[Mailman-Users] Setting up an announce only list

[Jon Carnes]

All that you ask is easily done with a little scripting...

You'll need to turn off "Send mail to poster when posting is held".  Then 
write a script that looks at the held messages for the specified list in 
~mailman/data/..

grep for the first occurence of "From:" and isolate the senders email address

Send back a canned message:
  mail -s "You are not authorized to post to list at mydomain.com" $FROM < 
~mailman/lists/<listname>/canned_message.txt

Put the script in your mailman crontab and let it execute hourly (at 59 
minutes past the hour).

Make sure the list is setup so that only an elite few can automagically post 
to it... Voila!  Exactly what you want.

Oh, BTW, delete the held message after you respond to it, and (look in the 
FAQ for more details) copy a saved/empty request.db over the current one for 
the list - so that you won't get annoying messages about a pending request.

Work on it for awhile, and let me know if you have any problems.  I'm happy 
to help.

Jon Carnes

 --- Original Message: Tuesday 09 April 2002 06:29 pm ---
> Greetings!
>
> I'm new to Mailman and I've read the various documentation, FAQ's and
> scanned the archives, but I don't see a definitive answer to setting up an
> "announce only" type list.  I can't quite come up with the solution I want,
> and perhaps there isn't with this version.  Ideally what I'd like is this:
>
> When members (or anyone) try to send to the list, they receive the message
> back in the "autoresponse_postings_text" variable but *NOT* the short
> message indicating that the post is being held pending administrative
> approval (as it won't ever get approved).  In this case, the list
> administrator would only need select "discard" from the "tend to pending
> administrative tasks" page instead of having to word a reply for each
> posting.
>
> Unfortunately setting "Send mail to poster when their posting is held for
> approval?" to no also seems to disable the autorespond text.  Setting the
> above to yes then sends *both* messages - the short one indicating the
> message is being held for approval and the autorespond text.  The problem
> is the messages conflict - one says the message is being held for approval
> and the other says no posts to this list are allowed.
>
> Another possible solution would be to change the short message to indicate
> no posts are allowed, but I don't see any method of doing so from the web
> interface.  Is there a way?
>
> I'd also like to change the "Welcome to the list" e-mail text, is there a
> way to do this - other than just adding additional text?
>
> If anyone has a better method for setting up an announce only list, I'm all
> eyes.
>
> Any suggestions are appreciated.  Thanks!
>
> -Eric
>
>
> Eric Sisler <esisler at westminster.lib.co.us>
> Applications Specialist
> Westminster Public Library
> Westminster, CO USA
>
> Linux - Don't fear the Penguin.
> Want to know what we use Linux for?
> Visit http://gromit.westminster.lib.co.us/linux
>
>
>
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