PMDF System Manager's Guide

As mentioned previously, it is important to keep in mind that MAILSERV list membership files are solely that---list membership files. Postings to the list are handled by PMDF proper and not MAILSERV, which merely manages subscriptions to and from the list and handles queries for a copy of the list. For a complete discussion of PMDF mailing lists, see Section 4.1.

Each mailing list maintained by the mail server must be set up by creating a world readable⁶ mailing list distribution file in the PMDF_MAILSERV_MAIL_DIR directory and adding an entry for the list to the PMDF alias file (or alias database). The mailing list distribution file has the same format as the mailing list distribution files used by the alias file. See Section 4.1. For example, suppose you want to create a new mailing list called info-boink. First, create the (initially empty) distribution list file and set its protections: on OpenVMS,

$ create pmdf_mailserv_mail_dir:info-boink.dis - _$ /protection=(s:rwed,o:rwed,g:re,w:re) ^Z $

or on UNIX,

# touch /pmdf/mailserv/mail/info-boink.dis # chmod 755 /pmdf/mailserv/mail/info-boink.dis # chown pmdf /pmdf/mailserv/mail/info-boink.dis

or on NT,

C:\> copy nul C:\pmdf\mailserv\mail\info-boink.dis

Next the aliases for the list should be added to the aliases file, PMDF_ALIAS_FILE, (or added to the alias database). Large lists should be set up for deferred address expansion. (This can prevent remote mail connections from timing out while the mailing list is expanded.) The following lines would be added to the aliases file for the info-boink list on OpenVMS:

info-boink: info-boink-expand@process info-boink-expand: <PMDF_MAILSERV_MAIL_DIR:info-boink.dis, \ info-boink-error info-boink-request: mailserv info-boink-error: postmaster

or on UNIX:

info-boink: info-boink-expand@process info-boink-expand: </pmdf/mailserv/mail/info-boink.dis, \ info-boink-error info-boink-request: mailserv info-boink-error: postmaster

or on NT:

info-boink: info-boink-expand@process info-boink-expand: <C:\pmdf\mailserv\mail\info-boink.dis, \ info-boink-error info-boink-request: mailserv info-boink-error: postmaster

The definition as shown above requires that your PMDF configuration include a process channel; note that the PMDF configuration utility normally creates such a process channel. See Section 28.7 for more details on the process channel.

The info-boink mailing list should now be ready to use. These steps should be repeated to set up any additional mailing lists to be maintained by the mail server.

On OpenVMS, for the convenience of your VMS MAIL users, you can add a VMS MAIL forwarding address so that VMS MAIL users can simply send to info-boink (rather than having to send to IN%info-boink):

$ MAIL MAIL> SET FORWARD/USER=INFO-BOINK IN%info-boink

On UNIX, the case of the mailing list files is important. If the mailing list file is in all lowercase, then users may specify the list name in any mixture of upper and lower case on their MAILSERV commands. However, if the mailing list file is in mixed or all upper case, then users must specify the exact same matching case in their MAILSERV commands.