Provided by: enemies-of-carlotta_1.2.6-4_all 
NAME
enemies-of-carlotta - a simple mailing list manager
SYNOPSIS
enemies-of-carlotta [options] [addresses]
DESCRIPTION
enemies-of-carlotta is a simple mailing list manager. If you don't know what a mailing list manager is,
you should learn what they are before trying to use one. A manual page is unfortunately too short to
explain it.
Enemies of Carlotta keeps all data about the lists in the ~/.enemies-of-carlotta directory. It will be
created automatically when you create your first list. You need to arrange manually for the mails to be
processed by the list manager. The details differ from mail system to another. For QMail and Postfix,
see below.
Each list has one or more owners, who also moderate subscriptions or moderate some or all postings. On
completely unmoderated lists the list owners are responsible for answering questions about the list. On
completely moderated lists, they have to approve each message before it is sent to the list. On lists
with posting=auto, messages from subscribers are sent automatically to the list, and the moderators have
to approve the rest.
OPTIONS
--name=foo@example.com
Specify the list the command is to operate on. Most of the remaining options require you to set
the list name with this option. With the --edit, --subscribe, --unsubscribe, and --list options,
the name can be abbreviated to by leaving out the @ sign and domain.
--create
Create a new list. You must specify at least one owner with --owner.
--owner=address
Specify a list owner when creating or editing a list.
--moderator=address
Specificy a list moderator when creating or editing a list.
--language=language-code
Set the language code used for looking up template files. The code should be empty (the default,
meaning English), or a two-letter code such as fi or es.
--cleaning-woman
Deal with bouncing addresses and do other cleanup. You must run enemies-of-carlotta
--cleaning-woman periodically, such as once per hour. It will clean up all your lists.
--destroy
Destroy the list.
--edit Modify the list configuration.
--subscription=type
When creating a list, set its subscription mode to free or moderated. Use with --edit, or
--create.
--posting=type
When creating a list, set its posting mode to free (anyone can post), auto (only subscribers can
post, mails from others need to be moderated), or moderated (all mails are moderated). Use with
--edit, or --create.
--archived=yes-or-no
Should list messages be archived to the archive-box directory in the list directory under the
~/.enemies-of-carlotta directory. Use yes or no.
--mail-on-subscription-changes=yes-or-no
Should the list owners be notified when someone subscribes to or unsubscribes from the list? Use
yes or no. Default is no.
--mail-on-forced-unsubscription=yes-or-no
Should list owners be notified when someone is forcibly dropped from the list due to too much
bouncing? Use yes or no. Default is no.
--ignore-bounce=yes-or-no
Should bounces be ignored? Use yes or no. Default is no.
--list List the subscribers of a list.
--subscribe
Add subscribers to a list. The non-option arguments are the addresses to be subscribed. Note
that addresses added this way won't be sent confirmation requests.
--unsubscribe
Remove subscribers from a list. The non-option arguments are the addresses to be unsubscribed.
Note that addresses removed this way won't be sent confirmation requests.
--incoming
Deal with an incoming message in the standard input. The SMTP envelope sender address must be
given in the SENDER environment variable, and the SMTP envelope recipient address in the RECIPIENT
environment variable. (QMail and Postfix do this automatically.)
--skip-prefix=string
Before analyzing the recipient address to see which list it refers, remove string from its
beginning. This helps deal with QMail and Postfix virtual domains, see above.
--domain=domain.name
Before analyzing the recipient address to see which list it refers, replace the domain name part
with domain.name. This helps deal with Postfix virtual domains.
--is-list
Does the address specified with --name refer to a valid list? This sets the exit code to zero
(success) if it does, or one (failure) if it does not.
--sendmail=pathname
Use pathname instead of /usr/sbin/sendmail for sending mail via a command line interface. Note
that the command must obey the sendmail command line interface.
--smtp-server=hostname
Send mail using the SMTP server at hostname (port 25). The server must be configured to allow the
list host to relay mail through it. Note that a command line interface is used by default; SMTP
sending is used only if you use this option.
--qmqp-server=hostname
Send mail using the QMQP server at hostname (port 628). The server must be configured to allow
the list host to relay mail through it. Note that a command line interface is used by default;
QMQP sending is used only if you use this option.
--moderate
Force an incoming message to be moderated, even if it is going to a list where posting is free.
This can be used for spam filtering: you pipe incoming messages through whatever spam filter you
choose to use and if the mssage looks like spam, you ask it to be moderated by a human.
--post Force an incoming message to be posted, even if it is going to a list where posting is moderated.
This can be used when there is an external check for whether a mail is acceptable to the list,
e.g., by checking digital signatures.
--quiet
By default, debugging log messages are sent to the standard error output stream. With this
option, they aren't.
--sender=foo@example.com
--recipient=foo@example.com
These two options are used with --incoming and --is-list to override the environment variables
SENDER and RECIPIENT, respectively.
--get Get the values of one or more configuration variables. The name of the variables are given on the
command line after the options. Each value is printed on a separate line.
