openSUSE:Mailing lists subscription

Thank you for the interest in openSUSE mailing lists.

This article is about how to subscribe, unsubscribe, read archives, ask for help and assistance, post to the list etc.

Important: Subscribers of the openSUSE mailing lists have established some rules for posting. Please read the mailing list netiquette before you post. This netiquette is recommendation how to write messages to openSUSE mailing lists that are easy to read, reduce amount of text and number of messages, help mutual understanding and avoid flames.

Available mailing lists

The openSUSE Mailing Lists contain the following groups:

Announce Lists
Architecture Lists
Development Lists
Globalization (m17n, i18n) Lists
Team Lists
Topic Lists
User/Support Lists

Head over to lists.opensuse.org for a complete list of all the available mailing lists.

Subscribing

Mail subscription

To subscribe to a mailing list, simply send an email to <LISTNAME-subscribe@lists.opensuse.org>.

Choose LISTNAME from the list of available mailing lists.

When subscribing to mailing lists, please use plain text email format to avoid request denials.

Nomail subscription

Note: This does not work. Activate nomail in the mailman control web page instead after doing a normal subscription.

The nomail version of a mailing list means that you are recognized as a subscriber, but will not get any messages from the list. This is useful when it's necessary to post from several email addresses to a subscribers-only list or if you read mails from the list elsewhere (gmane).

Subscription works with the following address:

<LISTNAME+subscribe-nomail@lists.opensuse.org>

Digest subscription

A Mailing List Digest combines multiple messages posted to a mailing list in to a single message. Digests are usually sent once a day and serve to reduce the number of emails received from a particular mailing list.

Digest are turned off for nearly all existing lists so you can't subscribe to them. Often people ask about list mail in the form of a digest, but most of our lists are far to large to make digests useful. Are you really going to read a ~500K email once per day? Yes, it's the same amount that you would receive as separate mail, but it's easy to delete or skip messages that don't interest you in that case; it's not with a digest. And in our experience, digests tend to decrease the quality of list postings. They do this by encouraging the sorts of behaviors that are often considered rude or in poor 'netiquette': replying to mail with the incorrect subject header or other headers that make it impossible for threaded mail clients to work properly, replying to mail without reading the entire thread first, and probably more. Of course, people who do things like this are often the cause of huge flame wars about proper netiquette that can go on for days, often with the result of having very helpful and knowledgeable people leaving the list in disgust.

Technically, you can send mail at the following address:

<LISTNAME+subscribe-digest@lists.opensuse.org>

Changing the subscription type

If you are already subscribed to a list, you can change your subscription type (mail vs. nomail vs. digest) by sending a new subscription mail for the appropriate subscription type, as described in the previous section. That is, there is no need to unsubscribe and then resubscribe to the list.

Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing mail

To unsubscribe from a mailing list, simply send an email to <LISTNAME-leave@lists.opensuse.org> and don't forget to reply to the server message when you are asked for confirmation. This way only you can unsubscribe yourself, not someone else. If you don't send reply, server will ignore first one and you will continue to receive emails.

Problem

I still receive the openSUSE mails, but when I send the unsubscribe post, The manager say "you are not subscribed". How can I do?

Answer for Thunderbird

Chance is you have changed "identity", that is, when you send a mail, the "sender" is not the one that subscribe the list, but some "redirect" or "alias" make you still recipient.

The harder part is to open the source of any list message to see what is the mail server known identity. On Thunderbird, type Ctrl U. It's probably visible just on top after the X-Original-To: tag.

Then go to the Thunderbird account properties, there is an "identity" button. There you can add an identity — the one that you need.

Then, on every list message, bottom, click on unsubscribe. The mail come on. You have a sender drop down list. Choose your new identity and send the message (empty is good).

In the minute you will receive a confirmation message. Send it as is (no need to change the identity on this one). You will receive then a good bye message.

Done

Unsubscribing digest

To unsubscribe from a digest version of a mailing list, send e-mail to <LISTNAME+unsubscribe-digest@lists.opensuse.org>.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

For a collection of frequently asked questions about this list, send email to <LISTNAME+faq@lists.opensuse.org>.

Generic FAQ

Why do my replies go to the original poster and not the list?

We do not "munge" the mail headers by inserting a "Reply-To:" header because it makes it more difficult subscribers to handle the mail the way they want to. Your mail client probably has a "reply" function as well as a "reply to all" or "reply to list" one; Please use the latter if you want you message to go to the list and not just to the original poster.

Individual users are free to choose where they wish replies to them sent.

Individual users are free to munge their own headers so that replies will go to the list if they do not wish personal replies and prefer answers to stay on the list. This is a personal choice. Not everyone wants this, so this choice isn't made for everyone. However for those that prefer replies to go to the list and to NOT receive replies personally it is your responsibility to direct where you want your replies sent.

Note, that many emailers, will replay to the individual sender and any 'Cc'ed groups when a user replies to all. In those situations you will receive 2 copies -- one addressed directly to you and one directed to the list that you'll received from the list. You may choose to delete one copy, or realize that the one to the list can go to your list 'mbox' to keep a copy of a conversation in context, while giving you the benefit of seeing the response directed to you immediately, if you don't get around to reading through all of your lists as quickly as you do reading email that is addressed directly to you.

If you don't like the duplicate messages, you can configure your email software to delete messages with duplicate message ID's.

