Mailing lists are a very powerful automated tool for maintaining a list of members. In this example, we will assume your mailing list is listname@mydomain.com and your unix username is md, with home directory /home/md. You will need to replace these three items with your own.

You need to telnet (or ssh) into your unix account to set this up.

• ezmlm-make is the unix command to create your mailing list.
• /home/md/listname is the directory in your home directory that will contain the mailing list files.
• /home/md/.qmail-listname is the .qmail- file for the list.
• listname is your mailing list name.
• mydomain.com is your domain name.

Type "cd /home/md/listname", then type "pico inlocal". At first it will say only "listname", you need to change it to say "md-listname" (your unix username + mailing list name). Control-X will save and exit.

At this point, the list is set up and working, but nobody is subscribed. To subscribe (add) a member by hand, type "ezmlm-sub /home/md/listname anybody@anywhere.com". Replace /home/md/listname with your home directory & mailing list name, and then the email address you want to add.

If someone wants to join the list, they should send a mail to "listname-subscribe@mydomain.com". They will receive a confirmation email, and when they reply, they will be added. This protects people from being subscribed to the list without their knowledge or approval.

To insert something into the subject line of all mail passing through the list, create a file called "/home/md/listname/prefix". An example of the contents is "Mylist;", so that the subject of the messages will be like: "Subject: Mylist; normal subject"

If you create the file "/home/md/listname/text/trailer", it will add this to the end of all messages going through the list. Most free e-mail providers do something like this.

To set a maximum message size (recommended), create the file "/home/md/listname/msgsize" with the number saying the maximum number of bytes. Putting "50000" inside will limit the message size to 50k.

If you want to protect the list from spam and only allow subscribed members to send mail to the list, you need to edit the file "/home/md/listname/bouncer" and add this line at the top:

 
|/usr/local/bin/ezmlm/ezmlm-warn '/home/md/listname' || exit 0

For real power users, a much better FAQ is available here.