Re: coping with a high-volume mailing list (like this one)?
On 29 Nov 00 08:23:53 GMT, Pap Tibor <papt@edasz.hu> wrote:
>On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Frank Copeland wrote:
>> On 29 Nov 00 05:34:28 GMT, Lawrence H. Robins <lrobins@his.com> wrote:
>> >I'm curious to know what strategies are used by regular subscribers
>> >to this list to deal with the high volume of messages (>250/day)?
>> A mail2news gateway. A decent news client is always going to be a
>> better bet for dealing with a high volume threaded discussion group.
>> I'm responding to this in a gated newsgroup set up by my ISP, but I
>> could just as easily have set it up myself, and I have done so.
>Could you offer a mail2news gateway for home use? I would like to read
>mailing lists through news client but my ISP doesn't provide this.
I do it all with inn, but that may not be an option in all
circumstances, especially if you can't create arbitrary local email
addresses. The method is:
1. apt-get install inn2 (inn may be suitable if it includes the
mailpost script, I haven't used it for a while).
2. create a local *moderated* newsgroup for the list, for example:
$ /usr/lib/news/bin/ctlinnd newgroup local.lists.debian-user m
3. create a mail alias for the list and pipe any mail for it through
mailpost, for example (in /etc/aliases):
debian-user: "|/usr/lib/news/bin/mailpost -a news@localhost local.lists.debian-user"
4. add an entry to /etc/news/moderators pointing back to the list, for
example:
local.lists.debian-user:debian-user@lists.debian.org
5. subscribe the mail alias for the group to the mailing list.
The trick is in making the newsgroup moderated. The -a option to
mailpost adds an Approved: header to each incoming article so that inn
knows not to send it straight back to the list. Locally posted articles
will lack an Approved: header so they will be mailed to the list
address. It isn't perfect, and I use a slightly modified mailpost
script that strips out some headers that tend to confuse inn if they
appear in incoming articles.
By default, inn will expire (delete) messages after 2 weeks. You can
modify that by editing /etc/news/expire.ctl.
If you can't create arbitrary local email addresses, for example if you
have a dialup connection to an ISP, you will need to do something with
exim .forward files or procmail scripts to identify list mail and pipe
it into mailpost. I have no experience with that so I can't suggest a
solution.
If you are already using another news server such as leafnode, you will
have to work out the equivalent setup yourself.
Frank
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