and without root access to the server....is there another way?

On or about Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 09:44:09AM +0200, David Kelly typed:

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we have a massive problem with the W32.Sircam.Worm@mm. I want to temporarily close the lists we have...what's the best way???

Comment out the entries in the /etc/aliases file?

Roger _______________________________________________ Smartlist mailing list Smartlist@lists.RWTH-Aachen.DE http://MailMan.RWTH-Aachen.DE/mailman/listinfo/smartlist

and without root access to the server....is there another way?

...

On or about Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 09:44:09AM +0200, David Kelly typed:

...

we have a massive problem with the W32.Sircam.Worm@mm. I want to temporarily close the lists we have...what's the best way???

Comment out the entries in the /etc/aliases file?

You could try a cron job that touches the .etc/rc.lock file every 10-15 minutes until you're ready to roll again. Then just remove the cron job when things are better.

From the Manual file:

If you don't use "led" but still would like to put incoming mails on hold temporarily, then you can do this:

- for all the lists by creating the file: .etc/rc.lock - only for one list by creating the file: rc.lock in the list directory of that list.

The .bin/flist command checks to see if these rc.lock files exist AND are not older than 17 minutes before delivering the mail. So, if you create an rc.lock file, mails to that (or all) lists will stall for the next 17 minutes. If you need more time, touch the file every so often. You should remove the rc.lock files again after finishing your editing.

If you would like to change the -dist alias (used to distribute the mail to the subscribers) into something less well known, go right ahead, but remember to change the corresponding assignment to listdist. For completeness sake one should also correct the createlist and removelist scripts in that case. If you are using chopdist to expand the dist-file, then you don't even need a -dist alias at all.

At 7:47 PM -0400 7/19/01, Patrick Salsbury is rumored to have typed:

You could try a cron job that touches the .etc/rc.lock file every 10-15 minutes until you're ready to roll again. Then just remove the cron job when things are better.

Yipe! That would be a REALLY TERRIBLE IDEA, since each inbound mail (to the list address or the -request address) would spawn a process of flist which would sit there running, patiently waiting for the lockfile to expire...eventually, you would have enough processes backed up to bring the server down to its knees. Since the questioner doesn't have root access, it is assumed crashing the server would _not_ make him popular with whomever DOES have root access on the server.

(Please re-read that manual section, particularly the word, "temporarily." It's only designed to hold mail that you want to process temporarily while editing a system file. He wants to avoid processing mail altogether to avoid the viral messages.)

Since I don't know how the questioner's system is set up, I can't make any simple suggestions, but one sure-fire way is to simply add a delivering recipe to the top of rc.local.s00...this has the added benefit of leaving sub/unsub alone, and doesn't require root access on the server. Something like:

:0 : listholdingfile

..should do nicely.

Charlie

I inherited a list sometime ago and the previous admin forwards (automatically) the email from the old list address to the new, just like the previous list admin for him. I would really like to get the forwarding to stop as some of the is handled over 3 hops and I have not been able to reach any of the previous admins. Is there an easy way to reject the message and send a reply to the sender to use the new address.

I suppose something in the rc.local.s00 to check the header and the use the commonly found rejectmsg script?