On 5/3/2007 11:14, Stan Horwitz wrote:
> On May 3, 2007, at 10:15 AM, Cheryl Cato wrote:
> 
>> I would like to be able to grant privileges to our senior help desk
>> staff to review all lists on the server without giving them the keys
>> to the car, as it were.  Is it possible to grant something less than
>> maintainer status without having to modify the headers of all the lists
>> on the server?  We're running 14.5.
> 
> I just bit the bullet a few years ago. I showed just the managers of our 
> help desk how to use the list and server maintenance GUI and I made them 
> each a postmaster. That was about two years ago. The results have been 
> pretty good for them and for me as the LISTSERV site maintainer.  Our 
> help desk folks do not have authority to actually log onto the Linux box 
> where we host LISTSERV, so any real damage they can do is minimal and we 
> also do daily backups anyway. I don't recall ever having a problem with 
> this strategy. You might consider doing the same.
> 

We took a different approach to this problem. We created a list (HD-STAFF)
with closed subscription, owned and managed by the LISTSERV administrators.
Permanent, full-time Help Desk staff are subscribed to this list. Part-time,
temporary, contract, and student Help Desk staff are not subscribed to the
list. The templates we use to create new lists include the following keyword
statement:

	* Owner= (HD-STAFF)   *** DO NOT REMOVE ***

This provides Help Desk staff members with full ownership rights on any
list which contains this configuration statement. As a matter of policy,
Help Desk staff members are prohibited from using this power to do
anything other than view the list configuration and subscriber information.
This enables them to answer most questions regarding list configuration
and subscription, and to walk list owners through changes.

This method eliminates the need to update multiple list headers to reflect
staff changes. We simply add or remove subscribers on the HD-STAFF list.

We made no attempt to retrofit this change to all existing lists. Instead,
we update the lists one at a time, when Help Desk staff members notify us
that they are unable to access a given list.

-- 
Paul Russell, Senior Systems Administrator
OIT Messaging Services Team
University of Notre Dame
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