Easier said than done
Robert G. Brown
rgb at phy.duke.edu
Wed Jun 7 11:00:55 PDT 2000
On Wed, 7 Jun 2000 axelsen at axe1.med.upenn.edu wrote:
>
> Dear Robert,
>
> I have also been trying to post, and failing that, to unsubscribe
> and resubscribe so that I could post a message. I've sent messages
> to beowulf-admin at beowulf.org about this, but no response.
Ah, this is a good thing (really!). I went to the beowulf page at
www.beowulf.org and lo, the beowulf list is ALREADY a mailman mediated
list. This is infinitely better than it being a majordomo list.
SO, here are the revised instructions for getting on (or off) the
beowulf list.
The "website" of the mailman-mediated beowulf mailing list (not the
beowulf website per se, just that of the list) is now:
http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
Start by visiting this site with your favorite browser. To subscribe,
well, subscribe. To unsubscribe (if you've already been on the list a
while and want to get off) scroll down to the "subscribers" section
(since you are already subscribed:-). Enter your email address EXACTLY
AS IT WAS GIVEN IN YOUR ORIGINAL SUBSCRIPTION and click the "edit
options" button.
This puts you into your own personal configuration page. Right there
before you is the unsubscribe option. HOWEVER, to unsubscribe you need
a password. Generally speaking, there is a maintenance script that runs
on the mailman server that mails all subscribed persons a reminder of
their passwords once a month, but if it has been set up by the list
administrators it obviously hasn't been run yet.
No matter. Right there underneath the unsubscribe panel is a "Forgotten
your Password?" panel. If you click the "Email my password to me"
button, you will get the standard password/instruction set mailed to you
in a second or so. Go retrieve it in your mail program and you can
unsubscribe.
BUT, think -- do you really want to? Note all the options below on this
page. One of them is to disable mail (while remaining subscribed). You
can stay on the list and turn it on and off like a spigot with this
option. You can then re-enable list delivery, ask a question, stay
online for a week to get all the responses, and when the thread plays
out turn the list "off" again. It actually might be more efficient to
work this way than to subscribe and unsubscribe over and over again to
get a week's worth of traffic when you need it.
Then there is digest mode. If you "like" getting the list traffic but
just can't handle getting mail every twenty minutes (or whatever the
MTBM is), you can try this for a while. In digest mode, you get the
entire day's traffic in a single message, once a day, with a
header/table of contents. If you see anything in the TOC that interests
you, you can read it. Otherwise, hit the ol' "d" button and move on. I
digest all the lists I'm not myself active on, which cuts their
effective burden on me to near zero.
You can even control whether or not you want to receive MIME messages or
plaintext only.
Stuff like this is what makes mailman a very nice thing indeed. Even
those without procmail installed (which can simulate parts of this,
poorly) can now control the delivery of list traffic very nicely,
although you'll still need procmail to filter out certain prolific
contributors (like rgb:-) or the occasional spammer that targets the
list if they annoy you...
Note that EVERYBODY on the list can (and at their convenience probably
should) check out their subscription options and retrieve/save their
password information (as well as bookmark the subscription page). The
URL above is also the most direct route for subscribing to the beowulf
list at this point.
rgb
>
>
> |>>> From beowulf-admin at beowulf.org Wed Jun 7 11:28:58 2000
> |>>>
> |>>> It isn't working because the beowulf.gsfc.nasa.gov address is defunct
> |>>> and obsolete. This is one (of many) reasons to use the proper domain
> |>>> address: www.beowulf.org. This is a "portable" entity and has followed
> |>>> Don Becker, Erik Hendriks, and many of the rest of the NASA Goddard
> |>>> folks to Scyld. I believe that www.beowulf.org is currently actually at
> |>>> scyld.com but I'm not sure and the reason for using the domain name is
> |>>> that it won't matter. Whereever it really is, that's where you'll go.
> |>>>
> |>>> So, try sending your unsubscribe message to majordomo at beowulf.org.
>
>
>
> When I did this, I got the following back ...
>
>
>
> |>>> From MAILER-DAEMON at axe1.med.upenn.edu Wed Jun 7 13:13:13 2000
> |>>> Received: from localhost (localhost)
> |>>> by axe1.med.upenn.edu (8.10.0/8.10.1) id e57HDDN17984;
> |>>> Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:13:13 -0400 (EDT)
> |>>> Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:13:13 -0400 (EDT)
> |>>> From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON at axe1.med.upenn.edu>
> |>>> Message-Id: <200006071713.e57HDDN17984 at axe1.med.upenn.edu>
> |>>> To: axelsen at axe1.med.upenn.edu
> |>>> MIME-Version: 1.0
> |>>> Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status;
> |>>> boundary="e57HDDN17984.960397993/axe1.med.upenn.edu"
> |>>> Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details
> |>>> Auto-Submitted: auto-generated (failure)
> |>>>
> |>>> This is a MIME-encapsulated message
> |>>>
> |>>> --e57HDDN17984.960397993/axe1.med.upenn.edu
> |>>>
> |>>> The original message was received at Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:13:13 -0400 (EDT)
> |>>> from axelsen at localhost
> |>>>
> |>>> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> |>>> majordomo at beowulf.org
> |>>> (reason: 550 <majordomo at beowulf.org>... User unknown)
> |>>>
> |>>> ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> |>>> ... while talking to blueraja.scyld.com.:
> |>>> >>> RCPT To:<majordomo at beowulf.org>
> |>>> <<< 550 <majordomo at beowulf.org>... User unknown
> |>>> 550 5.1.1 majordomo at beowulf.org... User unknown
> |>>>
> |>>> --e57HDDN17984.960397993/axe1.med.upenn.edu
> |>>> Content-Type: message/delivery-status
> |>>>
> |>>> Reporting-MTA: dns; axe1.med.upenn.edu
> |>>> Arrival-Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:13:13 -0400 (EDT)
> |>>>
> |>>> Final-Recipient: RFC822; majordomo at beowulf.org
> |>>> Action: failed
> |>>> Status: 5.1.1
> |>>> Remote-MTA: DNS; blueraja.scyld.com
> |>>> Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 <majordomo at beowulf.org>... User unknown
> |>>> Last-Attempt-Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:13:13 -0400 (EDT)
> |>>>
> |>>> --e57HDDN17984.960397993/axe1.med.upenn.edu
> |>>> Content-Type: message/rfc822
> |>>>
> |>>> Return-Path: <axelsen>
> |>>> Received: (from axelsen at localhost)
> |>>> by axe1.med.upenn.edu (8.10.0/8.10.1) id e57HDCO17982
> |>>> for majordomo at beowulf.org; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:13:13 -0400 (EDT)
> |>>> Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 13:13:13 -0400 (EDT)
> |>>> From: axelsen
> |>>> Message-Id: <200006071713.e57HDCO17982 at axe1.med.upenn.edu>
> |>>> To: majordomo at beowulf.org
> |>>>
> |>>>
> |>>> unsubscribe
> |>>>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Paul H. Axelsen MD, Associate Professor .... ..... . . . .
> Departments of Pharmacology and . . . .. . .. .
> Medicine, Infectious Diseases Section .... .... . . . . . .
> University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine . . . .. . ..
> Rooms 130/131 John Morgan Bldg . ..... . . . .
> 3620 Hamilton Walk
> Philadelphia, PA 19104-6084 --------------------------
> 215-898-9238 (office)
> Email: axe at pharm.med.upenn.edu 215-898-9766 (lab)
> WWW: http://axe2.med.upenn.edu 215-573-2236 (fax)
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb at phy.duke.edu
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