--- List owner documentation / Eugenio Gatto. - Torino, 1994-06-11
--> Rodney Boyd & LSVOWN-L
"... the end of the first month of serving as the list owner of
DOUBLEREED-L. At times I feel totally lost, confused, and frustrated."
"Can someone tell me how to get the system to function with the TELL
commands?" (Rodney Boyd, 1994-06-10)
As a new list owner myself I understand Ronn feelings: the documentation
available for ListServ is very good, but I know how much I was helped by
my many previous years of practice with machines. My sending to the list
assumes that LSTOWN-L is really the appropriate forum for mutual help:
please correct me, if I am "wasting bandwidth".
"... you cannot use commands such as TELL LISTSERV AT... unless both
your account and the listserv are on active BITNET nodes." (Douglas
Winship, 1994-06-10)
Quite right for the ListServ end, I think: but on the other end Ronn
could be on a system which can send and receive this way, but simply
the command to manage it is not TELL but something else (I am on a VMS
system, and I use SEND and SEND/FILE: of course this means that my
system has a quite powerful interface with BITNET).
Other problems may exist: the address seen by ListServ for messages
received via TELL could be different from the one seen via MAIL, and, to
be indifferently accepted as a list owner you must appear twice in the
list header (this is my situation): with the drawback (minor, for a not
too active list) that you receive every list owner message twice. As a
list owner, you can add your "other" address modifying the list header.
"Is there any way that I, as a listserv owner, can alter the header? And
is there anyway in which I can make a change for a subscriber with one
command rather than having to edit the whole subscriber file?" (Rodney
Boyd, 1994-06-10)
Anything done via TELL can be done via MAIL: ListServ interprets any
piece of mail as commands, at first; with the notable exception that if
the first line of it is "PUT xxx yyy" the following lines are taken as
the actual content of file "xxx yyy" to be stored on ListServ. This
applies also to the special file "yourlist LIST" (the definition & list
of subscribers of your list), and this way you can modify it.
You can limit the PUT to the (whole) header part: this results in
modifying the header with no risk of altering the list of subscribers.
If you intend to work on this part only (the part where every line
starts with "*"), you don't even need to GET it in a special way, since
(generally) it goes not beyond 80 characters per line; and if you are
the only (active) list owner there is no concern for LOCKing and
UNLOCKing.
For changes to individual subscribers definitions, you may well prefer
the commands (via TELL or via MAIL) QUERY, DELETE, ADD and SET: working
on the whole subcriber file requires to be well aware of the "hidden"
part of it (coded individual options and dates, from the 81.th character
of every line).
"... can anyone recommend to Ronn the briefest list management document
that's available?" (Roger Burns, 1994-06-10)
I cannot recommend the "briefest" one: I think that for a list owner the
entire set available on every ListServ is a necessity (not to be read
all at once, of course). The list can be retrieved sending a GET INFO
FILELIST.
Personally, I found quite useful another set of manuals (thanks to Jim
Gerland), from [log in to unmask] This is the list I obtained sending there
an INDEX LSVOWNER command:
* LSVOWNER FILELIST for [log in to unmask]
********************************************************************************
LSVOWNER $PACKAGE ALL GER V 73 20 94/02/17 09:57:07 The Welcome Mail
LSVOWNER READY ALL GER V 72 20 93/01/29 11:06:05 'Your List is Re
LSVOWNER WELCOME ALL GER V 74 19 93/01/29 11:05:56 'Welcome to this
LSVOWNER TXT ALL GER V 79 44 93/01/29 11:06:01 Generic List Own
LSVOWNER NEW-LIST ALL GER V 77 28 93/01/29 11:06:16 New List Announc
LSVOWNER GATEWAY ALL GER V 73 162 93/01/29 11:06:10 USENET News Gate
LSVOWNER NON-CMS ALL GER F 80 36 94/03/07 14:58:07 CMS Instructions
LSVOWNER FIL-LIST ALL GER F 80 258 94/03/07 14:58:20 " "
LISTSERV TIPS ALL GER F 80 1568 93/05/13 08:40:36 Lisa Covi's Doc.
*
LSV-17D CHANGES ALL GER V 73 593 93/04/05 08:57:47 Ver 1.7d changes
LSV-17E CHANGES ALL GER V 73 471 93/04/05 08:57:51 Ver 1.7e changes
LSV-17F CHANGES ALL GER V 79 917 93/04/05 08:57:55 Ver 1.7f changes
LSV-18A CHANGES ALL GER V 73 1225 93/12/13 09:27:41 Ver 1.8a changes
Hope to have been useful (and to have perhaps relieved some postmasters
from some of the many questions I posed to mine).
<-- Eugenio Gatto (CIDEM, Politecnico di Torino, Italia)
(list owner AIB-CUR@ICINECA)
TEL 39.11.564'6600 FACS 39.11.564'6609 EM [log in to unmask]
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