Mailing list question

Mycroft

Mycroft

Perch
Hi,

I'm having trouble doing something that I though could be done in most mailing list software.

I have a large organization with several groups of people. I have a mailing list for each of the small groups. I recently decided to create a list for the entire organization, so I made a mailing list that contained the addresses of the smaller groups.

I would really like to do it this way for several reasons. First, it is easier to maintain for me, I only need to add and remove the entire group as groups come and go from the organization. Also I think the lists will be more accurate if they are maintained on the small group level. The other important reason I like this method is that it does not require users to subscribe/unsubscribe from multiple lists.

Anyway, it doesn't seem to be working. Messages sent to the larger group just disappear. No return message or anything. Is this not possible in Hsphere or am I doing something wrong?

Regards,

-Jim
 
Thanks for the reply Stephen. I think you may misunderstand. The groups I'm referring to are just groups of people in mailing lists.

Here's what I mean.

Mailing list [email protected] contains
[email protected]
[email protected]

Mailing list [email protected] contains
[email protected]
[email protected]

I want a the [email protected] mailing list to look like this:
[email protected]
[email protected]

I've been playing with it and I don't think it's possible in ezmlm to do it.

Thanks again,

-Jim
 
Hi Jim,

This seemed like an interesting idea and since I had a few idle moments and enjoy a puzzle :) I was intrigued to try it myself. I thought I had a clever idea that might have helped. Unfortunately it didn't but I stumbled upon why it doesn't work, not that it helps, I don't see a solution.:(

Using your example, I wondered if allorg somehow recognized group1 and group2 as mailing lists and for some reason just wasn't happy about that. So ... I thought, lets make some forwardings, say [email protected] forwards to [email protected] and likewise for group2. Make [email protected] and [email protected] subscribers of allorg. That "disconnects" the lists so now allorg is just sending to two "normal" subscribers that it knows nothing about so it seemed like it should work.

Lets test the forwarding first. I sent a test from Gmail to [email protected], expecting it to go to the subscribers of group1. Oops ... no such luck, it bounces with the group1 list complaining that the group address is not in the To: or CC:. ie, it doesn't like receiving messages that are not explicitly addressed to the list.

Then it struck me that that's the real problem here.

When you send a message to allorg, it then goes to group1 but group1 says, "you're not really addressed to me, you're addressed to allorg" so it bounces. I'm not sure where the bounce goes. I think it goes back to allorg and luckily either ezmlm or qmail is smart enough to recognize it and not send it on again, which would create an infinite loop.

I use mailman on another host for a mailing list and you can set the permitted To: addresses so that would solve this. Its possible ezmlm has that feature too, just not in H-Sphere. Jodo may be able to set allorg as permitted To:'s on the other groups.

I could send a message to both group1 and group2 in the usual way by putting both in the To: so I guess if nothing else, that works.

Cheers
Ross
 
Ross,

Wow. Thanks for all your work on my behalf. I'd really like to have one list for the whole organization so it seems that for the moment I'm stuck maintain the list separately unless Stephan can tell me if what you propose is possible.

Thanks again for your help.

-Jim
 
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