The Perl Toolchain Summit needs more sponsors. If your company depends on Perl, please support this very important event.

NAME

Siesta::UserGuide - a guide to setting up your siesta system.

DESCRIPTION

This document should take you through setting up lists and users, and generally administering your system.

Setting up the database

The first thing you need to do is create a database.

Fortunately this is easy. Running

    % nacho create-database

should do everything for you (providing the config in your siesta.conf is ok).

Migrating a list from Mailman

Use the bandito tool shipped with Siesta to steal the config - given the path to a mailman list config db it should automatically create a new sistes list, subscribe any necessary users, set up configs and generally 'just work'.

It will even migrate your archives across for you.

How handy :)

Creating a List

Run this command:

  % nacho create-list myfirstlist admin@thegestalt.org \
                     myfirstlist@thegestalt.org \ 
             myfirstlist-bounce@thegestalt.org

which will print out.

  Created the new list 'myfirstlist' <myfirstlist@thegestalt.org>
  Paste this into your alias file to activate the list



  ## myfirstlist mailing list
  ## created: 06-Sep-2002 nacho (the siesta config tool)
  myfirstlist:       "/usr/bin/tequila myfirstlist"
  myfirstlist-sub:   "/usr/bin/tequila myfirstlist sub"
  myfirstlist-unsub: "/usr/bin/tequila myfirstlist unsub"
  myfirstlist-admin:  admin@thegestalt.org 
  myfirstlist-bounce: admin@thegestalt.org

This prints out the appropriate aliases to put in your /etc/alias (or equivalent) file. This can be printed out again at any time by doing :

  % nacho show-alias myfirstlist

  ## myfirstlist mailing list
  ## created: 06-Sep-2002 nacho (the siesta config tool)
  myfirstlist:       "/usr/bin/tequila myfirstlist"
  myfirstlist-sub:   "/usr/bin/tequila myfirstlist sub"
  myfirstlist-unsub: "/usr/bin/tequila myfirstlist unsub"
  myfirstlist-admin:  admin@thegestalt.org
  myfirstlist-bounce: admin@thegestalt.org

To find all the lists on the system

  % nacho show-lists
  myfirstlist

To look at the information for a list do

  % nacho describe-list myfirstlist
  owner = 1
  return_path = myfirstlist-bounce@thegestalt.org
  post_address = myfirstlist@thegestalt.org
  name = myfirstlist
  id = 2
  plugins : MembersOnly Archive SubjectTag ListHeaders Send ReplyTo

or to modify that information

  % nacho modify-list myfirstlist name somenewname
  Property 'name' set to 'somenewname' for list myfirstlist

TIP : if you modify the id then what will actually happen is that a new list will be created with that id but with information exactly the same details as the previous list.

Creating Members

You can either subscribe members manually by creating them and inserting them using nacho

  % nacho create-member simon@thegestalt.org
  Member simon@thegestalt.org added    

  % nacho add-member myfirstlist simon@thegestalt.org
  Member 'simon@thegestalt.org' added to list 'myfirstlist'

Or, nacho will automatically create members if they don't exist.

  % nacho add-member myfirstlist newmember@notexists.org

You can add multiple people at the same time. Que Convenient.

  % nacho add-member myfirstlist richardc@unibeard.net greg@mccarroll.demon.co.uk
  Member 'richardc@unixbeard.net' added to list 'myfirstlist'
  Member 'greg@mccarroll.demon.co.uk' added to list 'myfirstlist'

Finally a person can subscribe by mailing

    myfirstlist-sub@thegestalt.org 

address or by going through the web interface

Managing members

You can get a list of every members that's on the system.

  % nacho show-members
  greg@mccarroll.demon.co.uk
  richardc@unixbeard.net
  simon@thegestalt.org

... or just the members subbed to a particular list.

  % nacho show-members myfirstlist

To find out all about a member, use the describe command

  % nacho describe-member simon@thegestalt.org

    email = simon@thegestalt.org
    lastbounce =
    bouncing =
    password = bar
    nomail =
    id = 36
    Subscribed to : myfirstlist, somerandomlist

To modify information that information :

  % nacho modify-member simon@thegestalt.org password foo
  Property 'password' set to 'foo' for member simon@thegestalt.org

Again,just changing the id will copy the member.

