[Mailman-Users] Question

[Nils Vogels]

Hey Jody,

On Wed, Jun 12, 2002 at 04:33:52PM -0400, Jody Wishner wrote:

-8<-

> Now I know this may seem like a dumb question, but if I want to do a mass mailing to everyone on my mailing list (almost like a spam mailing), is there a way in your program to write an e-mail and have it address everyone on the list, something like the mass enrollment screen. 

You can use crontab to achieve this.

Crontab is a program that lets you schedule jobs, things to do, maintenance,
or send out emails :)

What you need to do is:

1) Put the text you want to email in a seperate textfile and put it on the
mailinglist server (it needs to be a machine which is powered on at the time
you want to send the email)
2) Make a commandline to send out the email.
   Personally, since I'm hooked on mutt, an email program, I'd use:
mutt list-address at my.example.org -s "Monthly FAQ Posting" < /your/path/to/message-1.txt

(this above is one line)
Do not type it in, just write it down in a seperate textfile or something, so
you can paste it in in step 3 ;)

3) Read the crontab manual page and decide how often you want to post this
message. In my example, it's monthly, and I'd like to send it every second day
of the month at 3 am, thus I add this crontab:

0 3 2 * * mutt list-address at my.example.org -s "Monthly FAQ Posting" < /your/path/to/message-1.txt

(again, this is one line!)

4) Wait till it's July 2nd, 3 am ans watch the fireworks ;)

Gr,

-- 
Nils Vogels		PGP:0xC26BD15F Available on keyservers.
S at H:4690WU/6.385yr	--> setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu. Will you find aliens?

My other computer is your windows box.