Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

How do I create a mailing list with a non-standard name?

Mailing lists with non-standard names can be supported, but it is much better to create a separate workgroup so that users can easily join up automatically.
Non-standard mailing lists will need to be administered by a human (you).
The critical thing is to keep the email address of the list off the web. In otherwords, never put the full email address of the list on a web page or in a document that will appear on the web. The safest thing is to refer to the list as yourlist at trust

As an alternative, at UC Berkeley, CUSG will set up a majordomo list for a small fee.

To have a mailing list created with a non-standard name, send email to webmaster with the name of your mailing list. Note: The name should not contain a dash or underscore.

The webmaster will

  1. Become root on andrews and do 
    cd /export/home/mailman_N 
bin/newlist mailinglistname email-address-of-owner password
    For example 
    cd /export/home/mailman_4
bin/newlist yourlist user@eecs.berkeley.edu foobar
  2. Mail will be sent to root who will run a script to update /etc/mail/aliases and /etc/mail/virtualusers.
  3. Go to http://trust.eecs.berkeley.edu/mailman/admin/listname
  4. Edit Base URL for Mailman web interface (Details) and change it to http://trust.eecs.berkeley.edu/mailman