Managing Plugins

You can list all the plugins installed on the system.

  % nacho show-plugins
  Archive
   -
   save messages to maildirs
  ...
  UnSubscribe
   -
   A system plugin used for unsubscribing a member to the list

or see the ones set for a particular list

  % nacho show-plugins test
  Plugins for test:

  post:
  Debounce
  MembersOnly
  Moderated
  ListHeaders
  ReplyTo
  SubjectTag
  MessageFooter
  Send
  Archive

  sub:
  Subscribe

  unsub:
  UnSubscribe

Since plugins are 'just' normal Perl modules you can write your own or download plugins other people have written and install them like any other module. Siesta will autmatically detect them.

To set the plugin order explicity do

  % nacho set-plugins siesta-dev Debounce SimpleSig SubjectTag Send
  Set the plugins for siesta-dev to be :
  1) Debounce
  2) SimpleSig
  3) SubjectTag
  4) Send

or to delete all the plugins just do an empty list

  % nacho set-plugins siesta-dev
  Deleted plugins from siesta-dev

It should be noted that you probably always want to have the Send plugin (or a replacement plugin) as the last plugin.

To get more information about a plugin either do

  % perldoc Siesta::Plugin::ReplyTo

or ...

  % nacho describe-plugin ReplyTo
  The plugin ReplyTo has the following options :
  - munge : should we munge the reply-to address of the message to be the list post address

To find out what the current config for a list is, just add the list name.

  % nacho describe-plugin ReplyTo myfirstlist
  Preferences for list myfirstlist
  - munge : 0

And to find out a member's config options, add their email address.

  % nacho describe-plugin ReplyTo myfirstlist simon@thegestalt.org
  Personal preferences for member simon@thegestalt.org on list myfirstlist
  - munge : 1

To modify configuration for any of these

  % nacho modify-plugin myfirstlist ReplyTo munge 1
  Preferences for list myfirstlist

or if you want to change a member's preference ...

  % nacho modify-plugin myfirstlist ReplyTo munge 0 simon@thegestalt.org
  Personal preferences for member simon@thegestalt.org on list myfirstlist

Removing Members

To remove a member from a list just do :

  % nacho remove-member myfirstlist greg@mccarroll.demon.co.uk
  Member 'greg@mccarroll.demon.co.uk' removed from list 'myfirstlist'

Deleting Members

Deleting a member from the system will remove them from all the lists they're subscribed to and then deleted from the system.

  % nacho delete-member richardc@unixbeard.net 
  Member 'richardc@unixbeard.net' deleted.

Handling deferred messages

Deferred messages are ones being held for approval or contain administrative tasks.

You can see how many deferred messages there are by doing :

    % nacho show-deferred

    Deferred-Id: 1
    Reason: the hell of it
    Owner: test@foo

     From: simon@thegestalt.org
     To: people@somewhere.org
     Subject: some subject lin
     Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:49:30 +0100  

or you can view an individual message by supplying the id

    % nacho show-deferred 1
    From: simon@thegestalt.org
    To: people@somewhere.org
    Subject: some subject line
    Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:49:30 +0100  

    Hello people

    Simon

To resume a message simply do this :

    % nacho resume-deferred 1
    Sucessfully resumed message 1

alternatively to delete a deferred message :

    % nacho delete-deferred 1
    Message deleted from deferral queue

Deleting Lists

Similarly deleting a list will unsub all member from that list and then remove it from the system.

  % nacho delete-list myfirstlist
  List 'myfirstlist' deleted

Making backups

Running the command

    % nacho create-backup 

will print a shell script to STDOUT.

This shell script consists of nacho commands to restore your systems to its glorious past should anything go wrong.

Upgrading

Simply make a backup as described above, install the latest version from CPAN and then run the nacho generated script to restore your system.

Miscellanous

This will run mariach for all lists and output the html into siesta base/mariachi-html/list name

  % nacho run-mariachi
  

but you're probably better off running mariachi on its own.

See

 % man mariachi

for options.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2002 - The Siesta Dev Team

SEE ALSO

Siesta, nacho, tequila, mariachi, bandito