Kary,

Thanks for the info! More below.

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Paul Karagianis wrote:

>On 30 Sep 2005, at 11:30, Listserv Manager wrote:
>
>So there are two points here... (1) yes, on these two OS'es you can just
>chuck the stuff you don't want, although I suspect LSoft puts this on the
>same spiritual level as handling serpents.  (2) You can figure out your
>own program and method of deleting non-subscribers or you could compromise
>for something as crude as just chucking everyone without a password which
>I've done repeatedly without getting caught by the users.  ;-)  There may
>be other factors, like all *user* lines (or something) without passwords so
>look carefully before you leap and keep backups.

At this point I've done a lot of work- I have a script that compares the
subscriber information with the signup files, so I know exactly what has
to go. I can't user your technique and remove people without passwords-
most don't. But the folks that aren't subscribed to any list can easily
go.

I am sorely tempted to edit the files (delete unwanted entries), but
you're right, it's absolutely not recommended. And I don't understand
enough of the guts to get the sequence of events right (rehashing etc.)
For example, the deletes I sent via REGISTER ... OFF last night aren't yet
reflected in the SIGNUP files (which have today's time stamps) although if
I attempt to delete them again, they aren't there. So I presume this stuff
is cached in memory, but I have no idea when the files will reflect the
changes.

And Listserv is so embedded in our daily work that I can't just willy
nilly take it down and restart it.