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List:       majordomo-users
Subject:    Re: Subscription to a list...
From:       Brent Chapman <brent () GreatCircle ! COM>
Date:       1993-05-25 21:59:10
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#     The problem is, there's no telling what somebody's going to send to a
#     "-request" address.  Majordomo understands only a very specific
#     syntax; it makes no attempt at natural language parsing.  Piping
#     "-request" directly into Majordomo is going to yield a lot of garbage.
# 
# That's ok for me.  Virtually all the traffic I receive to -request
# aliases are intended for majordomo.  The few that don't parse would
# cause the usual help/error text returned to them.
# 
#     Another problem with piping "-request" traffic directly to Majordomo
#     is that it leaves no obvious way for someone to contact a human
#     responsible for the list (to ask about archives, for instance).  The
#     Majordomo-supplied recording on "-request" aliases actually does TWO
#     important things: it tells the user how to use Majordomo for routine
#     requests, AND it tells them how to contact a human for other request.
# 
# Hmm, it looks like the majordomo script doesn't mail back the help text
# when it encounters an error...  I was expecting this to be done and since
# the identity of the human contact is in that text; I didn't figure this
# to be an issue.

If Majordomo gets garbage as input, it sends back a generic "this is
how to use Majordomo" message.  Unlike the "request-answer" message,
that message does not include instructions for contacting specific
list owners; it does, however, tell you how to contact the person
responsible for the Majordomo server at that site.

#     You could alias "majordomo@sgi.com" to
#     "majordomo@whizzer.wpd.sgi.com", then rig Majordomo on whizzer to
#     respond as "sgi.com" (i.e., by setting "$whereami" to "sgi.com"
#     instead of "whizzer.wpd.sgi.com").
# 
#     This would assume that there would only be one Majordomo server
#     operating within SGI, however.  That's not as bad an assumption as it
#     sounds, though; there probably SHOULD be only one Majordomo server at
#     a given site, which gets used for all the lists at that site, but it's
#     not clear that it should be on an individual's workstation.  If you
#     set up and use "majordomo@sgi.com" right from the start, you can move
#     it to another machine later just by changing the alias on "sgi.com".
# 
# The machine sgi.com is administered by different folks than the internal
# machine where the mailing list is located and where I am allowed to
# muck with aliases.  I wanted to transparently replace my previous manual
# maintenance with majordomo.  BTW, I originally tried setting $whereami
# to sgi.com but when majordomo was invoked on the internal machine I got
# errors ""$whoami: $reply_to is not a valid return address.\n""--or so I
# recall (it was past my bedtime :-)).

I suspect some sort of configuration problem.  Myself and many other
people run with $whereami set to something other than the name of the
machine the server is running on, with no problem.  You might want to
try it again some time.


-Brent
--
Brent Chapman                                   Great Circle Associates
Brent@GreatCircle.COM                           1057 West Dana Street
+1 415 962 0841                                 Mountain View, CA  94041

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