Mark R. Williamson writes:
> First you have to be running version 1.8c, which is still in beta-testing
> as far as I know.  Then you set a suboption of an existing header keyword.
> I don't at  the moment recall which suboption of which keyword, but I'm
> sure Nathan put it in the 1.8c manuals.  (I'll try to find out if you need
> the information.)
 
  From my discussions with the LISTSERV folks, the only way probes get sent
is as part of the renewal process. That means you have to set all of the
users to renew now in order to probe the list. I would *love* to have a list
owner or site coordinator command to send a probe for a list without invol-
ving changing the list's renewal settings.
 
  By the way, I went so far as to hack probe support into Sendmail to get
probes to work before I found out they wouldn't be useful for me. It's a
trivial change (this works for sendmail 8.8.2 through 8.8.4, and maybe
earlier 8.8's as well). As always, don't blame me if this breaks your send-
mail or does other damage - I haven't had much call to use it).
 
  Anyway, if other list owners think being able to do on-demand probes is
a handy idea, please let L-Soft know...
 
        Terry Kennedy             Operations Manager, Academic Computing
        [log in to unmask]      St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
        +1 201 915 9381 (voice)   +1 201 435-3662 (FAX)
 
  Here's the sendail patch (of course, you need to define LISTSERV somewhere
in the appropriate Makefile, or remove the #ifdef/#endif's):
 
*** /usr/local/src/sendmail-8.8.4/src/alias.c_orig      Fri Sep 20 14:13:03 1996
--- /usr/local/src/sendmail-8.8.4/src/alias.c   Wed Dec  4 22:39:43 1996
***************
*** 78,83 ****
--- 78,89 ----
        char *owner;
        auto int stat = EX_OK;
        char obuf[MAXNAME + 7];
+ #ifdef        LISTSERV
+       /* tmk - hack for LISTSERV subscription probes */
+       static char *lbuf = NULL;
+       char lbuf2[MAXNAME + 7];
+       static char lbuflen = -1;
+ #endif        /* LISTSERV */
        extern char *aliaslookup();
 
        if (tTd(27, 1))
***************
*** 108,115 ****
--- 114,145 ----
                        e->e_message = "alias database unavailable";
                return;
        }
+ #ifdef        LISTSERV
+       /* tmk - hack for LISTSERV subscription probes */
+       if (p == NULL)
+               if (strncmp(a->q_user, "owner-", 6) == 0)
+               {
+                       strcpy(lbuf2, "\"|/usr/local/bin/lsv_amin -t ");
+                       strcat(lbuf2, a->q_user);
+                       strcat(lbuf2, "\"");
+                       /*
+                        * of course, it's never this easy - sendmail expects
+                        * to be able to deallocate this buffer later, so we
+                        * make a temporary, dynamic copy.
+                        */
+                       lbuflen = strlen(lbuf2);
+                       if (lbuf != NULL)
+                               free(lbuf);
+                       lbuf = xalloc(lbuflen);
+                       strcpy(lbuf, lbuf2);
+                       p = lbuf;
+               }
+               else
+                       return;
+ #else
        if (p == NULL)
                return;
+ #endif        /* LISTSERV */
 
        /*
        **  Match on Alias.