--set Set the values of one or more configuration variables. The names and values are given on the
command line after the options and separated by an equals sign ("="). For example, the following
would set the language of a list to Finnish: enemies-of-carlotta --name=foo@bar --set language=fi
--version
Print out the version of the program.
--show-lists
List the lists enemies-of-carlotta knows about.
CONFIGURATION
Each list is represented by a directory, named after the list, in ~/.enemies-of-carlotta. That directory
contains several files and directories, described below. In general, it is not necessary to touch these
at all. However, some esoteric configuration can only be done by hand editing of the list configuration
file.
config The list configuration file. Contents are described below.
subscribers
Subscriber database. Each line contains a subscriber group, with the first five space delimited
fields being group identifier, status, timestamp for when the group was created, timestamp for the
bounce that made it switch from status 'ok' to 'bounced', and the bounce identifier.
archive-box
Archived messages.
bounce-box
Bounce messages groups not in state 'ok'.
headers-to-add
These headers are added to the mails sent to the list. They are copied to the beginning of the
existing headers exactly as they are in the file, after list headers ("List-ID" and such) have
been added and those mentioned in headers-to-remove have been removed.
headers-to-remove
These headers are removed from mails sent to the list.
moderation-box
Messages waiting for moderator approval.
subscription-box
Subscription and unsubscription requests waiting to be confirmed by the user.
templates
Directory containing list specific templates (optional). If this directory exists, templates are
searched from it before going for system wide templates. An empty file here means the
corresponding message is not sent at all. This can, for example, to be used to turn off the
"please wait for moderator" mails on a per-list basis.
plugins
Directory containing plugins, Python source files that are loaded automatically by EoC upon
startup. The plugins may change how EoC operates.
The config file has a keyword=value format:
[list]
owners = liw@liw.iki.fi
archived = no
posting = free
subscription = free
mail-on-subscription-changes = yes
mail-on-forced-unsubscribe = yes
language = fi
The keywords archived, posting, and subscription correspond to the options with the same names. Other
keywords are:
owners List of addresses for the owners. Set with the --owner option.
moderators
List of addresses for the moderators. Set with the --moderator option.
mail-on-subscription-changes
Should the owners be mailed when users subscribe or unsubscribe?
mail-on-forced-unsubscribe
Should the owners be mailed when people are removed from the list due to excessive bouncing?
ignore_bounce
Bounce messages are ignored on this list. Useful for example if list should have static subscriber
list.
language
Suffix for templates, to allow support for multiple languages. (If language is set to "fi", then
the template named "foo" is first searched as "foo.fi".)
pristine-headers
Do not MIME encode the headers. Set to "yes" to not encode, anything else (including empty or
unset) means encoding will happen.
EXAMPLES
To create a list called moviefans@example.com, owned by ding@example.com, use the following command (all
on one line):
enemies-of-carlotta --name=moviefans@example.com
--owner=ding@example.com --create
Note that you need to arrange mail to arrive at the list (and its command addresses) by configuring your
mail system. For Qmail and Postfix, see below.
To see the subscribers on that list:
enemies-of-carlotta --name=moviefans@example.com --list
People wanting to subscribe to the list should mail
moviefans-subscribe@example.com
QMAIL
With QMail, to arrange for incoming mail to be processed by Enemies of Carlotta, you need to create a
couple of .qmail-extension files per list. For example, if your username is joe and you wish to run the
joe-fans mailing list, you need to create two files, .qmail-fans and .qmail-fans-default, containing
|enemies-of-carlotta --incoming
If you're running a virtual domain, example.com, and the mails are being delivered to via
/var/qmail/control/virtualdomains to joe-exampledotcom, the files would be called
.qmail-exampledotcom-fans and .qmail-exampledotcom-fans-default and would contain
|enemies-of-carlotta --incoming --skip-prefix=joe-exampledotcom-
(all on one line, of course, in case the manual page formatter breaks it on several lines).
COURIER-MTA
For Courier-MTA, the instructions are similar to the Qmail ones above. If your user name is joe and you
wish to run the joe-fans email list, you need to create the two files .courier-fans and .courier-fans-
default in your home directory with the content
|enemies-of-carlotta --is-list --name $RECIPIENT || exit 67
|enemies-of-carlotta --incoming
(The former file needs only the second line, but the first line does no harm and it is easier to keep
track of things when the files have the same content. Note that $RECIPIENT should be included verbatim,
it is not a metavariable for you to expand.)
If you are running a virtual domain configured so that all mail to the domain @example.com is delivered
to joe-exampledotcom, you need to create the files .courier-exampledotcom-fans and .courier-
exampledotcom-fans-default containing the two following lines:
|enemies-of-carlotta --is-list --name $RECIPIENT --skip-prefix=joe-exampledotcom || exit 67
|enemies-of-carlotta --incoming --skip-prefix=joe-exampledotcom
If the virtual domain is for list use only, then it is sufficient to create only the file .courier-
exampledotcom-default containing the latter two lines.
