resulting in delivery failure. This generates a undeliverable message report, a "bounce". Unfortunately this can be abused to generate a bandwidth amplification attack. Append "; exit 0" to the .courier command, to suppress bounces from delivery failures: | /usr/local/bin/couriermlm msg directory; exit 0 This will suppress all bounces, though, not just the ones resulting from messages from non-subscribers. A better solution is to config- ure SMTP pre-filtering, as described below. SMTP pre-filtering checks each message before it's accepted from the sending SMTP server. A rejected message does not generate a bounce message, but returns an error to the sending SMTP server, leaving it on the hook for generating bounces. $HOME/.courier-list-owner This file should contain the appropriate delivery instructions for for- warding all mail addressed to <list-owner@domain> to the address of the owner of the mailing list. This can be another E-mail address, or a mailbox specification. $HOME/.courier-list-default This file should be initialized to contain the following delivery in- struction: | /usr/local/bin/couriermlm ctlmsg directory directory is the created mailing list directory. This dot-courier(5)[1] file provides support for all other addresses of the form <list-com- mand@domain>, where command is a mailing list administrative command. Commands are sent to this mailing list manager by sending a message to one of several special addresses, described more fully in "Mailing list commands[4]", below. Configuring SMTP pre-filtering of mailing list messages This is an optional step that implements filtering of mailing list messages before each message is received from the sending SMTP server. Otherwise, Courier accepts all messages, and the rejected ones generate a non-delivery report. The report gets E-mailed to the purported sender. Another option is to quietly ignore the rejections, as described above. Either way, non-de- livery notifications can sometimes be problematic. This step adds some com- plexity to the mailing list configuration, but mostly eliminates this prob- lem. SMTP pre-filtering uses the localmailfilter(7)[5] interface. The following instructions repeat some of the information from the localmailfilter(7) documentation, for convenience. See that documentation for complete infor- mation. The following instructions reference a typical mailing list configuration setup: * A reserved system account called "lists". * A mailing list's address of "lists-announcements@example.com", set up by installing $HOME/.courier-announcements and $HOME/.courier-announce- ments-default (and $HOME/.courier-announcements-owner) in lists's home directory, as described above. * The mailing list directory (created by couriermlm create) is $HOME/an- nouncements. The first two steps enable SMTP mail filtering using maildrop, and this should be done as root: # echo /usr/local/bin/maildrop >/usr/local/etc/courier/maildropfilter Note This enables SMTP mail filtering to all local mailboxes. All local mailboxes will be able to specify their SMTP mail filters, as explained in localmailfilter(7). The second step installs couriermlm wrappers for SMTP filters: # mkdir /usr/local/etc/courier/maildroprcs # d="/usr/local/share/courier/couriermlm" # ln -s $d/couriermlm-rcptfilter-ctlmsg /usr/local/etc/courier/maildroprcs # ln -s $d/couriermlm-rcptfilter-msg /usr/local/etc/courier/maildroprcs # ln -s $d/couriermlm-smtpfilter-ctlmsg /usr/local/etc/courier/maildroprcs # ln -s $d/couriermlm-smtpfilter-msg /usr/local/etc/courier/maildroprcs The remaining steps are done while logged in as the mailing list owner's account: $ mkdir $HOME/.mailfilters $ chmod 700 $HOME/.mailfilters Each mailing list needs four maildrop scripts installed in .mailfilters. Using the "lists-announcements@example.com" list as an example, owned by lists's account: $ cd $HOME/.mailfilters $ cat rcptfilter-announcements LISTDIR="announcements" include '/etc/courier/maildroprcs/couriermlm-rcptfilter-msg' $ cat rcptfilter-announcements-default LISTDIR="announcements" FILENAMEPREFIX="rcptfilter-announcements" include '/etc/courier/maildroprcs/couriermlm-rcptfilter-ctlmsg' $ cat smtpfilter-announcements LISTDIR="announcements" include '/etc/courier/maildroprcs/couriermlm-smtpfilter-msg' $ cat smtpfilter-announcements-default LISTDIR="announcements" FILENAMEPREFIX="smtpfilter-announcements" include '/etc/courier/maildroprcs/couriermlm-smtpfilter-ctlmsg' And the permissions must be nailed down, as always: $ chmod 600 $HOME/.mailfilters/* Each maildrop script sets the LISTDIR variable before invoking the couri- ermlm wrapper. LISTDIR is the name of the mailing list's directory, in the account's home directory. In this case the mailing list directory, created by couriermlm