Mailing Lists

I am running two public mailing lists on my server.

The first one is a two-way discussion list, primarily for the purpose of discussing my combined patch, but also for discussions about this web site, qmail, djbdns, daemontools, or anything related.

The second one is an "announcement only" list, where I announce new versions of the combined patch, and significant changes to the web site.

Anybody is welcome to join either list.

2009-04-01 One restriction: People using Yahoo addresses will not be permitted to join. This isn't because of you, it's because Yahoo insists on turning your outbound email into a platform for their own spam. YOU may be a Yahoo user, and have agreed to their flooding you with advertisements, but I am not a Yahoo user and I certainly don't agree to their filling my mailing list with ads.

Also, on 2009-04-06, any existing list members with Yahoo addresses will be removed from the list, and told to re-subscribe using an email address whose provider doesn't inject advertisements into their users' outbound email messages.

This policy will be expanded to include other domains who inject ads into their users' outbound email messages. Additions to the list of "bad" domains will be announced on the list, and on this page.

The qmail-patch list

This is a two-way discussion list. It's primarily meant for discussions about the combined patch, however any qmail-related topic, including anything found on this web site.

To subscribe to the list, send an empty message to this address, from the address you wish to have subscribed:

2009-01-08 A spammer managed to subscribe themselves to the list and get one spam message through. I absolutely HATE spammers, with a screaming purple passion, so the list is now subscription moderated, which means that after you confirm your email address, one of the moderators (myself and a few other carefully selected people, who shall remain nameless) will need to confirm adding you to the list. This will usually only take a few hours, but may take a few days- it depends on how often we check our email.

Once you are subscribed, you can send a message to the list by sending it to this address:

To UN-subscribe from the list, send an empty message to this address, from the address you wish to remove:

Visit http://qmail.jms1.net/lists/q-p-faq.txt to see the FAQ for the qmail-patch list.

List Rules

There are a few things you should already know before posting on the qmail-patch list.

If you want to run qmail, you should already know how to administer your server. You should know what a "cron job" is and how to set one up, you should know what the "grep" and "sed" commands are for, you should know how to read and write basic shell scripts, and have a solid understanding of how userids and groups and permissions operate.

If you don't know these things, chances are that qmail will be over your head. Your time would probably be better spent becoming familiar with your operating system, system and network adminsitration, and basic shell and/or perl scripting. Jumping into qmail without understanding your OS is like trying to run without knowing how to walk- you need to understand the basics before you can jump into the advanced stuff.

And qmail is fairly advanced. It's a collection of small programs, each of which does one part of the overall "mail server" job. There is a bit of a learning curve, but once you get your head wrapped around how the various programs work with each other, it suddenly becomes simple- in fact, for me it was like turning on a light- suddenly it all made sense. (Of course it took me several months of doing nothing but qmail, eight hours a day, to reach that point...)

The biggest rule for the qmail-patch list is this: everybody is required to read, and UNDERSTAND, this web page, before posting anything on the list.

Anybody who posts on the list in a way which shows that they haven't read, didn't understand, or is ignoring this page, is running the risk of being removed from the list. Remember that the people on the list, myself included, are there because we WANT to be there, not because anybody is paying us to be there.

With that said, the list is not meant as an "experts only" list. We don't mind beginners to qmail... however we do ask that you know how to administer your own system, that you read the documentation and web sites, that you use Google before asking questions, and that you are here to LEARN about qmail, rather than just looking for somebody to solve a problem for you so you can go back to playing Solitaire, or Warcraft, or whatever it is you do with your free time.

Visit http://qmail.jms1.net/lists/q-p-rules.txt to see the full list of rules for conduct on the qmail-patch list.

The qmail-patch-announce list

This is a one-way announcement list, I am the only person with access to post messages to it. I use it to announce new versions of the combined patch, as well as significant changes on the web site.

To subscribe to the list, send an empty message to this address, from the address you wish to have subscribed:

To UN-subscribe from the list, send an empty message to this address, from the address you wish to remove:

Archives

Visit http://www.jms1.net/lists/ for a web-accessible archive of both lists. The web interface uses Bruce Guenter's ezmlm-browse program, which is written in Python and works pretty well.

I did make one minor change to the ezmlm-browse program- I'm not masking the email addresses when it shows the messages in the browser. I'm not doing this because of the nature of my lists; it's very common for messages to contain things which "look like" email addresses but may not be, and hiding them interferes with the semantic content of the messages. Of course, I made it a configuration item, and made a patch file with my changes, if anybody is using the program to archive their own lists and wants the same functionality. (I would have made it a per-list option instead of a global option, but I don't know enough Python to do it, and I personally don't need such an option. Maybe Bruce will take the idea and make it a per-list option.)

Another nice thing is that this interface can serve RSS feeds for the lists, which means if you're so inclined, you can read the list using an RSS reader instead of email.

Copyright 1995-2024 John M. Simpson KG4ZOW (email) (PGP key)
Last updated 2009-04-01 06:54:58 +0000