POSTFIX
With Postfix, you need to set up a .forward file containing
"|procmail -p"
and then a .procmailrc file containing
:0
* ? enemies-of-carlotta --name=$RECIPIENT --is-list
| enemies-of-carlotta --incoming
To use Enemies of Carlotta with a Postfix virtual domain, you need to set up a virtual regular expression
map, typically called /etc/postfix/virtual_regexp (add virtual_maps = regexp:/etc/postfix/virtual_regexp
to your /etc/postfix/main.cf file to enable it). The regexp file needs to do ugly things to preserve the
recipient address. Add the following to the regexp file:
/^your.virtual.domain$/ dummy
/^(yourlist|yourlist-.*)@(your.virtual.domain)$/ joe+virtual-$1
That's two lines. Use joe-virtual instead, if recipient_delimiter for your Postfix is configured to a
minus instead of a plus.. Then, in your .procmailrc file, add the --skip-prefix=joe-virtual- and
--domain=your.virtual.domain options to both calls to enemies-of-carlotta.
(Yes, I think these things are much too complicated, too.)
MAIL COMMANDS
Users and list owners use Enemies of Carlotta via e-mail using command addresses such as
foo-subscribe@example.com. Here is a list of all command addresses list users and owners can give. In
all these examples, the name of the mailing list is foo@example.com.
Mail commands anyone can use
These commands are meant for everyone's use. They don't require any special priviledges.
foo@example.com
Send mail to all list subscribers. The message may have to be manually approved by the list
moderators first, and they have the power to reject a message.
foo-owner@example.com
Send mail to the list owner or owners instead.
foo-help@example.com
Sending mail to this address makes the list manager reply with the help message for the list.
foo-subscribe@example.com
Send mail to this address to subscribe to a list. The list manager will respond with a
confirmation request. You won't be subscribed unless you reply to the confirmation request. This
way, malicious people can't put your address on a mailing list, or many mailing lists.
foo-subscribe-joe=example.com@example.com
This is a second form of the subscription address. If you want to subscribe to the list with
another address than the one you're sending mail from, use this one. In this case, the address to
be subscribed is joe@example.com. Note that the confirmation request is sent to Joe, since it is
his address that is to be added to the list.
foo-unsubscribe@example.com
To unsubscribe from a list, send mail to this address from the address that is subscribed to the
list. Again, you will receive a confirmation request, to prevent malicious people from
unsubscribing you against your will.
foo-unsubscribe-joe=example.com@example.com
To unsubscribe Joe, use this address. Again, it is Joe who gets to confirm.
Mail commands for the list owners
These are commands that list owners can use to administer their list.
foo-subscribe-joe=example.com@example.com
If a list owner sends mail like this, it is they who get the confirmation request, not Joe. It is
generally better for people to subscribe themselves, but sometimes list owners want to do it, when
they have permission from the person and feel helpful.
foo-unsubscribe-joe=example.com@example.com
List owners can also unsubscribe other people.
foo-list@example.com
To see who are on the list, this is the address to use. It only works if the sender address is
one of the list owners. The sender address is the one used on the SMTP level, not the one in the
From: header.
foo-setlist@example.com
This lets a list owner set the whole subscriber list at once. This is similar to using lots and
lots and lots of -subscribe and -unsubscribe commands, only less painful. Everyone who is added
to the list gets a welcome message, and everyone who is removed from the list gets a goodbye
message.
foo-setlistsilently@example.com
This is similar to -setlist, but no welcome and goodbye messages are sent.
PLUGINS
Enemies of Carlotta supports plugins. If you don't know what Python programming is, you may want to skip
this section.
A plugin is a Python module (file named with a .py suffix), placed in the ~/.enemies-of-carlotta/plugins
directory. The plugins are loaded automatically upon startup, if their declared interface version
matches the one implemented by Enemies of Carlotta. The interface version is declared by the module
global variable PLUGIN_INTERFACE_VERSION.
Plugins can define hook functions that are called by appropriate places in the EoC code. At the moment,
the only hook function is send_mail_to_subscribers_hook, which can manipulate a mail message before it is
sent to the subscribers. The function must look like this:
def send_mail_to_subscribers_hook(list, text):
The list argument is a reference to the MailingList object that corresponds to the list in question, and
text is the complete text of the mail message as it exists. The function must return the new contents of
the mail message.
FILES
~/.enemies-of-carlotta
All files related to your mailing lists.
~/.enemies-of-carlotta/secret
Secret password used to generate signed addresses for bounce checking and subscription
verification.
~/.enemies-of-carlotta/foo@example.com
Directory containing data pertaining to the foo@example.com list. Except for the config file in
this directory, you shouldn't edit anything by hand.
~/.enemies-of-carlotta/foo@example.com/config
Configuration file for the mailing list. You may need to edit this file by hand if you wish to
change moderation status or list owners.
SEE ALSO
You may want to visit the Enemies of Carlotta home page at http://www.iki.fi/liw/eoc/.
ENEMIES-OF-CARLOTTA(1)