create is $HOME/announcements, so LISTDIR is announcements. It's possible to put mailing list directories in a subdirectory, and refer- ence the subdirectory here. Mailing list directories' names cannot contain periods. Additionally, the two -default scripts must set FILENAMEPREFIX to their own names, with the "-default" suffix stripped off. The easiest way to test this configuration is to use the default mailing list configuration that allows messages only from the list's subscribers, then attempt to send a message to the mailing list, from another SMTP server, using a return address that's not subscribed to the list. The re- sulting non-delivery report should come from the other SMTP server, and not couriermlm's mail server. MANUAL COMMANDS couriermlm may also be run manually from the command line as follows: /usr/local/bin/couriermlm command directory [ options... ] command is a command from the following list. directory is the mailing list directory. The commands are: create Create a mailing list. update Update/restore mailing list templates. The original, default, mailing list message template files (*.tmpl and *.tmpl.html) are reinstalled into the mailing list directory. This command must be processed for every mailing list directory after upgrading to the Courier server ver- sion 0.55, or later, from earlier versions (but see below). couriermlm in version 0.55 of the Courier mail server uses updated templates files, which must be installed in every mailing list directory. Al- though the names of many template files have not changed, the embedded markup codes in the template files work differently. 1. Begin by making a backup copy of all *.tmpl files in the existing couriermlm mailing list directory. 2. Run the "update" command on the list directory. 3. Review the backed up template files, identify your customized changes, then retype them into new template files installed by the "update" command. 4. Proceed to the next mailing list directory. Yes, this is going to be a pain. This is the first overhaul of couri- ermlm's infrastructure in many years. Once a decade, some elbow grease must be sacrificed in the name of progress. It's not the end of the world. In an extreme emergency, preserve the couriermlm from the previous ver- sion of the Courier mail server. Mass-update all existing lists' .courier-list and .courier-list-default files to run the old couri- ermlm. Then, migrate each mailing list on a predetermined schedule. Af- ter migrating each list, put the default path back into the list's .courier files. Keep in mind the following issues, while migrating the lists: * The help.tmpl template file is usually the one that gets customized the most. In most cases, large bits and pieces of this file, that document certain list options that do not apply to this list, must be removed. * There are several new template files, including a number of *.html files that refer to new HTML-formatted responses from couriermlm, and the WebMLM interface. * Be aware of updated mail headers declared in several template files. The MIME character set is now given as utf-8. Some templates no longer contain the Mime-Version and Subject headers. The Subject headers are moved to separate template files. Many existing tem- plate files now contain both a plain text and an HTML-formatted version of the couriermlm response. Always scroll to the end of each template file, to reveal any appended HTML portion of tem- plate's text. set Set mailing list options, see below. sub Manually subscribe an address to the mailing list. unsub Manually unsubscribe an address from the mailing list. lsub List all the subscribers to this mailing list. laliases List write-only aliases for this mailing list. export Export mailing list subscriber information. import Import mailing list subscriber information. ctlmsg Receive and interpret a control message. info Display a subscription record. msg Post a message to the mailing list. hourly Perform hourly maintenance. It is necessary to set up a cron(8) job to execute the hourly command once an hour. daily Perform daily maintenance. It is necessary to set up a cron(8) job to execute the daily command once a day. digest Create a digest. See "Setting up a mailing list digest[2]" below for more information. MANUAL SUBSCRIPTION MANAGEMENT The sub, unsub, lsub, laliases, export, and import commands allow manual subscription list management. Normally, subscription-related commands are done by sending an appropriate mailing list command, see "Mailing List Com- mands[4]", below. couriermlm sub directory user@domain This command adds the address <user@domain> to the subscription list. couriermlm will now read a free-form comment or a note from standard input, terminated by an end-of-file (usually