I'm going to annotate the following to try to figure out where something
is breaking.
 
On Fri, 13 Jan 1995 23:41:51 +0001 Trish Forrest said:
>We have a list where the list-owner is on a NOVELL network, and on NOVELL
>there are no such things as 'postmaster', or 'maint'(thanks Melvin!)
>userids.
 
Not a problem for a list owner; this is an issue more for list members on a
Novell network.
 
>I should also say that the list-owner is new to listserv, so I have been
>trying to help out as listserv maintainer.
 
OK, Trish is apparently the LISTSERV postmaster: this is good!
 
>One of the subscribers to the list is on a 'freenet' userid, and the
>list-owner has asked me to change an error in the name of one of the
>subscribers.
 
This list owner should be able to do this for herself using ADD and DELETE
commands; that there isn't a postmaster userid on her Novell.  network is
irrelevant.  Still, if she wants help, she wants help....  :-)
 
>Of course I tried everything I knew to no avail...I still keep getting the
>msg that I an not the node admin for freenet.org.
 
Aha!  LISTSERV doesn't recognize you as the LISTSERV postmaster, nor does
it recognize you as the list owner (you're not, so no problem), and finally
it checks to see if you're the node admin.
 
The real question is, why doesn't LISTSERV recognize its postmaster?  Who
does it think its postmaster is, and what address did it send its command
response to?  Did you use an extra FOR parameter on your command that might
have confused LISTSERV?
 
>Short of going to their office and asking if I can login to the
>list-owner's userid on their NOVELL network, is there anyway that the
>postmaster can change a subscriber's name?
 
You should be able to do anything to any list on a LISTSERV you manage.
 
>This is a bit of a sensitive situation since we also create the NOVELL
>userids and passwds, but we do not like to login to take advantage of this
>even if it will help us do what they want.
 
Agreed, one shouldn't need to assume that this is an option....
 
>I was under the incorrect assumption that the listserv maintainer could do
>anything (gulp!) with regard to lists that he or she creates, but this is
>obviously an error in thinking.  I could just be making errors as the hour
>is late and I've been on the go since 5:00am..but...
 
I'd say the error is that LISTSERV doesn't recognize its postmaster, but
maybe you're using a different userid than it expects of its postmaster.
(Is pdomain.uwindsor.ca really the name of the node LISTSERV expects
its postmaster to use?)
 
>How do other sites handle this kind of situation, other than going over
>to the office in question, asking permission to login and giving a quiet del
>command and then a quiet re-sub to correct a name?  This is assuming that
>I can do this from the list-owner's userid on NOVELL.
 
Do other LISTSERV Postmaster commands, such as SHUTDOWN (REIPL (or whatever
the Unix equivilent is) work? That's the first question you need to ask.
 
Hope this helps,
Nick
 
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