Any HHS employee can become a list owner by creating a list on our website. To create a list online, visit the NIH LISTSERV Home Page at http://list.nih.gov, click "For List Owners," then click "Create a LISTSERV List."
The first thing to do is create a LISTSERV password (see below). The password allows you to log onto LISTSERV's List Management Interface, from which you can administer your lists. Next, print out the NIH LISTSERV List Owner's Guide, glance through it, and keep it handy for reference. When you're ready to start administering your list--e.g., adding or deleting subscribers--visit the NIH LISTSERV Home Page and click "MANAGE" to access the List Management Interface.
To send mail, or "post," to a list, address your e-mail message to:
listname@list.nih.gov
where listname is the name of the list to which you're posting.
To create a LISTSERV password, visit the NIH LISTSERV Home Page, click "For List Owners," then click "Create a LISTSERV Password." Fill out the online form and submit it. LISTSERV will e-mail you a request for confirmation. Pop into your e-mail software, find and open the mail message from LISTSERV. Follow the instructions in the e-mail to confirm your password.
When you create a LISTSERV password, LISTSERV asks you for an e-mail address. LISTSERV associates this address with the password. You can use any valid e-mail address when you create your LISTSERV password. However, make sure that the address you use exactly matches your owner address for your list, or LISTSERV will not let you log in to the list management page.
No problem. Just repeat the procedure for creating a LISTSERV password (see previous question). This will overwrite the password you forgot.
There are two ways:
Via e-mail. Send e-mail to listserv@list.nih.gov with the following text in the message body:
add listname user@host Firstname Lastname
where where listname is the name of the list, user@host is the e-mail address of the user, and Firstname Lastname is the user's name. Be sure to spell the user's e-mail address correctly, or you'll be seeing error messages from LISTSERV.
Via the Web. Go to the NIH LISTSERV Home Page and click "MANAGE" to access the List Management Interface. Log in using your owner address and your LISTSERV password, select the desired list, then click the "Subscribers" button. Scroll down the page to the section marked, "Add a new user to the list." Fill in the user's name and address in the following format:
user@host Firstname Lastname
where user@host is the user's e-mail address, and Firstname Lastname is the user's name. If you want the user to be notified, click the radio button labeled, "Notify user"; if not, click "Do not notify the user in any way." Last, click the "Add to [listname]" button to add the user to the list.
There are two ways:
Via e-mail. Send e-mail to listserv@list.nih.gov with the following text in the message body:
delete listname userid@host
where listname is the name of the list and userid@host is the e-mail address of the user. NOTE: do not include the user's name in the delete command, only their e-mail address.
Via the Web. Go to the NIH LISTSERV Home Page and click "MANAGE" to access the List Management Interface. Log in using your owner address and your LISTSERV password, select the desired list, then click the "Subscribers" button. In the top section of the page, marked, "Examine or delete a subscription," fill in all or part of the name or address of the user you wish to delete, then click the "Search in [listname]" button. LISTSERV will search the subscriber list and, hopefully, find the subscription you're looking for. If you want the user to be notified, click the radio button labeled, "Notify user"; if not, click "Do not notify the user in any way." Click the "Delete" button to delete the user from the selected list; click the "Delete from all lists" button to delete the user from all lists that you own.
Sometimes a subscriber will set his/her subscribed address to be forwarded to a new address. Later, that new address becomes unreachable and starts generating bounced messages. This can be a difficult problem to resolve, because the bounced address that you see doesn't match any address on your subscriber list.
Your best bet for solving the problem is to do some detective work. You can use the SCAN command to try to identify the subscribed address. If the bounced message contains the user's name, scan for part or all of it. Sometimes the userID (the part of the e-mail address to the left of the @ sign) remains the same from one address to another; you can try scanning for that. If you can identify a name in the userID, try scanning for that.
To use the SCAN command, send e-mail to listserv@list.nih.gov with the following text in the message body:
scan listname searchstring
While you can view your list of subscribers on the LISTSERV List Management Web Interface, there is no way you can print out the whole thing from the Web. To print or save a copy of your subscriber list, use the REVIEW command. Send e-mail to listserv@list.nih.gov with the following text in the message body:
review listname noheader
where listname is the name of the list. LISTSERV will send you a copy of the list of subscribers by return e-mail. You can then save it, print it, etc.
To have the subscriber list sorted by name, type the command as follows:
review listname noheader by name
Point your web browser at the LISTSERV Home Page and click "For List Owners," then click "Delete a List." Fill in the online form and press the "Submit" button. Be sure and check your e-mail for a request for confirmation. You must reply to the request in order for your list to be deleted.