CTRL-D). The free-form comment is stored in the subscription database, together with the address, and is shown by the "info" command. couriermlm unsub directory user@domain This command remove the address <user@domain> from the subscription rolls. couriermlm will also read a free-form comment, which is added to the sub- scription record. After removing this address from the subscription rolls, its subscription record is archived in the directory/unsublist directory. couriermlm lsub directory This command lists all the addresses subscribed to the list, on standard output, one per line. couriermlm laliases directory This command lists all write-only aliases that have been subscribed to the list, together with the subscriber address that added each alias. See "Write-Only Aliases[6]" for more information. couriermlm export directory The export command lists the contents of the subscription database on stan- dard output. The export command produces the following output format: address subscription information ... address subscription information ... "address", is an address subscribed to the mailing list. This is followed by its corresponding subscription information, usually a copy of the sub- scription request that was used to add the address to the mailing list. The subscription information is terminated by a line containing a single pe- riod. Any lines in the subscription information that begin with a period have an extra period prepended to them. couriermlm import directory The import command reads on standard input a previously exported mailing list subscription database, and adds those addresses to the indicated mail- ing list. It is highly recommended to make a regular backup of subscriber information using the export command, in the event that the subscription database gets corrupted. In which case the import command can be used to rebuild the sub- scription database, in absence of any direct backups of the database files. SETTING MAILING LIST OPTIONS The set command sets various list options: couriermlm set directory option=value option=value... Note Setting the ADDRESS or the URL options, described below, automatically updates the contents of the headeradd configuration file. Its existing "List-" headers are removed and replaced by updated "List-" headers that reflect the revised list address or URL. One or more options can be set with the same command. The available options are: ADDRESS=address The base E-mail address for this mailing list. URL=address The URL of WebMLM web page for this mailing list. Note WebMLM determines its own URL automatically, by reading its HTTP headers. This setting is used by couriermlm, which has no knowledge of the web server's configuration, and needs to know the correct URL to insert into generated messages. CASESENSITIVE=flag If flag is "1", the userid portion of E-mail addresses are case-sensi- tive. The domain address portion is always case-insensitive. The de- fault setting is "0" making both userid and domain address portions of E-mail addresses case-insensitive. Note Be careful when changing this setting on an active list. Changing this option to "CASESENSITIVE=1", forces all existing subscribers to make sure their addresses are lowercase-only, otherwise they will no longer be recognized as subscribers. Changing this option to "CASESENSITIVE=0" blocks all subscribed addresses that have up- percase characters in the userid portion of their E-mail address. They will continue to receive mailing list traffic, but unable to post messages to the list, or unsubscribe from it. It will not be possible to unsubscribe those addresses even by running the couri- ermlm command manually. DIGEST=directory Enable digests. directory is the pathname to the previously-createddi- gest list directory. See "Setting up a mailing list digest[2]" below for more information. KEYWORD=keyword Set the subject line keyword for mailing list messages. If set, couri- ermlm inserts "[keyword]" into the subject of every mailing list mes- sage, to aid sorting by the recipients. MAXBOUNCES=n Maximum number of bounce notifications sent by the hourly command, in order to prevent the mail system from being overloaded. The default is 20 bounce notifications. Any unsent notifications will be carried over to the next hourly job. MAXMODNOTICES=n Maximum number of moderation reminders sent by the hourly command, in order to prevent the mail system from being overloaded. The default is 20 moderation reminders. Any unsent reminders will be carried over to the next hourly job. MAXFETCHSIZE=K Maximum size, in kilobytes, of a response to the fetch command. The de- fault is 100Kb. This option is used to minimize the impact of abusive requests for the entire archive, with a forged return address. NAME=name The