Postmaster Guidelines and Procedures

MUSH/UNIX/Postmaster Tips and Tricks


 
 
  This page is a hodge-podge of different utilities or processes for doing out-of-the-ordinary UNIX or MUSH related things on list.mail. Feel free to add your own tips and tricks!
Checking an address in all databases
To check an address in all four databases associated with the automated mail system for U.Va. as implemented by ITC, which includes the alias database (usr), the registration database (reg), the list database (list) and the database for those entries that do not quite fall into any of the above (misc), use the grepdb utility. For example to see how many email ids have a specific domain in their registered address, (for example, cms.mail), you would use:

grepdb cms.mail.virginia.edu |wc

which would provide you with a count of all email ids in the databases whose address ends with cms.mail.virginia.edu.

Sort and Remove Dupes

To sort and remove duplicate entries from a file (for example: a list of email addresses for a massmailing), at the command prompt type:

sort -u -o filename filename

Now your file lists only unique entries in ascending sort order.

Too many hops

A message that has passed through too many email servers will be flagged by the automated mail system and will be delivered to postmaster for handling. How many hops is too many is set by the system administrator for each system. Please see the web site on handling messages with too many hops for more information.

Translation tools

Postmaster is a world-wide position. Should you receive a message and need some help with translating its content, you can sometimes use an automated web tool to assist. Please see information on web translation tools for more information.

Unix hints

Hints on learning to work with Unix can be found many places on the web. Please see the web site on unix hints for more information.


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