IMPORTANT: The facility being described here is an extension to the VM
mailer software. The extension happens to have release 1.7b of LISTSERV
as a pre-requisite, but it is NOT an enhancement of the LISTSERV
software: you cannot assume that this facility is available on all sites
running version 1.7b or higher.
ABSTRACT: A modification to the 'LOCAL' delivery exit (requiring version
2.08 of the VM mailer) makes it possible for VM sites running LISTSERV
version 1.7b or higher to support the generic local addresses 'owner-xyz'
and 'xyz-request' without requiring any configuration/maintenance of the
mailer's SPECIAL table. The mailer passes on requests for such addresses
to LISTSERV, which examines the header of the corresponding list to
extract the relevant addresses and delivers the message.
JUSTIFICATION: This function both makes LISTSERV and BITNET a more
friendly environment to Internet-literate users and provides convenient
access to list owners/maintainers for BITNET users with RFC822 mail. Most
importantly, this service comes at no manpower cost to the LISTSERV site,
beyond initial installation: there is no need to define mailer aliases
and keep track of changes made by list owners so as to make corresponding
changes to the mailer tables.
DESCRIPTION: The change modifies the behaviour of the 'LOCAL' delivery
exit, causing it to look for addresses of the form 'owner-xyz' or
'xyz-request' if it failed to find a match in the SPECIAL table (an
address of the form 'owner-xyz' which has an entry in the SPECIAL table
is processed according to that entry, and not to the new logic). Case is
ignored when performing that comparison. If the address matches either
form, the mailer will attempt to (silently) pass on the message to the
local user 'LISTSERV'; if there is no such local user, normal processing
continues. No message is issued as the message is forwarded to LISTSERV.
When LISTSERV receives the request, it checks for a local list by the
specified name; if no list by that name is found, it delivers the message
to the LISTSERV maintainers (who can then look for misspelled list names)
and exits. If the list exists, the message is delivered to the
appropriate recipients, based on the mailbox used: owner-xyz, which is
normally used for delivery errors, is mapped to the contents of the
"Errors-To=" keyword. xyz-request, normally used for administrative
requests, is mapped to the people listed in the various "Owner="
keywords.
INSTALLATION:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> WARNING - LISTSERV release 1.7b and mailer release 2.08 are required! <
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Note that release 1.7b of LISTSERV is still being beta-tested as this
note is written; please do not report the lack of 1.7b update for your
site unless you had requested to beta-test the code.
Sites with a source distribution: order LOCAL ERIC01 from LISTSERV@SEARN,
add it to your LOCAL AUXLCL file, re-assemble the LOCAL exit, and rebuild
MAILER MODULE.
Sites with an object distribution only: due to the licensing conditions
for the Waterloo C library code included in MAILER MODULE, the updated
MODULE file may not be made available from SEARN. Instead, you should
order LOKAL TEXT from LISTSERV@SEARN, place it on your mailer's A-disk,
and use the LOKAL exit as a replacement for LOCAL in your MAILER
MTPLATE/PROFILE files (WARNING: make sure to check you are running
release 2.08 of MAILER!).
DISCLAIMER: This code was written in a couple hours, using unearthed
memories about the internals of MAILER V1 gathered during an assignment
in 1987. It works, but is not satisfactory: no tracing, waste of
addressability space through not calling new powerful routines the author
was not familiar with and, most importantly, the function cannot be
disabled through a configuration variable (this is a serious shortcoming
for sites not running release 1.7b). Thus, this code cannot be included
in standard mailer distributions as is. Still, one can hope that John
Wagner will be kind enough to consider the possibility of including a
better version of this function in a future release.
Eric
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