name that's listed on the return address of administrative mes- sages. Note that if name contains spaces, you should quote this argu- ment in the shell. The default value is "Courier Mailing List Manager". NOBOZOS=flag If flag is "0" couriermlm will not attempt to block misdirected sub- scribes and unsubscribes that are sent to the mailing list's posting address. If flag is "1" (the default), those kinds of messages will be bounced appropriately. NODSN=flag If flag is "1" couriermlm will use a Delivery Status Notification set- ting of "never" when it sends confirmation requests and help messages: this should reduce the amount of useless failure notifications gener- ated when couriermlm dutifully replies to spam received by the mailing list administrative addresses, i.e. -(un)subscribe and -help. If flag is "0" (the default), a DSN setting of "fail" will be used. Please see sendmail(1)'s -n option for more details on the DSN setting. POST=option Set posting options. option is one of three values: "subscribers" - only subscribers may post messages to this mailing list (this is the default); "all" - anyone can post messages to this mailing list; "mod" - only subscribers may post, and messages are sent to the list owner for approval (moderation). UNICODE=flag Accept mailing list messages with Unicode-formatted headers. The de- fault setting of 0 rejects messages with Unicode headers, and rejects subscription requests from E-mail addresses with Unicode mailbox names. Most mail servers on the Internet do not implement support for Unicode messages at this time. Accepting a Unicode message and redistributing it to a mailing list results in delivery failures to all mailing list subscribers that do not implement Unicode support, so by default this setting is turned off. Set UNICODE to 1 to accept mailing list messages with Unicode headers, and subscription requests from Unicode mailbox names. Note Subscription requests from E-mail addresses that have an interna- tional domain name are always accepted if the internal domain name uses ASCII-compatible encoding. POSTARCHIVE=option Set access to archived messages. option is either: "all" - Anyone can access the mailing list archive; or "subscribers" - only subscribers can access the archive. The default is "all". PURGEARCHIVE=d Purge archived mailing list messages after d days. The default is 0 days - messages are never removed from the archive subdirectory. PURGEBOUNCE=d Wait d days for the probe message, that automatically unsubscribes un- deliverable addresses, to bounce (default: 14 days). Probe messages are sent three days (default) after the first message to an address bounces. PURGECMD=h Purge unconfirmed subscribe/unsubscribe requests after h hours (de- fault: 48 hours). REMODERATE=h Resend a moderation reminder after h hours (default: 12 hours). REPORTADDR=address Mail daily reports of new and removed subscribers to this address. Must be set in order to receive reports. Provide an empty address to stop reporting. SIMPLECONFIRM=n If n is 1, confirmation requests may be acknowledged without adding "yes" to the subject line. Note The text in sub.tmpl, unsub.tmpl, and help.tmpl may need adjusting. SUBSCRIBE=option Set subscription options. option is either "all", meaning that anyone can subscribe, or "mod", meaning moderated subscription requests, where all subscription requests are sent to the mailing list owner for ap- proval. The default is "all". STARTPROBE=n Send a probe to a bouncing address n days after receiving the first bounce. Basically this means that an address must bounce for at least n days before it gets a probe message. The default is 3 days. Option names and settings are case sensitive. Note If you set up a digest list, you MUST set identical POSTARCHIVE option for both the main list and the digest list. DISPLAYING A SUBSCRIPTION RECORD The info command displays the subscription record for the requested ad- dress: couriermlm info directory user@domain This displays the subscription record for "user@domain", which typically consists of a copy of the initial subscription request, and confirmation. SENDING MESSAGES TO THE MAILING LIST The msg commands reads an E-mail message on standard input, and mails the contents of the message to the mailing list's subscribers. If the POST option is set to "subscribers", the message is rejected unless the address in its From: header is a subscriber to this mailing list. Control files headeradd and headerdel are read, and are applied to the mes- sage, as described previously. MAILING LIST COMMANDS Mailing list commands can be sent via E-mail to couriermlm by sending a message to <list-command@domain>. The "default" dot-courier(5)[1] file runs couriermlm to receive mail for all addresses of this form. couriermlm