On Tue, 15 Feb 2000 16:11:48 EST, Bill Verity <[log in to unmask]>  said:

> Under AIX, does anyone have a technique for creating lists via the
> web interface and having the /etc/aliases entries created?  We
> currently create a file (by hand) called BATCH ALIASES that contains
> the name of lists we just created.  Then a cron job wakes up and
> updates /etc/aliases for us.

Hmm.. a cron job.  This is sounding familiar. ;)

Ours runs a little perl script called auto-alias, and then runs
'newaliases'.

Nathan et al: I *know* "how to create the aliases" is MTA dependent.
Would it be possible for The Next Release to check for the existence
of a user-supplied helper program and run it at list creation time?
This would allow the web interface to be Real Time (which has been
an issue for some of our professors - when they request a list now,
the list is created in real time via some Black Magic CGI(*), but they
whine when they have to wait an hour before they can post to their
class).

/Valdis

(*) Black Magic - the professor goes to a web page, gets authenticated
as being himself.  We then do some Oracle extracts to see which classes
he's the instructor of record, ask if he wants to  create a list for
any of those classes.  We then use the LCMDX interface to create the
list and the 'Bulk Load' facility to populate it with another extract
of the current registrar enrollment list.  All loaded and ready to
rock-and-roll.  No, most of this source isn't available.  I might be
persuaded to release the Listserv interface code however. ;)

And then they have to wait an hour for a cron job to run.  It ticks
them off. ;)