Ease-Home List Owner FAQ

1. "Help! I just signed up and have no idea what to do! I need to convert my list from another type of mailing list system ASAP before my old list expires. Please tell me where to start!"

The very first thing you should do is create a personal password for your list so you can modify your List Header as desired and be able to run the list commands that require either confirmation or a password.

Since the Ease-Home host provides a WWW List Management Interface you may wish to take advantage of its convenience. You can use the interface to add subscribers one at a time or for bulk operations, simply run a command on your old list system that will provide you with the e-mail addresses of your subscribers, copy these addresses into a file and upload that file into your browser.

2. "How can I get a label to appear in the "Subject:" line of all posts so subscribers can easily tell that the message is from my list?"

The Subject-Tag= List Header keyword controls the label prepended to each post. In the List Header, ensure that you have the lines:

where "label" is either listname or some other label you wish to use. For example, a list named ROCKANDROLL could have

in the header and the label [ROCKANDROLL] would be prepended to each list message "Subject:" line.

which would result in the label [ROCK] being prepended to the "Subject:" line of each message.

In addition, you would need to ensure that the Default-Options= keyword in the List Header is as follows

so that all new List Subscribers would be set to SUBJECTHDR or SUBJ and receive the label in their "Subject:" line.

To ensure that all existing subscribers also receive the label the List Owner must send in the command s

The * notation indicates a wildcard and therefore indicates that all existing subscriber e-mail addresses will be changed to have the SUBJ setting.

3. "When I use the "Reply" feature of my mail program sometimes the message goes back to the list and other times it goes back to the person who posted the original message. Why is this and how can I set it so that it always goes back to the list (or to the subscriber, etc...)?"

The Reply-To= keyword in the List Header is used to control the configuration of the "Reply-to:" header line in every message that LISTSERV processes.

which will set the "Reply-to:" field to the List Address unless the original sender has something set in that field, in which case LISTSERV will respect what is there and will not change it. The Respect option is the reason why some replies will go back to the list (if the original sender does not use a "Reply-to" field) and some will go back to the original sender.

which will set the "Reply-to:" field to the List Address and ignore (override) the setting in the "Reply-to:" field set by the original sender. This will result in replies more consistently going back to the list.

which will set the "Reply-to:" to the original sender's address (same as the From: field). The optional Repsect or Ignore will operate as stated above.

This keyword will allow you to control how LISTSERV populates the "Reply-to:" address in the messages it processes. However, because of variations in mail programs, some inconsistency may result even when the keyword is set as desired. Some programs may use the "Reply-to:" field address; however others may use the "From:" address. And even others use the (hidden) "Sender:" field. There may even be a choice that the user can specify. There are as many variations as there are different kinds of mail programs and there is no set rule or standard.

Therefore, List Subscribers must learn the details of their own mail program and be responsible and pay attention to where their messages are directed.

4. "When I send command messages to LISTSERV, it sometimes takes hours or even days before I get a response. Why is response so slow and how am I to manage my list when I can not even send and receive mail? I receive mail just fine from the rest of the world."

Response time from the Ease-Home server is usually very fast. It is rare for it to be even more than a minute. The most likely cause for the delay you are experiencing is due to the online service or internet provider you are using and the problem is at that end. For some reason or another (perhaps due to erroneous anti-spam measures or RFC-821 issues which will not be discussed here) mail from the LISTSERV address is delayed in reaching you even when your other mail is not.

For this reason, L-Soft will provide a free POP3 e-mail account to Ease-Home List Owners to ensure reliable and fast command processing. You can access this account via any POP3 capable mail program. (AOL customers may bring up a POP3 capable e-mail program to access this account once connected to AOL. Please request help from AOL if you need instructions in how to do this.)

MGR-listname@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM where listname is the name of your list.

1. Mail sent to the MGR-listname accounts will be deleted if left on the server for more than 10 days.

2 The MGR-listname accounts may be used for personal mail, but L-Soft assumes no liability for lost personal mail or any problems associated with using the MGR-listname account for other than list management purposes.

3. The MGR-listname account may be used to subscribe to the Ease-Home mailing list, and the mailing list associated with the MGR-listname account. Users may not subscribe to any other mailing lists via the MGR- listname accounts.

4. L-Soft reserves the right to impose a mailbox size limit in the future if these accounts are abused; if List Owners do not download their mail regularly; or if List Owners fail to delete their mail from the server after downloading.

