John, your problem is that you have a 6 month old copy of PEERS NAMES because
Eric does not auto-distribute it to sites that are not on the backbone for some
reason that is totally uncomprehensable to me. You should pull a copy of it
from BITNIC or someplace closer that has a current version (use the RELEASE
command to see the date of the file before requesting it). Once you install
the new PEERS NAMES on your LISTSERV, Mail-Via=DISTRIBUTE should work fine.
 
Eric, why don't you send all 'current' sites PEERS NAMES? I can understand
not sending to those sites which might be so old that they cannot handle
the extra names you added several months ago. But why should those of us
who cannot accept your requirements for backbone status yet still want to
use LISTSERV efficiently for locally generated list have to go out of our
way to make sure that our files are kept current, when other sites get this
done automatically. Surely it is not that much more load on the system to
send it to every site that can handle it.
 
Bill