These changes will go into affect next Monday (the 24th), along with the program changes I'm describing below. I've tried to make sure everything works well and fairly seamlessly, but please report any problems you see to me.

In any case, in order to support this policy I have modified or rewritten the utilities

ckaddr
mklist
mkreg
kalias

and the list creation system on list.mail (ie. mailman).

These changes, in most cases, should be transparent.

However, when a list or alias is deleted, it will be placed in a special database. The above programs will check this database. Trying to create an alias or list that already exists or is in the "oldalias" database will result in an error message that includes all the information about the "old alias". At this point, in most cases, that's it. You tell the requester tough luck.

If you believe that an exception should be made here (again, I'm not sure who really has authority here to make that decision), you can override the error with a "-O" flag. For example, after I win the lottery and leave here and someone requests the alias or majordomo list name "cadieux", you can override the two year block with

mkalias -O cadieux:mst3k

The "-O" flag will cause a prompt to come up so that you can override the block.

There is no way to override a block when creating a mailman list. In order to do that you must use a new tool that can directly modify the "oldaliases" database. The utility to run in the upostmst account on list.mail is:

chgadb

You can remove a block on a list or alias with this utility using a "-d" flag. For example, to remove the block on "cadieux" you could type

chgadb -d cadieux

You can also use this utility to look at a blocked alias using the "-p" flag, or modify an entry using a number of flags. Just typing "chgadb" will print out those flags.

These are basics. Here's the more detailed stuff, if you want to use it . . .

The "oldalias" database contains the follow fields

alias => the old alias
reason => mass_deletion, user_deletion, user_request
type => list, personal, official
reference => userid the alias pointed to, or the former list owner
comment => text of up to 2048 characters
deletion date => date the alias or list was deleted
available date => date the alias or list will be available again

The defaults that will be used depends on the situation

• reason will be mass_deletion when I doing mass removals based on account expiration.
• reason will be user_deletion by default when using mklist or mkalias to delete a list or alias.
• type will be personal when using mkalias -d
• comment will be blank by default in all cases
• alias, reference, and the date's will be automatically filled with the correct information.

When deleting an alias with mkalias, you can change some of these defaults. Running mkalias -h shows you these flags . . .

Usage: mkalias [-O] alias:permid
mkalias [-O] alias:anyaddress
mkalias -d alias [-n] [-r] [-c comment]
-O: Override alias block
-n: is an nonpersonal or departmental alias
-r: user is requesting the alias be removed
-c comment: comment on why we're deleting this alias

You can also use the utility chgadb to edit many of the fields after the fact. Again, just running chgadb will print out its options.