--On September 13, 2005 4:52:05 PM -0400 Wayne T Smith <[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:

> It is unfortunate that LSoft bundles "backbone" and "Catalist".
> I don't want to deliver the mail of other LISTSERV sites, but find
> Catalist useful.
>
> But the most annoying part of "backbone" for me wasn't X-SPAM, but the
> fact other LISTSERV sites were delivering (or not delivering) my outgoing
> mail.  The fix for me was to configure all lists with "Mail-Via= Direct",
> but I'd just as soon see most or all of the "backbone" disappear.  Though
> once useful, is the "backbone" more than an LSoft marketing tool to
> anyone now?

Hard to say.  All I know is that our site at Modwest.com, despite multiple 
attempts, still does not apparently show up in the backbone.  Catalist has 
our site, and it sends out update, however we get no X-SPAM, and our system 
also refuses to activate virus scanning, just turning it on results in the 
logfiles getting huge amounts of errors to that effect.  Our runmode never 
changes, and there's no logs as to why.

The software is still far better than any open source list product I've 
seen so far, but it is starting to show it's age.  All of the documentation 
and standard templates, especially the ones being sent out via email to 
users need a serious updating, there's still a lot of stuff about BitNet.

There's also a lack of auditing for web confirmations.  Unless the user is 
the list owner the webUI reports 127.0.0.1 as the IP that confirmed.  I 
hadn't really even noticed this until this was pointed out by one of our 
owners.

LSoft certainly should be "qualifying" sites before they go into the 
backbone, and making sure they ARE delivering email that they claim to 
deliver for.

>
> Thanks and cheers, wayne
>
> Bill Verity wrote, in part,  on 9/13/2005 4:26 PM:
>
>> I just submitted a de-register form to get off the backbone.  Got to try
>> this for a while.  X-SPAM traffic has been killing us.  We generated 916
>> jobs yesterday that went to 216 sites as 140 jobs each.  That's around
>> 140,000 jobs, if my math is right.  Took me hours to toss them all.  If
>> you recall, I run a script every 15 minutes to look at all .mail files
>> and delete any that contain X-SPAM.
>>
>> At 5:38 PM -0700 1/22/04, Ben Parker wrote
>>
>>
>>> On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 17:49:33 -0500, Paul Karagianis <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Is the above usable as an emergency on/off switch?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> No, especially if you are a registered backbone site (which STJOHNS
>>> is).  Each LISTSERV site maintains (periodically updated) tables of the
>>> other backbone sites to share the X-SPAM and other notifications,
>>> including DISTRIBUTE jobs. Even if you set your server to STANDALONE,
>>> if you are in the registered list, all other sites will continue to
>>> send you their notices, based on their local tables.  You need to
>>> de-register from the backbone
>>>
>>>  http://www.lsoft.com/regform.html
>>>
>>> and then run in STANDALONE mode for 15-30 days before you can really
>>> feel the effects of shutting this down.  And some older sites still
>>> running with outdated tables, may still send you backbone traffic, even
>>> a year later.
>>>
>>> STANDALONE also removes your site from CataList (the worldwide list of
>>> LISTSERV lists).
>>>
>>> This needs to be a carefully thought-out process, definitely not
>>> something done in a hurry.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>



--
"Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors
into trouble of all kinds."
-- Samuel Butler