Is your list brand new? If so, it won't appear on the website until the day after you create the list. However, if your list was created properly, in most cases you should be able to see it via the List Management Interface (see "I'm a new list owner," above).If your list is not new, there are a couple of possibilities. Does your list have archiving turned off? Lists without archives do not appear on the website. If you have such a list, you will have to administer the list using e-mailed commands. Likewise, users will have to subscribe, unsubscribe, and post to the list via e-mail; they will not have the option of doing so on the website.
If list archiving is turned on, the most likely explanation is that the list is confidential. Confidential lists do not appear on the List of Lists. To access the web pages for a confidential list, click the "Access unlisted lists" link just under the alpha index on the List of Lists. Type the list name in the "List name:" field and click the Go button.
Still can't see your list? Check to make sure you spelled the list name correctly. If all else fails, contact the LISTSERV Administrators.
When using the List Management Web Interface, LISTSERV checks your login address against the list owner e-mail addresses in its records. When entering the list management area, the names of lists you "own" under the login address are displayed. You may find that some of the lists you own are not displayed; or, if LISTSERV finds no matches, that you cannot access the list management area at all.
If you've run into this problem, your login address doesn't match your owner address for the list. This is a common problem, especially at NIH, where most users have more than one valid e-mail address. Try logging on using another valid e-mail address (you may have to create a LISTSERV password for the new address). If your list has just been set up, your e-mail address may have been mistyped on the online application form, or you may have registered a forwarding address (such as Jane_User@nih.gov) with LISTSERV, rather than your actual e-mail address. If you have a list co-owner, he or she may be able to log on and ascertain your owner address. You can then log into the website using that address (again, you may have to create a password for the address).
If all fails, contact the LISTSERV Administrators at listmaster@list.nih.gov.
See the previous question.
To direct replies to the sender, change the REPLY-TO keyword in the list header to SENDER,RESPECT instead of LIST,RESPECT. To direct replies to the whole list, change the REPLY-TO keyword to LIST,RESPECT instead of SENDER,RESPECT. See Changing Your List Settings (Modifying the List Header) for details on how to modify the list header, and Changing Where Replies Are Sent, for specifics on changing this keyword in the list header.
To change, add, or delete an owner address, you must modify the list header. For detailed instructions, please see Changing Your List Settings (Modifying the List Header). For further information on changing an owner address, see Changing Owner Addresses for Your List.
If your address is the one that's changing, and you know what your new address will be, it's a good idea to add it as a second owner address in the list header before your address changes. That prevents you from losing access to the list when the change occurs. Once your old address goes away, be sure to remove it from the list header to avoid generating bounce messages to the LISTSERV Administrators. You will need to create a password for the new address.
If you have a valid LISTSERV password for your old address, log in to the List Management page with your old address and add the new address to the list header (see previous question). Then create a password for your new address, and you should be good to go. Alternatively, if you have a co-owner whose address is still valid, have him or her add your new address to the owner definitions in the list header, then create a password for your new address.
The quickest way to get help with an error message is to forward a copy to the LISTSERV Administrators at listmaster@list.nih.gov. Type a brief note of explanation at the beginning of the message.
LISTSERV doesn't assume that the list owner wants to receive list mail. To receive list mail, you must subscribe to the list.
If your editor address in the list header doesn't exactly match the "From:" address in your outgoing e-mail, LISTSERV won't "recognize" you when you try to approve a posting. You'll need to have the list owner modify the editor address in the list header so that it exactly matches the "From:" address in your outgoing e-mail. If you are the list owner as well as the list editor, you can make the change yourself.
If your list volume does a sudden and obvious jump--especially if you see multiple copies of the same message--you may have a mail loop. Putting the list on HOLD causes all list mail to be held by LISTSERV, giving you time to get help. To hold the list, log in to the List Management page using your owner address for the list, click the "Command" button, and type the following command:
hold listname pw=password
Fill in your list name and password, of course! Then contact the NIH LISTSERV Administrators at listmaster@list.nih.gov for assistance as soon as possible. When you're ready, restart mail to the list with the FREE command:
free listname pw=password
"Out of office" messages (a.k.a. vacation messages) are automated replies sent in response to incoming mail, usually by a user's e-mail client software. Not only are they annoying when sent to a LISTSERV list, but they are also a potential cause of mail loops.
"Smart" e-mail clients send the automated reply exactly once to each sender. "Dumb" e-mail clients, however, send out an automated reply to every single incoming e-mail message. If the "dumb" client also directs the reply to a LISTSERV list, or the reply bounces to the LISTSERV machine, a mail loop can result. This scenario is more likely if your list has many non-NIH subscribers, since most NIH employees use "smart" e-mail clients such as MS Outlook.