reads the DEFAULT environment variable, which is set by the Courier mail server, that indicates the specific command. The available commands are: help A simple autoresponder. couriermlm mails the sender the contents of the help.tmpl file. subscribe A request to subscribe to this mailing list. couriermlm reads the sender's address in order to determine what address to subscribe. subscribe-name=domain Explicitly specify the address to subscribe to the mailing list, in- stead of using a return address. In the previous example, sending a message addressed to <my-widgets-subscribe-john=domain.com@example.com> would result in a subscription request for <john=domain.com>. Any un- usual punctuation characters in the address must be replaced by a plus sign, followed by two hexadecimal digits that represent the punctuation character's ASCII code. unsubscribe A request to unsubscribe to this mailing list. unsubscribe-name=domain Explicitly specify the address to unsubscribe from the mailing list. alias-subscribe Set up a write-only alias (see below). alias-subscribe-name=domain Explicitly specify the subscriber address for which a write-only alias needs to be set up. There are other commands that are used internally for maintaining the mail- ing list. WRITE-ONLY ALIASES Write-only E-mail aliases can send messages to the mailing list, but they do not receive any mailing list messages themselves. A write-only alias can be set up by any subscriber. Only one write-only alias is allowed per sub- scribed E-mail address. Write-only aliases are not needed for mailing list that has the POST=all option set. To set up a write-only alias, the subscriber sends a couriermlm alias-sub- scribe command. The subscriber's E-mail address can be explicitly specified in a similar manner as the subscribe command. The subject line of the E-mail message must contain the E-mail write-only alias to be set up, and nothing else. couriermlm responds with a confirma- tion request, just like when subscribing to the list. This request must be acknowledged in the same way. A subscriber's write-only alias can be changed at any time by repeating this procedure. The new alias replaces the previous one. To prevent abuse, there's a limit of at most one alias-subscribe command every 30 minutes. Leave the subject of the E-mail message blank in order to remove an exist- ing write-only alias, SETTING UP A MAILING LIST DIGEST couriermlm supports mailing list digests. Mailing list digests are created as a second, separate, mailing list. The create command initializes a sec- ond mailing list directory, and then additional configuration takes place which links the main mailing list to the digest list. If the mailing list address is list-address@example.com, the address of the digest version of the mailing list is usually list-address-digest@exam- ple.com, but it doesn't have to be this address. The only requirement is that the directory for the digest version of the mailing list must reside on the same file system as the directory for the mailing list itself, and both must be owned by the same userid. To set up a mailing list digest, first proceed with the steps to create the mailing list itself. After the mailing list is created and configured, pro- ceed as follows: Create the digest list directory Execute the create command to create the digest version of the list: /usr/local/bin/couriermlm create \ /path/to/digest/list/directory \ ADDRESS=list-address-digest@example.com Use the full pathname to the mailing list directory, and the address of the digest version of the mailing list. Configure the digest list Execute the set command to set any appropriate options for the digest list. There one important differences to note: messages are not posted to the digest list directly, so there is no moderation option, however the digest version of the list can have moderated subscription re- quests. Link the two lists Set the DIGEST option for the main mailing list, specifying the direc- tory of the digest list. This keyword lets couriermlm know that a di- gest version is available. Note You MUST set identical POSTARCHIVE option for both the main list, and the digest list. Create dot-courier(5)[1] files It is necessary to create dot-courier(5)[1] files for the digest list just like the main list, except for some important differences, which are noted below. Create cron(8) jobs It is also necessary to create cron jobs for the digest list exactly like the main list, to run the hourly and daily cleanup. It's possible to set up one set of cron jobs to run hourly and daily cleanups consec- utively for both lists. Create a digest cron(8) job The digest creates and distributes the digest version of the list. It can be executed by a cron(8) job, or the command can be