Information Technology

Commands Understood by the List Server:
Please make note of the following EOU Restrictions

If you're familiar with mail servers, an advanced user's summary of Majordomo's commands appears at the end of this message.

Majordomo is an automated system which allows users to subscribe and unsubscribe to mailing lists, and to retrieve files from list archives.
You can interact with the Majordomo software by sending it commands in the body of mail messages addressed to "listserver@eou.edu".
Please do not put your commands on the subject line; Majordomo does not process commands in the subject line.
You may put multiple Majordomo commands in the same mail message. Put each command on a line by itself.
If you use a "signature block" at the end of your mail, Majordomo may mistakenly believe each line of your message is a command; you will then receive spurious error messages. To keep this from happening, either put a line starting with a hyphen ("-") before your signature, or put a line with just the word
end
on it in the same place. This will stop the Majordomo software from processing your signature as bad commands.
Here are some of the things you can do using Majordomo:

I. FINDING OUT WHICH LISTS ARE ON THIS SYSTEM

To get a list of publicly-available mailing lists on this system, put the following line in the body of your mail message to listserver@eou.edu:

lists

Each line will contain the name of a mailing list and a brief description of the list.

To get more information about a particular list, use the "info" command, supplying the name of the list. For example, if the name of the list about which you wish information is "demo-list", you would put the line

info demo-list

in the body of the mail message.

II. SUBSCRIBING TO A LIST

Once you've determined that you wish to subscribe to one or more lists on this system, you can send commands to Majordomo to have it add you to the list, so you can begin receiving mailings.

To receive list mail at the address from which you're sending your mail, simply say "subscribe" followed by the list's name:

subscribe demo-list

If for some reason you wish to have the mailings go to a different address (a friend's address, a specific other system on which you have an account, or an address which is more correct than the one that automatically appears in the "From:" header on the mail you send), you would add that address to the command. For instance, if you're sending a request from your work
account, but wish to receive "demo-list" mail at your personal account (for which we will use "jqpublic@my-isp.com" as an example), you'd put the line

subscribe demo-list jqpublic@my-isp.com

in the mail message body.

Based on configuration decisions made by the list owners, you may be added to the mailing list automatically. You may also receive notification that an authorization key is required for subscription. Another message
will be sent to the address to be subscribed (which may or may not be the same as yours) containing the key, and directing the user to send a command found in that message back to listserver@eou.edu. (This can be
a bit of extra hassle, but it helps keep you from being swamped in extra email by someone who forged requests from your address.) You may also get a message that your subscription is being forwarded to the list owner for approval; some lists have waiting lists, or policies about who may subscribe. If your request is forwarded for approval, the list owner should contact you soon after your request.

III. UNSUBSCRIBING FROM MAILING LISTS

Your original intro message contains the exact command which should be used to remove your address from the list. However, in most cases, you may simply send the command "unsubscribe" followed by the list name:

unsubscribe demo-list

(This command may fail if your provider has changed the way your address is shown in your mail.)
To remove an address other than the one from which you're sending the request, give that address in the command:
unsubscribe demo-list jqpublic@my-isp.com
In either of these cases, you can tell listserver@eou.edu to remove the address in question from all lists on this server by using "*"
in place of the list name:
unsubscribe *
unsubscribe * jqpublic@my-isp.com

IV. FINDING OUT WHO'S SUBSCRIBED TO A LIST

To get a list of the addresses on a particular list, you may use the "who" command, followed by the name of the list:
approve [password] who demo-list

VII. GETTING MORE HELP

To contact a human site manager, send mail to Listserv-Owner@eou.edu.

To contact the owner of a specific list, send mail to that list's approval address, which is formed by adding "-approval" to the user-name portion of the list's address. For instance, to contact the list owner for demo-list@eou.edu, you would send mail to demo-list-approval@eou.edu.

To get another copy of this help message, send mail to listserver@eou.edu with a line saying
help
in the message body.

VIII. COMMAND SUMMARY FOR ADVANCED USERS

When providing the item, do not include the []'s around it. Items in brackets, such as [address], are meta-symbols that should be replaced by appropriate text without the brackets. List passwords are required for some commands.
It understands the following commands:

• subscribe [list] [address]
• Subscribe yourself
• unsubscribe [list] [address]
• Unsubscribe yourself
  "unsubscribe *" will remove you (or [address]) from all lists.
  This may not work if you have subscribed using multiple addresses.
  
  who [list]
  Find out who is on the named .
  
  info [list]
  Retrieve the general introductory information for the named .
  
  intro [list]
  Retrieve the introductory message sent to new users. Non-subscribers
  may not be able to retrieve this.
  
  lists
  Show the lists served by this Majordomo server.
  
  help
  Retrieve this message.
  
  end
  Stop processing commands (useful if your mailer adds a signature).
  
  Commands should be sent in the body of an email message to
  "listserver@eou.edu". Multiple commands can be processed provided
  each occurs on a separate line.
  
  Commands in the "Subject:" line are NOT processed.
  
  If you have any questions or problems, please contact
  "listmaster@eou.edu".