Eqinfo Mailing List Server

There are a set of shell scripts under this account to aid in managing the mailing list. Typing 'help' in the listmgr account will give a list of the available commands.

This is the listmgr account on eqinfo.  There are a number of shell script
available to help you with administering the mailing lists:

activity:    Shows subscribe/unsubscribe activity for the current day,
             or last 24 hours.

listsubs:    Lists the subscribers to a list.
adduser:     Adds a subscriber to a list.
removeuser:  Removes an address from a mailing list.

listposters: Lists the addresses allowed to post to a list.
addposter:   Adds an address to the list of addresses allowed to post to a list.

countlist:   Counts the subscribers to a list.

makelist:    Creates a new mailing list.

Each of these scripts will give a usage message if it is invoked without
arguments.

Each machine maintains its own independent copy of each mailing list. Since subscription requests can end up on any one of the three, there is a mechanism for maintaining the lists. There is a cron job on each machine that runs from the listmgr account:

   */15 * * * * /home/listmgr/bin/listsync.pl > /dev/null
   

Additionally, there is a job that checks the lists on each server against each other to make sure that they are all the same. This runs once an hour:

   4 * * * * /home/listmgr/bin/integrity3.pl
   

The handling of incoming mail for each list is specified by the .qmail file in the list directory. There were a few changes to this file as compared to a standard mailing list. The first is the addition of the line:

|/usr/local/bin/ezmlm-issubn /home/listmgr/quake-all/list/allow || bouncesaying 'Not allowed'

The second change is the addition of "-T" to the second line:

|/usr/local/bin/ezmlm-reject -T '/home/listmgr/quake-all/list'

The last line in editor is a call to ezmlm-warn. This handles bounces. The timeout value by default is about 11 days. Since earthquake messages can be weeks or months apart, this timeout has been set higher for our mailing lists. For quake-all it is set to 30 days, and for quake-large and shakemail it is 180 days.

|/usr/local/bin/ezmlm-warn -t 180 '/home/listmgr/shakemail/list' || exit 0

Subscriptions are open to all lists except for office and felt. Subscriptions to these lists must be approved by the list moderator. This is set up with the ezmlm-sub program:

ezmlm-sub /home/listmgr/felt/list/mod stan@iron.gps.caltech.edu

There is a message trailer file in list/text/trailer. This is appended to all outgoing messages:

-- 
You are receiving this message through the <#l#> mailing list.
To subscribe, go to http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/mailing-lists.html
To unsubscribe, send mail to <#l#>-unsubscribe@<#h#>

The text that is sent to users by ezmlm is all stored in files in the list/text directory. In particular, the subscription confirmation text is stored in sub-confirm. Any of these files can be modified by the listmgr account.

In the interests of tracking how much work the server has to do, it reports the number of list subscriptions back to MRTG. This is done with a shell script running as a cron job on Eqinfo. This is the crontab:

0 * * * * /home/listmgr/bin/countit.sh cube
1 * * * * /home/listmgr/bin/countit.sh quake-all
2 * * * * /home/listmgr/bin/countit.sh quake-large
3 * * * * /home/listmgr/bin/countit.sh shakemail

mrtg-quake-all: "| /home/mrtg/quake-all.sh"
mrtg-quake-large: "| /home/mrtg/quake-large.sh"
mrtg-shakemail: "| /home/mrtg/shakemail.sh"
mrtg-cube: "| /home/mrtg/cube.sh"

bort# cat quake-all.sh
#!/bin/sh
#       Take the message and strip off the headers.
        sed '1,/^$/d' > /home/mrtg/quake-all-count.txt

5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/mrtg /usr/local/etc/mrtg/mrtg3.cfg