[Mailman-Users] Batch Add/Remove Users via Mail

[Leo Hackstein]

Hello Mailman-Users!

I am tasked to write a script that adds multiple users to a mailing
list. The List of users is generated from a different database.

Unfortunately, the script will not be running on the same machine as the
mailing list is hosted, so as I understand it, I cant use the scripts in
"/usr/lib/mailman/bin" (or wherever mailman resides on that machine).

Now I thoght I will just send mailman a mail with lines
"subscribe $password address=$address"
but it seems like $password is in this case the password for the user of
$address.

So in theory I could write
"subscribe address=$address",
but I have no idea what exactly will happen then. I myself am not
administrator on the mailing list, so I can't experiment.

Are the users automatically subscribed to the mailing list, if the mail
with the subscribe-statements is sent from a list administrator? How
does the administrator authenticate, then?
Are all users that get subscribed in that way getting a confirmation
mail where they have to approve their subscription? That would be OK, I
think.
Does the list administrator have to manually approve the subscriptions
again, if they are sent with a mail?

Are there better ideas?

Using the Web Interface is not an option (the web interface is used at
the moment, but as we need the script anyway to generate the user list,
it would be very convenient if the script could also add the new users
automatically).
If you know of a script (ideally written in perl) that uses some kind of
http agent to access the web interface to add/remove users, that would
be cool, too.

- Leo Hackstein