The simplest way to create a mailing list is to edit the mail aliases file itself, located at /etc/aliases. Simply edit the file and add the list. Lists look like my-list: person1,person2,person3.
The simplest way to create a mailing list is to edit the mail aliases file itself, located at /etc/aliases. Simply edit the file and add the list. Lists look like my-list: person1,person2,person3.
For a small list or one that does not change often, hand-editing the alias file is a workable solution. However, for larger and more frequently changing mailing lists, a mailing list management tool is probably better. There are several popular tools available — see the sidebar “Popular Mailing List Software” for a short list — with Majordomo (http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo) being one of the best-known.
Written in Perl, installation of Majordomo is very simple: download the source from http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/1.94.5/majordomo-1.94.5.tar.gz and unpack that file with tar -xzf majordomo-1.94.5.tar.gz. Next, change to the new directory that tar created, create a new user named majordomo, and then follow the steps outlined in the INSTALL file.
Once installed, setting up a Majordomo mailing list is straightforward. While Majordomo has a number of tools to create and maintain mailing lists, the nuts-and-bolts method is to again edit the file /etc/aliases directly.
For example, to create the mailing list my-friends, edit /etc/aliases file and enter the following lines:
# A mailing list for my friends . . . my-friends: “|/opt/majordomo/wrapper resend -l my-friends my-friends” my-friends-list: :include:/opt/majordomo/lists/my-friends owner-my-friends: mascio my-friends-owner: mascio my-friends-request: “|/opt/majordomo/wrapper majordomo -l my-friends
These five lines (excluding the comment) define a new mailing list. The…
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