To prevent this problem, educate your (non-Outlook) subscribers to create a rule that excludes LISTSERV lists from the automated reply. The subscriber may need to consult with his/her e-mail administrator, or with technical support for the e-mail software, to find out how.
This is a problem that we see occasionally with the Microsoft Outlook e-mail client. For some reason--and only for some users--Outlook sends the attachments in a proprietary Microsoft format called MS-TNEF. This causes LISTSERV to strip off the attachments.
Adding the following line to the list header prevents the attachments from being stripped:
Language = Exchange
However, this represents a trade-off. The attachments will be visible in the list mail but, unfortunately, they will not be readable in the list archives. To date, neither we nor the experts at L-Soft have found a perfect solution for the problem.
Chances are that you're seeing the effect of a recent change in how the NIH Microsoft Exchange system processes e-mail. Microsoft recently added a filter designed to detect and eliminate "duplicate" messages. Here's how it makes your messages seem to disappear:
An e-mail message is posted to several lists simultaneously. Joe is subscribed to several of the lists, and has an NIH Exchange account. Since Joe is subscribed to several of the lists, LISTSERV addresses several copies of the message to Joe, which are received by the NIH Exchange server. Since all the copies originated from the same message, they have the same Message ID (a unique identifier that is assigned to the message by the originator's e-mail software or e-mail server). The Exchange server "sees" these as duplicate copies, and forwards only the first one to Joe, discarding the rest. From the point of the Exchange server, this eliminates unnecessary load. Unfortunately, if you're the person "expecting" several copies of the message in order to verify that it went out properly, it can be unnerving.
This effect may be visible to recipients of list mail who use MS Outlook or MS Exchange e-mail clients, or an e-mail client (such as IMAP) that uses the NIH Exchange Hub as its mail server. Other mail systems may perform the same sort of duplicate elimination, although we are not aware of any at NIH that do. To make sure that the message actually reached all the lists to which it was sent, check the list archives.
Finally, it's worth noting that not all mail systems assign message-IDs to messages they send. So some duplicate messages from multiple lists (i.e., those sent from mail systems that don't assign message-IDs) may still appear in Exchange.
The best way to monitor all postings to your list is to set up a list editor. The editor can be the list owner or any designated individual. To make your list an edited list, modify your list header to include the following keywords:
Send= Editor,Hold,Confirm
Editor= user@hostwhere user@host is a designated editor other than the owner. LISTSERV will send all postings to the editor for approval before posting them to the list. For detailed instructions on modifying the list header, please see Changing Your List Settings (Modifying the List Header).
If the inappropriate postings are all coming from one individual, you have a couple of choices. From the List Management screen, click the "Subscribers" button to access the Account Management screen. Examine the subscription for the problematic user and select one of the following options (under miscellaneous), then click "Update":
- User may not post to list
- All postings sent to list owner for review
E-mail is inherently insecure because it is sent as clear text over the network, and thus is vulnerable to hackers, although the likelihood of someone hacking your particular message is small. It is true that you can link to our website using a secure browser connection, and even post a message to a list from there. Unfortunately, however, once LISTSERV releases the message to the network for distribution, it is no longer secure.
E-mail can be sent securely on a one-to-one basis using encryption, provided that both sender and recipient are set up to use encryption technology. Unfortunately, e-mail lists, due to their "one-to-many" nature, cannot accommodate public-key infrastructure (PKI) technology, which is the basis of current encryption schemes. In short, you can send an encrypted message to a LISTSERV list; but by the time it arrives, either it will be unreadable to the recipients, or it will no longer be secure.
In terms of privacy, e-mail in general is risky, and e-mail lists add an additional element of risk. You may not know who is subscribed to the list or who is browsing the list archives, or who may browse them later. Further, you cannot know what the recipients of your message will do with it. This is true of non-list mail as well, but's it's more of a risk when many recipients are involved, especially if you don't know them. In short, your message could end up in the hands of someone you didn't intend to see it. Your best bet is to keep all of this in mind and be careful what you send.
During business hours (7:00 AM - 6:00 PM), please call the CIT Technical Assistance and Support Center (TASC) at 301-496-4357 and ask for LISTSERV support. You can also email the NIH LISTSERV Administrators directly at listmaster@list.nih.gov.
 |
 Center for Information Technology National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Maryland 20892 301 496 4357 (v) 301 496 8294 (TDD) Comments and Assistance Privacy Notice Accessibility  |