Martin --

To clarify Santiago's explanation -- subscribers simply put 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject OR body of their message, sent to the list-request address. Regular users never use X-Command.

"2.5: How do people subscribe/unsubscribe to the list?" http://www.hartzler.net/smartlist/SmartList-FAQ.html#Section_2.5

On the other hand, If a list ADMIN needs to use X-Commands, these need to be sent to the list-request address either as their own HEADER element, OR after applying the 'X-Commands from the message body' fix, X-Command: xxx can be the FIRST line of the message BODY.

To explain: Email consists of two sections. First comes the header, with each header element (From: To: Subject: Cc: Whatever: ) starting at the beginning of a line. No empty lines are allowed in the header, BECAUSE: An empty line is the divider between the header and the message BODY.

Here is the relevant section of RFC 2822: "Internet Message Format"

A message consists of header fields (collectively called "the header of the message") followed, optionally, by a body. The header is a sequence of lines of characters with special syntax as defined in this standard. The body is simply a sequence of characters that follows the header and is separated from the header by an empty line (i.e., a line with nothing preceding the CRLF).

What the 'X-Commands from the message body' hack does is allow SmartList to continue scanning for X-Commands into the message body, by telling it to ignore the first empty line (which would normally tell it that it's done scanning the header.)

SmartList needs to see an X-Command header like this:

X-Command: blah blah blah;

NOT:

Subject: X-Command: blah blah blah.

Since the second one isn't an X-Command: header, it's a Subject: header.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Pete.

On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, [iso-8859-2] Martin MOKREJ© wrote:

Hi, I'm trying out to figure what is the syntax for unsubscription. I looks if I use the code from http://www.hartzler.net/smartlist/SmartList-FAQ.html#Section_3.2 that users have to say:

Subject: X-Command: unsubscribe , right?

It also applies to the message body, right?

Can someone explain me the sentence "Now X-Commands can go at the top of the message body. Add a blank line between the X-Commands and any other message content (as for instance with moderator approval)." from the above URL? Can you post an example of such moderator approval?

On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Santiago Vila wrote:

Perhaps you are a little bit confused, X-Command: is for the list admins. Users would subscribe or unsubscribe the usual way.

BTW, if you use rc.local.r00 to use X-Command in the body, it just mean you can write:

Subject: whatever From: whatever <- blank line separating headers and body. X-Command: whatever <- first line of body.

instead of

Subject: whatever From: whatever X-Command: whatever <- still a header line.

So now I know I understood right in the beginning the X-Command: , but unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem with subscriptions ...

While sending mesaage to testing-request@ with

Subject: subscribe

and empty mesage body I get back:

[...] WARNING: Please make sure to start the Subject: of requests to the archive- server with the word archive. Unknown command subscribe. [...]

What shall I do?

Use the source and the usual debugging procedures.

Smartlist thinks your subcribe request is an archive request. The code that does this is in rc.request when it calls "| arch_retrieve". Put VERBOSE=yes at the top of the file and analyze the logs after trying again.

[ I would perhaps disable the X-command-allowed-in-the-body feature just to be sure it's not the cause for this behaviour ].