5. These accounts are designed as a list management tool, offering convenience and reliability to all Ease-Home List Owners, not as a general purpose service. Any usage other than list management is at the user's risk.

6. L-Soft reserves the right to require that any and all problems reported with an Ease-Home list be documented through the use of the MGR- listname account.

7. Individual lists will be managed by one POP account. This account can be shared among the multiple owners of the said Ease-Home list. If necessary, L-Soft can provide additional POP accounts for a charge of $5/month.

8. List Owners who have multiple Ease Home lists, may elect to use a single POP account to manage them all.

If you do not wish to send your password via e-mail, you may call 301-731-0440, or fax it to us at 301-731-6302.

Your account will be set up within 24 hours, (Monday thru Friday) at which time you will receive the information you need to configure your POP3 mail program.

The List Header keyword Digest= Yes,location,Interval,Time,Lines controls the activation of list digests. All Ease-Home lists that have archives notebooks activated are capable of digest format by default. The default setting is

which means that digests are to be stored at the same location as the notebook archives and will be "cut" on a daily basis. If you do not have notebook achives (i.e., the Notebook= keyword is not set in your header) then you must explicitly set the Digest= keyword. You will need to contact technical support for the location parameter in that case. Only the Ease-Home Site manager may change the Digest= keyword when the location is being changed to something specific rather than Same.

For subscribers to receive the digest they or the List Owner must use the SET command to activate it. This may be via the command

Or if you wish the digest to be the default for all new subscribers you may set the Default-Options= Digest.

6. "Help! I received the following error message when I posted to my list and I have no idea what it means. It seems that my list is "frozen" and nothing is processing."

An error occurred while logging mail to the archives of the listname-L
list. An incomplete copy of the message might be present in the archive
file. The list is being held to prevent further occurrences of this error.
Please take corrective action and issue a "FREE listname-L" command
when you want the message to be reprocessed.

Serious error occurred - traceback follows
------------------------------------------------------
>>> Error X'00E0000B' opening file
E:\LISTS\listname-L\listname-L.LOG9705 <<<
-> Severity: Error
-> Facility: Accounting/quota subsystem
-> Abstract: Directory quota exceeded
-> I/O mode: Record write

You have received this message because your allocated archive disk space or quota has been exceeded. Since your list can no longer store your messages, it has been put into a HOLD state and will queue all messages until space is increased or freed by deleting (or editing) notebook logs, and the List Owner issues a FREE listname command.

The easiest solution is to contact the Ease-Home Site manager and request that your quota be increased (at a cost of 0.25 per megabyte per month) and send the command FREE listname after this is done.

with no text following the PUT command where LOGYYMM is the name of one of your notebook logs. Issue an INDEX listname command to get the name of all notebook logs.

This will delete the selected LOGYYMM notebook from your directory permanently. You can then issue the FREE listname command.

If you do not wish to permanently delete any notebook logs (for example, this happened on a weekend and you cannot get in touch with the Ease-Home Site Manager to increase your disk quota) you could download (GETlistname LOGYYMM) the notebook log and save it locally and PUT it back in a reduced version temporarily until your disk quota can be increased and at that time, PUT back the original log in its entirety.

To PUT a notebook back on the server you would simply issue the PUT command as specified above and immediately following that line you would place the the text of the desired file. You must not include the file as an attachment.

After space is made available, issue the FREE listname command and all queued messages will be processed.

To keep track of your available disk quota on a pro-active basis issue the command

When your space is over 80 percent utilized, consider purchasing more space or deleting notebook logs. This will prevent your list from going into a HOLD state and avoid the "emergency" action required above.

Visit this tutorial for more detailed instructions for deleting and editing notebook logs.

7. "When I issued the REVIEW listname command I noticed that some of my subscribers are set to CONCEAL. Since I do not want anonymous subscribers how can I prevent them from CONCEALing themselves?"

You cannot prevent a subscriber from setting their e-mail address to be omitted from a REVIEW command. However you can reverse their setting by issuing the command

However, nothing will prevent the subscriber from concealing their address once again. You will need to issue the above command periodically to "unconceal" subscribers.

Even though a REVIEW listname command may result in some subscribers being omitted due to CONCEAL, list owners may always get a list of all members set to CONCEAL by issuing the command:

Therefore, all subscribers’ addresses are available to the List Owner. If you are adamant about having no anonymous subscribers then you may wish to make it part of your list charter and delete those subscribers who insist on concealing their identities.