Mailman: Email Commands

Overview

For the purposes of this guide, the list that you are addressing will be listname@lists.uoregon.edu.

Substitute listname with the actual name of your list. For instance, if your list is called mylist, you would send your Mailman command emails to mylist-request@lists.uoregon.edu.

To get a list of all the commands available on a particular list, send an email to listname-request@lists.uoregon.edu with the word help in the subject line of the email. Commands can appear in the subject line of the email (for single commands), or in the body of the message (for one or more commands).

Below is a list of all the commands that Mailman understands.

Information

In the description below items contained in [ ]'s are optional. When providing the item, do not include the [ ]'s around it. Parameters in angle brackets ('< >') should be replaced without the surrounding angle brackets. For the purposes of this article, <address> will be substituted with bbogus@uoregon.edu as an example.

It understands the following commands:

Command Explanation
subscribe [address=<address>] Subscribe yourself (or <address> if specified) to listname. You can optionally request digesting of the list in this command.
unsubscribe [address=<address>] Unsubscribe yourself (or <address> if specified) from the list. DO NOT send the admin password for the list!
confirm <CONFIRMATION-STRING> Confirm an action or command. The confirmation string is required, and should be supplied within a Mailman confirmation request.
who [<admin_password>]

Find out who is on the named <list>.

Note: The admin, not moderator, password must be entered to authorize this command.
info Retrieve the general introductory information for the named <list>.
lists Retrieve a list of available lists.
help Retrieve this list of commands.
end Stop processing commands (useful if your mailer adds a signature).

For example, if you want to subscribe to the list mylist and your email address is bbogus@uoregon.edu then send an email with the following:

Field Contents
To mylist-request@lists.uoregon.edu 
From bbogus@uoregon.edu
Subject subscribe
Body (leave this empty)

In addition to these email commands, there are some extended email addresses associated with every Mailman list that can be used to join, leave, and confirm your subscription to a list.

Command Explanation
mylist@lists.uoregon.edu This is the address used to send postings to the list.
mylist-join@lists.uoregon.edu Sending a message to mylist-join will subscribe you to the list. The subject line and body of the message are ignored.
mylist-leave@lists.uoregon.edu Sending a message to mylist-leave will unsubscribe you from the list. The subject line and body of the message are ignored.
mylist-owner@lists.uoregon.edu This is the email address to the owner and moderators of the list.

For example, if you want to subscribe to the list mylist and your email address is bbogus@uoregon.edu then send an email with the following:

Field Contents
To mylist-join@lists.uoregon.edu
From bbogus@uoregon.edu
Subject (leave this empty)
Body (leave this empty)
Create a Ticket Print Article

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