On Sat, 28 Jun 1997, Eric Thomas wrote: > I'm not sure I understand the problem. If all the files belonging to user > X are under a predictable subdirectory tree ('/logs/X' or whatever), > charging for the space should be as simple as calculating disk space > usage for this directory tree. If the files *have* to be owned by X in > order for existing bean counting software to work, you could run a script > before each bean counting report is prepared that does something along > the lines of 'chown -R xxx /logs/X/*'. That assumes non-clever, non-hostile users, which is not the case in an academic setting :-) The technical problem in Unix is symlinks: a clever user could move their /u/username/list-archives directory to another place and create the symlink /u/username/list-archives -> newplace. Then, LISTSERV's archive writing would still work but the `chown -R` would not. File ownership in Unix can never, never reliably be determined by its location in the directory hierarchy; the only reliable way is via via the UID in the inode, which must be set at creation time. > >The second item is that the SCAN command doesn't recurse down into > >sub-lists. > > I don't agree that SCAN or list management commands in general should > recurse automatically into sub-lists. This might be useful in specific > cases but it is counter-intuitive to the primary purpose of list > management commands, which is to target a specific list. Because of our widespread use of sub-lists, *not* having recursion is counter-intuitive to our users! How about providing recursion as a per-command option or sitewide option, e.g. SCAN super-list pattern ( ALL > Note that you can also provide locally developed commands for the unix > version, using the same localcmd.file mechanism. You should be able to > convert your /WHOIS command to unix with the same syntax. I was hoping to avoid creating a local command due to the potential for ongoing support problems. (As you like to note, the internal structure of list files and subscription attributes can change with new leases of LISTSERV.) Monday (July 30) is my last day at the University of Florida, so I want to minimize the amount of local code that the remaining sysadmins (who aren't familiar with LISTSERV) need to support. David R Nessl -- Coordinator, Computer Systems (sysprog/sysadmin) http://www.nerdc.ufl.edu/~david