PMDF User's Guide
OpenVMS Edition
PMDF-USR-VMS-6.0

With PMDF DB you may create and maintain your own mailing lists. A mailing list is merely a collection of e-mail addresses with which you associate an alias. Or, looked at a little differently, a mailing list is an alias which expands to a list of e-mail addresses. When you address a mail message to the alias, it actually goes to all of the addressees listed in the mailing list. The act of sending a mail message to a mailing list is referred to as "posting".

A mailing list is created in three steps:

• Create a text file containing the list of e-mail addresses associated with the mailing list. Each address should be on a separate line in the file. The file itself is referred to as a "mailing list file"; the addresses in the file are the mailing list's membership.
• Set the protection of the mailing list file so that it is world readable

  $ SET PROTECTION=(W:R) filename
  

  Here, filename is the name of the mailing list file created in Step 1.
• Choose an alias name, alias-name , to associate with the mailing list. Then, in PMDF DB, issue the commands

  db> add alias-name "<filename"
  db> set alias-name public
  

  filename should include a full path specification including the disk and directory name. After these steps have been taken, the mailing list is set up and ready to use.

  For example, suppose the user sue@acme.com wishes to set up a mailing list named foo-list. The members of the mailing list will be bob@acme.com, judy@acme.com, ralph@stateu.edu, and sue@acme.com herself. Sue first creates the mailing list file D1:[SUE]FOO.DIS which contains the four lines

  bob@acme.com 
  judy@acme.com 
  ralph@stateu.edu 
  sue@acme.com 
  

  She then makes sure the distribution file is world readable by explicitly setting its protection with the DCL SET PROTECTION command,

  $ SET PROTECTION=(W:R) D1:[SUE]FOO.DIS
  

  Finally, Sue establishes the public alias FOO-LIST as follows:

  $ PMDF DB
  db> add foo-list "<d1:[sue]foo.dis"
  db> set foo-list public
  db> show foo-list attributes
  Key          Value 
  -----------  ----------------------------- 
  foo-list     <d1:[sue]foo.dis            
  Attributes:  public,no-expand,block-receipts,mail-address 
  [1 entries shown] 
  db> 
  

  By declaring the list to be public, Sue is allowing other people to post messages to this mailing list. They should do so by addressing their messages to sue+foo-list@acme.com. Messages so addressed will then be received by the members of the list as specified by the contents of the file D1:[SUE]FOO.DIS.

  At any time you may add or remove members from the mailing list. You do so by simply editing the mailing list file removing or adding addresses from or to it.

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