Peterhouse Junior Common Room

Computing

How to set up a society email list

To set up an email list for a club or society, you need to request that the computing service set up the list and approve it, then add the list members and set the list operation settings. The first step is to get the list created by the computing service so you can fill it full of addresses. You can apply for a list address by filing in the form as detailed on http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/request/grpresources.html. More details on restrictions on lists and how they work can be found at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/instadmin/lists.html.

It'll take the computing service a day or two to set the list up. Once the list has been created on the hermes server (you should get an email from the computing service telling you its name and that you're a manager for it), you can log in via PuTTY to edit it. PuTTY is a Telnet/SSH client that lets you access the hermes server directly and make changes - you can download it from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/. Run putty.exe, and in the box labelled 'Host Name (or IP address)' enter hermes.cam.ac.uk, and press ok (or login or start or whatever it is in the bottom right). This will bring up the terminal window (looks all black and white and a bit like DOS) with the prompt 'Login:'. Enter your userid (your hermes user name), press enter, then your HERMES password at the following 'password:' prompt. Some message will probably appear, press return to get past it, then you get the root hermes menu. This is how everyone had to get their email before the webmail system was introduced; you can still do it this way in the engineering dept, and there's a dedicated terminal like this in the ADC theatre. You can browse your inbox and stuff from this menu - it's not very difficult so give it a go if you like.

To set up your list, enter 7 for 'Lists' from the Hermes main menu and press return, then 6 for 'Management' and press return (if the list has been created properly and you're down as its manager you can select this option, if you're not a manager of at least one list you'll get an error message here). You're then prompted for the name of the list to manage; there's no drop down box or whatever so you have to type it in exactly as it said on that email from the computing service then press return. You'll get another list of options, and it's probably a good idea to select 'h' for help and have a quick read of the help file. It explains what all the options do, and about how the lists system works. It also explains important things like the difference between moderators and managers, closed, open and restricted lists, and stuff like that. Chances are you'll just want one manager (you) with the ability to add and remove members, and make it a closed list so only members can post to it. Or you can have it restricted, so only managers, moderators and authorised posters can post to it.

Give this some thought, it depends on how you want the list to be used. The JCR lists are restricted so people can't just post random stuff and annoy everyone. The JCR President and Secretary are the managers, currently the AMALS President is an authorised poster for AMALS news. He can't add or remove members or change other list settings, but he can post without having his emails authorised by us, basically because we trust him not to send junk and he needs to post quite regularly. Other lists are closed lists, where anyone who is a member can post. This produces some fairly lively discussions with loads of emails flying around. In either case, if a non member tries to post to the list it gets redirected to you only as manager, and you can chose to either forward it to the list or ignore it. Hermes is pretty clever here; if an unauthorised poster tries to post (eg anyone on a restricted list or a non member on a closed list) you (manager) get an email with 'APPROVAL REQUIRED' in the subject and loads of crap about the sender in the body, along with their original message text. If you forward this to the original target list Hermes automatically removes all the crap and the email looks just like it came from the original sender, even down to the 'from' field.

Anyway, once you've read the help you can set everything up by going into the other options. Option 6 is where you enter all the member addresses. This loads up the 'PICO' editor, which is an old text editor for UNIX systems like hermes. You just type in the userids of the people you want to add (eg abc123, press enter, def456, etc) or their email addresses in full if they're not @cam.ac.uk people (eg alumni with '@cantab.ac.uk' addresses). The white bar at the bottom lists the keyboard commands the editor uses once you've added all the addresses press ^X (means ctrl+X) to 'Exit'. Hermes will then ask you save changes or not, press c then enter for 'commit' to save the changed file (or q for 'quit' if you've buggered it up and want to start again). You can then go back to the members list with option 6 and check what you've just entered all the userids should have been recognised and had '@cam.ac.uk' added to them.

Right, you should now be able to test it. It's a good idea to send the first email with just yourself in the members list, that way if it all goes horribly pearshaped nobody else finds out about your mistakes. If you send an email to a list who's member file contains invalid or expired addresses (like all the boat club ones did when everyone graduated and had their accounts cancelled...) you'll get error messages emailed to you.

All being well you should now be in possesion of a fully functional email list. Any problems don't hesitate to contact jcr@pet.cam.ac.uk. The online help files within the text based hermes system are quite good, so before to check through those beforehand.

External Wiki on Cambridge college computing regulations - Peterhouse seems to be very reasonable compared to others!

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How to set up a society email list