On Fri, 26 Sep 1997 01:51:48 -0400 Vince Sabio <[log in to unmask]>
said:
>1. On my LISTSERV list, I have not run any probes. They were largely
>panned by the audience (which is lucky to be smart enough to *subscribe*
>to the damned list, much less figure out a probe message which is
>written in terms simple enough for a fifth grader to understand) back
>when we were on a different LISTSERV, so I did not implement them on the
>new server.
I have yet to run into a significant body of users who cannot understand
"This message is a test, please discard it and sorry for the
inconvenience" :-), but (with 1.8d) you can use passive probing in that
case. This turns a small, controlled number of postings into transparent
probes which look exactly like a normal posting.
>the users *appear* to be very quickly growing accustomed to the
>interface.
My point was that there is no particular reason for an average mailing
list user to have used the web management interface and remembered that
it is there if he should change jobs a year later and need to change his
address. Most users subscribe, may turn on DIGEST or whatever, and then
they're set and happy. They forget how to send commands to the server,
how to sign off, don't save the welcome message, etc. All they do is
read, post and reply. This is why people set up monthly admin messages
(that double as a probe) and bottom banners with signoff instructions, or
at least a pointer to them. It's nice to have a web interface so you can
just give people a URL instead of a FAQ when they ask you to do something
for them, but they are still going to ask.
>However, the risk of taking out the entire server is problematic to me
>-- as I'm sure it is to my server administrators.
I agree, but most exits are maybe 10-20 lines of code and it doesn't take
long to verify that they do look for string such and such and send this
or that mail message to the originator if found, after doing a lookup in
a file with addresses of registered users. The exit can only take down
the server if it does terrible things like delete all files on the system
(note that you don't normally run as root). If the exit program just
crashes, the server goes on. You can also test the exit outside of the
server.
Eric
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