executed manu- ally. The main mailing list is supported by three dot-courier(5)[1] files, as previously described: the posting address, the owner forwarding address, and the default address that handles administrative control messages. In the following example, the names $HOME/.courier-list, $HOME/.courier-list-owner, and $HOME/.courier-list-default are used to rep- resent each one of these files, and the following names are used to repre- sent the dot-courier(5)[1] files that correspond to the digest version of the mailing list: $HOME/.courier-list-digest, $HOME/.courier-list-di- gest-owner, and $HOME/.courier-list-digest-default. Note, however, that the digest version of the mailing list can have any name, not necessary the name of the list, followed by "digest". The contents of both $HOME/.courier-list $HOME/.courier-list-digest must be the same. Sending a message to the digest address should really end up sending a message to the main mailing list. Do not put the address of the digest mailing list directory in $HOME/.courier-list-digest, instead spec- ify the address of the main mailing list directory. Just copy $HOME/.courier-list to $HOME/.courier-list-digest. However, the contents of $HOME/.courier-list-digest-default must specify the directory of the digest version of the mailing list. The digest list is managed separately from the main list, it has its own subscriber list that is separate from the list of subscribers to the main list. $HOME/.courier-list-default can simply be copied to $HOME/.courier-list-di- gest-default, then the directory can be changed in the latter. $HOME/.courier-list-owner may use the same mailing list owner address as $HOME/.courier-list-digest-owner, or it can specify a different address. The both the digest and the main mailing list can have the same mailing list owner/moderator, or have a different owner/moderator. The following command must be executed in order to link the two lists to- gether: /usr/local/bin/couriermlm set \ /path/to/main/list/directory \ DIGEST=/path/to/digest/list/directory Setting the DIGEST option on the main list lets couriermlm know that a di- gest version is available. The DIGEST option must either use an absolute pathname, or a pathname that's relative to the main list directory (NOT the current directory). When the DIGEST option is set, messages are simultaneously distributed to the mailing list's subscribers, saved in the archive subdirectory of the main list, then placed in the modqueue subdirectory of the digest list. Di- gest list do not employ moderation -- any moderation must take place on the main list -- so the modqueue subdirectory is recycled to compile individual messages for the digest. Finally, something needs to be done in order to actually distribute the di- gest to the digest list's subscribers. This is done by running the follow- ing command: /usr/local/bin/couriermlm digest /path/to/digest/directory N H This command creates a digest, and sends it out. The N and H arguments are optional. The digest is created only if there's at least N messages that are waiting to be sent in the digest list, or if the oldest message is at least H hours old. Both options default to 0, so the default behavior is to send a digest with all unsent messages. Note that when the digest is created, ALL unsent messages are packaged into the digest, even if some messages are more recent than the time interval specified by the H option. A cron(8) job can be set up to run the digest command, or run it manually. couriermlm automatically provides the From:, To: headers on a message di- gest. Additional headers may be specified by the headeradd file in the di- gest list directory. The headerdel file has no effect. Note that the indi- vidual messages in the digest are copies of the messages from the main mailing list, and thus have the headeradd and headerdel headers processed from the main mailing list directory. BUGS couriermlm will not work if the Courier mail server's support for dot- courier(5)[1] extensions is disabled. SEE ALSO courier(8)[7], dot-courier(5)[1], webmlmd(1)[3]. AUTHOR Sam Varshavchik Author NOTES 1. dot-courier(5) http://www.courier-mta.org/dot-courier.html 2. Setting up a mailing list digest http://www.courier-mta.org/#digest 3. webmlmd(1) http://www.courier-mta.org/webmlmd.html 4. Mailing list commands http://www.courier-mta.org/#command 5. localmailfilter(7) http://www.courier-mta.org/localmailfilter.html 6. Write-Only Aliases http://www.courier-mta.org/#wonly 7. courier(8) http://www.courier-mta.org/courier.html Courier Mail Server 04/26/2022 COURIERMLM(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | BUGS | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | NOTES
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