Managing Mailing List Mail: A Tip Sheet
If you subscribe to one or more active mailing lists and you
are unable to read mail regularly, for example when the University is closed
during a holiday period or when you are on vacation or attending a conference,
your mail file (INBOX) may fill up very quickly with unread mail.
A very large mail file can cause problems for you and for other users.
At a personal level, you may be faced with an overwhelming number of messages
on your return. More generally, your mail file shares the same space
on the University's central UNIX systems as the mail files of all other
users and allowing those files to grow indiscriminately deprives all users
of much-needed space.
What you can do
Before an extended University holiday or before you leave for
more than a few days, unsubscribe from all mailing lists.
If you are subscribed to lists run by LISTSERV® or Listproc
software, you can temporarily stop receiving mail from those lists
instead of unsubscribing.
How to stop mailing list mail
To unsubscribe from any mailing list or to stop receiving mail
temporarily from a LISTSERV® or Listproc list, send
the command appropriate for the list type as the only line in the body
of an e-mail message to the list server (not to the mailing list itself),
as shown in the following table.
|
List type
|
Command you send...
|
... |
...to an address like this one
|
|
|
to unsubscribe
|
to stop mail temporarily
|
|
| LISTSERV® |
signoff listname |
set listname nomail |
listserv@host.domain |
| Listproc |
unsubscribe listname |
set listname mail postpone |
listproc@host.domain |
| majordomo |
unsubscribe listname |
(Not available)
|
majordomo@host.domain |
In each case, replace listname with the name
of the list and @host.domain with address of the list server.
For example, to unsubscribe from the majordomo list "consult-test" which
runs on the University's central UNIX systems, you would send a message
to
with the line
as the only text in the body of the message.
How to find the list server address
-
When you first subscribed to a mailing list, you may have received a message
with information on general list server commands, such as subscribe and
subscribe, and where to send those commands.
-
If you don't know the address of the server, you can search for information
about your mailing lists in one of the following Web collections:
How to restart mailing list mail
To receive mail after unsubscribing from any list or temporarily
stopping mail from a LISTSERV® or Listproc list, send the
command appropriate for the list type as the only line in the body of an
e-mail message to the list server (not to the mailing list itself),
as shown in the following table.
|
List type
|
Command you send...
|
... |
...to an address like this one
|
|
|
to unsubscribe
|
to stop mail temporarily
|
|
| LISTSERV® |
subscribe listname |
set listname mail |
listserv@host.domain |
| Listproc |
subscribe listname |
set listname mail ack |
listproc@host.domain |
| majordomo |
subscribe listname |
(Not available)
|
majordomo@host.domain |
In each case, replace listname with the name
of the list and @host.domain with address of the list server.
Other resources
For a more detailed list of commands, see Delphi's E-Mail
Discussion Lists page.
For further assistance, call the Help Center at 831-6000.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, send
e-mail to Evelyn Stevens (evelyn@udel.edu).
Page last edited on December 12, 1997