This system provides maximum flexibility so everyone can get what they want out of the system and is an attempt to please everyone -- and should do so once they make use of the mail mechanisms available to them.

Please don't complain about this on the list or to the user who sent the reply to the address you specified in your reply field. You control your Reply-To field, and if you choose to have email come to you, don't complain when it does -- it's rude, and off-putting to new users, since you (a more experienced and expert user) are more easily able to configure your email system to your likely rather than causing discomfort for new users who won't know your specific wants. Thanks for your understanding.

How to I get the list in digest form instead of separate emails?

We don't offer digested lists for several reasons:

Most of our lists are far to large to make digests useful. Are you really going to read an ~500K email once per day? Yes, it's the same amount that you would receive on as separate mail but it's easy to delete or skip messages that don't interest you in that case; it's not with a digest.
In our experience, digests tend to decrease the quality of list postings. They do this by encouraging the sorts of behaviors that are often considered rude or in poor 'netiquette': replying to mail with the incorrect subject header or other headers that make it impossible for threaded mail clients to work properly, replying to mail without reading the entire thread first, and probably more. Of course, people who do things like this are often the cause of huge flame wars about proper netiquette that can go on for days, often with the result of having very helpful and knowledgeable people leaving the list in disgust.
Usually, when people request digests what they are really asking for is a way to keep the list mail from flooding their mailbox and making it harder to find and read non-list mail. This is a valid concern and one that is best handled with mail filtering, not digests. Every mail client in openSUSE either has built in filtering capabilities or you can use a mail delivery agent like procmail. The lists provide a list mail header (X-Mailinglist) you can filter for.

Can I send attachments to the list?

The short answer is 'yes'. We may strip attachments that contain something other than plain text and bounce email that only contains attachments.

Why only subscribers may post an answer?

The lists are high frequented mailinglists with many subscribers. We want to prevent crosspostings and automaticly advertising (Spam). Messages from non-subscribers are blocked or moderated / reviewed before they get posted.

How do I change my email address with which I am subscribed?

There is no way to change the email address with which you are subscribed to an openSUSE mailing list, or even change it for all the lists you are subscribed to at once. Unsubscribe with your old address, then subscribe again with your new address, for each of the lists you are subscribed to.

Mailinglists owners

To reach a human being that can help you with problems that you might have with the mailing list software or with other subscribers, send an e-mail to <LISTNAME>-owner@lists.opensuse.org

Mail filtering

Usually people don't like mailing lists because the list mail keeps flooding their mailbox, making it harder to find and read non-list mail. This is a valid concern and one that is best handled with mail filtering.

Using procmail

If your system is configured to use procmail to deliver mail locally (SuSE's postfix and sendmail packages are) all you need to do is create a file in your home directory named '.procmailrc' that contains something like the following:

   MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail   # where do you keep your mail?
   DEFAULT=$MAILDIR/inbox  # what's you default mail box?
   
   # if mail is from list put it in $MAILDIR/foo
   :0
   * ^Mailing-List:.*<LISTNAME>
   $MAILDIR/<LISTNAME>

Everything else will be placed in $DEFAULT. By default, procmail creates a normal mbox formatted mailbox, so if you want to copy the file somewhere (e.g., to a PDA), you only need to, in the above example, copy $MAILDIR/<LISTNAME>. Of course, procmail is capable of much more than what this simple example shows, so please read procmailrc(5) and procmailex(5) for more information.

Using Thunderbird

A quick example to put messages into a separate folder: Right-click Local Folders and select New Folder; type a name and click OK. Then within the header area of any message from the list, right-click the '...opensuse.org' originating address and select 'Create filter from message'. The Filter Rules dialogue appears, with the first rule already made; edit/add more as desired. In the next part of the dialogue, select 'Move Message to' and choose the folder created earlier. Click OK to exit. The completed filter can be accessed any time under Tools > Message Filters, from where it can be enabled automatically or run manually.

More details at: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Filters_(Thunderbird)

Using Kmail

Select the message that has arrived from the mailing-list, right click, select "Create filter based on mailinglist" and select the folder you would like the mailing-list posts to be saved. Then click OK and exit the filter dialog. Select the folder you selected previously for the mailing-list and click the Folder/Mailing list properties" menu, where you can check the check-box to specify that a mailing-list is related to the folder and locate the post address automatically (click the relevant button). Afterwards you can reply to the mailing-list with the "reply to mailing-list" option from the context menu. If you have spam filters, you probably should also go to advanced settings and clear the check-box "Stop processing here" to allow the mailing-list posts to be checked for spam (it isn't that useful for this mailing-list though).

Using Gmail

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7190

list:(LISTNAME.lists.opensuse.org)

Reply-to-munging

You might wonder why replies go to the original poster and not the list? Thats because we do not "munge" the mail headers by inserting a "Reply-To: <LISTNAME>" because it makes it more difficult for subscribers to handle the mail the way they want to. Your mail client probably has a "reply" function as well as a "reply to all" or "reply to list" one; Please use the latter if you want your message to go to the list and not just to the original poster.

Also, please don't complain about this on the lists, it has been discussed many, many, many times in the past already.

Read this article for background information

Spam

All emails are subjected to our spam filter, any email identified as spam will be rejected.

Netiquette

The subscribers of the openSUSE mailing lists have established some rules for posting to the mailing lists. Please read the mailing list netiquette before you post a mail to the lists. Thank you.