| 1 | ezmlm is an easy-to-use, high-speed mailing list manager for qmail. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | ezmlm lets users set up their own mailing lists within qmail's address |
| 4 | hierarchy. A user, Joe, types |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ezmlm-make ~/SOS ~/.qmail-sos joe-sos isp.net |
| 7 | |
| 8 | and instantly has a functioning mailing list, joe-sos@isp.net, with all |
| 9 | relevant information stored in a new ~/SOS directory. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | ezmlm sets up joe-sos-subscribe and joe-sos-unsubscribe for automatic |
| 12 | processing of subscription and unsubscription requests. Any message to |
| 13 | joe-sos-subscribe will work; Joe doesn't have to explain any tricky |
| 14 | command formats. ezmlm will send back instructions if a subscriber sends |
| 15 | a message to joe-sos-request or joe-sos-help. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | ezmlm automatically archives new messages. Messages are labelled with |
| 18 | sequence numbers; a subscriber can fetch message 123 by sending mail to |
| 19 | joe-sos-get.123. The archive format supports fast message retrieval even |
| 20 | when there are thousands of messages. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | ezmlm takes advantage of qmail's VERPs to reliably determine the |
| 23 | recipient address and message number for every incoming bounce message. |
| 24 | It waits ten days and then sends the subscriber a list of message |
| 25 | numbers that bounced. If that warning bounces, ezmlm sends a probe; if |
| 26 | the probe bounces, ezmlm automatically removes the subscriber from the |
| 27 | mailing list. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | ezmlm is easy for users to control. Joe can edit ~/SOS/text/* to change |
| 30 | any of the administrative messages sent to subscribers. He can remove |
| 31 | ~/SOS/public and ~/SOS/archived to disable automatic subscription and |
| 32 | archiving. He can put his own address into ~/SOS/editor to set up a |
| 33 | moderated mailing list. He can edit ~/SOS/{headeradd,headerremove} to |
| 34 | control outgoing headers. ezmlm has several utilities to manually |
| 35 | inspect and manage mailing lists. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | ezmlm uses Delivered-To to stop forwarding loops, Mailing-List to |
| 38 | protect other mailing lists against false subscription requests, and |
| 39 | real cryptographic cookies to protect normal users against false |
| 40 | subscription requests. ezmlm can also be used for a sublist, |
| 41 | redistributing messages from another list. |
| 42 | |
| 43 | ezmlm is reliable, even in the face of system crashes. It writes each |
| 44 | new subscription and each new message safely to disk before it reports |
| 45 | success to qmail. |
| 46 | |
| 47 | ezmlm doesn't mind huge mailing lists. Lists don't even have to fit into |
| 48 | memory. ezmlm hashes the subscription list into a set of independent |
| 49 | files so that it can handle subscription requests quickly. ezmlm uses |
| 50 | qmail for blazingly fast parallel SMTP deliveries. |