--- List owner documentation / Eugenio Gatto. - Torino, 1994-06-11 --> Rodney Boyd & LSVOWN-L "... the end of the first month of serving as the list owner of DOUBLEREED-L. At times I feel totally lost, confused, and frustrated." "Can someone tell me how to get the system to function with the TELL commands?" (Rodney Boyd, 1994-06-10) As a new list owner myself I understand Ronn feelings: the documentation available for ListServ is very good, but I know how much I was helped by my many previous years of practice with machines. My sending to the list assumes that LSTOWN-L is really the appropriate forum for mutual help: please correct me, if I am "wasting bandwidth". "... you cannot use commands such as TELL LISTSERV AT... unless both your account and the listserv are on active BITNET nodes." (Douglas Winship, 1994-06-10) Quite right for the ListServ end, I think: but on the other end Ronn could be on a system which can send and receive this way, but simply the command to manage it is not TELL but something else (I am on a VMS system, and I use SEND and SEND/FILE: of course this means that my system has a quite powerful interface with BITNET). Other problems may exist: the address seen by ListServ for messages received via TELL could be different from the one seen via MAIL, and, to be indifferently accepted as a list owner you must appear twice in the list header (this is my situation): with the drawback (minor, for a not too active list) that you receive every list owner message twice. As a list owner, you can add your "other" address modifying the list header. "Is there any way that I, as a listserv owner, can alter the header? And is there anyway in which I can make a change for a subscriber with one command rather than having to edit the whole subscriber file?" (Rodney Boyd, 1994-06-10) Anything done via TELL can be done via MAIL: ListServ interprets any piece of mail as commands, at first; with the notable exception that if the first line of it is "PUT xxx yyy" the following lines are taken as the actual content of file "xxx yyy" to be stored on ListServ. This applies also to the special file "yourlist LIST" (the definition & list of subscribers of your list), and this way you can modify it. You can limit the PUT to the (whole) header part: this results in modifying the header with no risk of altering the list of subscribers. If you intend to work on this part only (the part where every line starts with "*"), you don't even need to GET it in a special way, since (generally) it goes not beyond 80 characters per line; and if you are the only (active) list owner there is no concern for LOCKing and UNLOCKing. For changes to individual subscribers definitions, you may well prefer the commands (via TELL or via MAIL) QUERY, DELETE, ADD and SET: working on the whole subcriber file requires to be well aware of the "hidden" part of it (coded individual options and dates, from the 81.th character of every line). "... can anyone recommend to Ronn the briefest list management document that's available?" (Roger Burns, 1994-06-10) I cannot recommend the "briefest" one: I think that for a list owner the entire set available on every ListServ is a necessity (not to be read all at once, of course). The list can be retrieved sending a GET INFO FILELIST. Personally, I found quite useful another set of manuals (thanks to Jim Gerland), from [log in to unmask] This is the list I obtained sending there an INDEX LSVOWNER command: * LSVOWNER FILELIST for [log in to unmask] ******************************************************************************** LSVOWNER $PACKAGE ALL GER V 73 20 94/02/17 09:57:07 The Welcome Mail LSVOWNER READY ALL GER V 72 20 93/01/29 11:06:05 'Your List is Re LSVOWNER WELCOME ALL GER V 74 19 93/01/29 11:05:56 'Welcome to this LSVOWNER TXT ALL GER V 79 44 93/01/29 11:06:01 Generic List Own LSVOWNER NEW-LIST ALL GER V 77 28 93/01/29 11:06:16 New List Announc LSVOWNER GATEWAY ALL GER V 73 162 93/01/29 11:06:10 USENET News Gate LSVOWNER NON-CMS ALL GER F 80 36 94/03/07 14:58:07 CMS Instructions LSVOWNER FIL-LIST ALL GER F 80 258 94/03/07 14:58:20 " " LISTSERV TIPS ALL GER F 80 1568 93/05/13 08:40:36 Lisa Covi's Doc. * LSV-17D CHANGES ALL GER V 73 593 93/04/05 08:57:47 Ver 1.7d changes LSV-17E CHANGES ALL GER V 73 471 93/04/05 08:57:51 Ver 1.7e changes LSV-17F CHANGES ALL GER V 79 917 93/04/05 08:57:55 Ver 1.7f changes LSV-18A CHANGES ALL GER V 73 1225 93/12/13 09:27:41 Ver 1.8a changes Hope to have been useful (and to have perhaps relieved some postmasters from some of the many questions I posed to mine). <-- Eugenio Gatto (CIDEM, Politecnico di Torino, Italia) (list owner AIB-CUR@ICINECA) TEL 39.11.564'6600 FACS 39.11.564'6609 EM [log in to unmask]