UCLink->CalMail migration's effect on mailing list admins & users

Hi Dianne (and all),

At 12:16 -0800 2004-01-13, Dianne Walker wrote (privately, with
permission to post this response to campus mailing lists):
>I have two large (one >2000 subscribers; the other >400 subscribers)
>listservs that are predominantly uclink accounts. Both are moderated.
>One anyone can [join]; the other, only the listowner can [add]
>people to. Are there any recommendations we can give to our
>users/subscribers about how to handle the migration other than [as
>noted in the CalMail FAQs:]
>
>"Changing the address that appears in the "From:" line of your
>outgoing messages from a UCLink address to an @berkeley.edu address
>could prevent you from posting to certain mailing lists or
>performing certain other tasks via email. If you wish to send
>messages to a mailing list that only accepts messages from its
>subscribed members, for instance, you might need to unsubscribe your
>current UCLink address from the list, then re-subscribe to that list
>using your @berkeley.edu address." (from the help page)?

   Subscribers to, and administrators of, simple, reflector-type lists
on UCLink should not experience any problems following the migration
from UCLink to the new campus email system, CalMail.

   However, following this migration, subscribers and administrators
may potentially see problems involving the use of majordomo
(listserv-type) lists on UCLink. The problems I can readily foresee
would result from these three issues:

   1) Some majordomo lists are restricted, so that only subscribers
      can post to those lists from their subscribed email address.

   2) To un-subscribe from most majordomo lists, subscribers
      will need to send an 'unsubscribe' command from
      the email address at which they originally subscribed.

      (Users *can* un-subscribe addresses, other than the address
      appearing in their "From:" line, from a majordomo list,
      although this typically involves a bit more complexity.)

   3) Similarly, to perform many other list server functions by sending
      commands to majordomo@listlink.berkeley.edu via email, both
      list subscribers and list administrators typically will need
      to send email from their current UCLink addresses for those
      commands to be accepted and processed by the list server.

      (There are ways around this -- for instance, administrators
      can include an authorization password with their majordomo
      commands, but those workarounds may not be readily apparent
      to some ...)

   Fortunately, for most UCLink users, the From: addresses in their
outgoing email messages - which are configured in their email client
programs (Eudora, Outlook, et al.) - will not change, so they will
continue to be able to post messages to restricted lists, to
un-subscribe without difficulty from mailing lists, to administer
mailing lists they own, etc. Here's are two reasons why this is so:

   1) After the UCLink->CalMail conversion, most users' email clients
will continue to automatically send mail From:

       theirusername@uclink.berkeley.edu

if they haven't configured their email program with a different return address.

   2) Users who have explicitly specified a return address setting
(aka "e-mail address" in Outlook, etc.) in their email program, as
long as they don't change this address from their current setting,
e.g.:

       theirusername@uclink.berkeley.edu (or uclink2, or uclink4, etc.)

should continue to be able to post, un-subscribe, etc. without
problems, much as they do today.

   However, there are two categories of users who may encounter
problems posting to restricted mailing lists or performing other
list-related tasks:

     1) Users who explicitly change their return address in their
        email programs to a new (optional) "@berkeley.edu" address:

        theirusername@berkeley.edu

        These users will either need to:

        a) Un-subscribe from their current UCLink address and
           re-subscribe with their new @berkeley.edu address.

        or

        b) Set up a different "personality" in Eudora or "account"
           (in most other email programs) which will put their
           current UCLink address in the "From:" line of any messages
           they post to these mailing lists, and/or use to send
           list commands to majordomo@listlink.

        If they don't take one of these steps, their mail to restricted
        lists, which allow subscribers only to post, will bounce to the
        list administrator. Similarly, commands they send
        via email to majordomo@listlink may not be accepted,
        because they come from the 'wrong' address.

     2) Cal|Mail pilot users (mostly IST staff) and other UCLink users
        who voluntarily have migrated their UCLink accounts early to
        the CalMail system, before the mass migration of accounts
        this Saturday, January 17.

        Those users (only) will be using 'calmail.berkeley.edu'
        as their SMTP host for sending mail. Unless they have
        explicitly entered their current UCLink address as their
        return address in their email program -- as per the email
        client program configuration instructions on the CalMail
        site -- they too will experience problems of the type
        described above.

        (As an alternative, these users can change their SMTP -and
        if they wish, POP and IMAP -- host settings back to uclink
        in their email program after the January 17th migration.)

   (Corrections or comments on the above are welcomed ...)

   Also, are there any other problems that you or others might foresee
that we should document, or be prepared to help campus users deal
with in a consulting context?

Thanks,

Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following was automatically added to this message by the list server:

For information about MAGNet, its meetings and events, and its
mailing list, including information on subscribing and unsubscribing,
see the MAGNet Web site at <http://magnet.berkeley.edu/>.
Received on Wed Jan 14 12:52:04 2004