Example of Moderated List

Last Updated: January 21, 2000

One of the powerful features of the Majordomo software is the ability to create moderated lists which are controlled by a central moderator. This control prevents abuse of your mailing list by outside parties as well as allowing the moderator to restrict frivolous postings. To set up a moderated Majordomo mailing list, you will need to do two things:

  1. Add Majordomo Aliases Configuration
  2. Create Majordomo List Files
In the example below, the sample files represent a mailing list titled "sample". You will want to substitute the occurrence of "sample" in the files below with the name of your moderated mailing list.

Majordomo Aliases Configuration

The lines below represent the aliases that you should add to your "~/etc/aliases" file to set up a moderated list. After you add these aliases you will need to run the command "vnewaliases" in order to update your virtual server's alias database. 

# sample moderated mailing list
owner-sample: bill@yourcompany.com 
sample: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper resend -A -R -l sample -h yourcompany.com sample-hidden-list"
sample-approval: owner-sample
sample-hidden-list: :include:/usr/local/majordomo/Lists/sample
owner-sample-outgoing: owner-sample
sample-request: "|/usr/local/majordomo/wrapper request-answer sample"
owner-sample-request: owner-sample
Note that in the example above the "hidden" mailing list is actually an alias "sample-hidden-list". You will probably want to change the occurrences of "sample-hidden-list" to be something obscure (since this is the first thing people who want to break in your list will check for).

You will also want to disable two dangerous commands in the majordomo perl script, namely "who" and "which". You can do this by commenting out lines 159 and 160 in the "majordomo" script in your usr/local/majordomo area.

It is also wise to modify your Virtual Server's "sendmail.cf" file (located in your "etc" directory) so that outside parties cannot expand (EXPN) and verify (VRFY) email aliases. Add the following line as the last entry in the "Options" section in your sendmail.cf file:

  • Opauthwarnings,needmailhelo,noexpn,novrfy

Majordomo List Files

The following three files represent what you will need for your moderated mailing list. You will need to create these three files for each moderated list and store them in your "~/usr/local/Majordomo/Lists" area.

  • sample
    the file that contains the email addresses, one per line.
  • sample.passwd
    the file that contains the moderator password.
  • sample.info
    the file that contains the information for your mailing list.

Now that you have a moderatored mailing list, you will need to know how to post to it. You must supply your password as a user defined mail header titled "Approved:". So if for example your password was "mypass", you would need to add the following header to a message for it to be approved:

  • Approved: mypass

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