LSVSTART MEMO February 1993 What is LISTSERV? LISTSERV is a distribution list management package. It runs on IBM VM/CMS systems in the international NJE network (Bitnet/EARN). It allows groups of computer users with a common interest to communicate among themselves, while making efficient use of computer and network resources. It makes it easy for even novice users to discover, join, and participate in these interest group mailing lists. LISTSERV also provides facilities for logging and archiving of mail traffic, file server functions, and database searches of archives and files. What is available from LISTSERV? There are LISTSERV lists on every subject under the sun, with names ranging from AARPUB-L (AAR Electronic Publication list) to Z3950IW (Z39.50 Implementors Workshop). LISTSERV lists are international and eclectic. You will find lists in every imaginable field, for every audience, in many different countries and in many different languages. Here are just a few examples from the more than 3500 lists in existence: ListName Location Title -------- -------- ------------------------------------------------- ACDGIS-L AWIIMC12 Geographische Informationssysteme ADQ UQUEBEC Association des demographes du Quebec AFRICA-L BROWNVM Forum Pan-Africa AHC-L DGOGWDG1 Association for History & Computing AIB-CUR IVEUNCC Discussione Associazione Italiana Biblioteche AIDSBKRV UICVM AIDSBKRV - AIDS Book Review Journal AIX-L PUCC IBM AIX Discussion List ALBION-L UCSBVM British and Irish History ALGCOMP BRLNCC Forum de Computacao Algebrica AMCA-L MCGILL1 Alumni and Friends of Croatian Universities AMIGA-TR TREARN Turk Amiga'cilar listesi ANEST-L UBVM Anesthesiology Discussion List ANGLICAN AUVM Episcopal Mailing List ARKNET-L UAFSYSB Arkansas State Network Discussions ARTCRIT YORKVM1 Art Criticism Discussion Forum ASIMOV-L UTDALLAS Discussion of Isaac Asimov's works AUTOCAD OHSTVMA AUTOCAD Autocad Discussion List AUTOMILK UMDD Automated Milking Systems AYN-RAND IUBVM Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy See the LIST command in the section "How to get started with LISTSERV" for instructions on getting an up-to-date list of lists. Who can use LISTSERV? Anyone who can send electronic mail to a Bitnet/EARN address can participate in a mailing list and access other LISTSERV facilities, as long as the message format is valid (according to the RFC822 standard), and has a usable return address. Every day, people use LISTSERV from HEPNET, Internet, Compuserve, MCIMAIL and many other networks throughout the world. Ask your local support people if you don't know how to send electronic mail to EARN/Bitnet. Where is LISTSERV? There are more than 250 sites in over 30 countries throughout the world running LISTSERV as part of the world-wide network. Here is a list of some of the LISTSERV sites: Host Site Country Computer Code -------- ---------------------------------------- ------- DEARN GMD Bonn Germany BITNIC BITNET Network Information Center United States HEARN Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen Netherlands CUNYVM City University of New York United States PUCC Princeton University, New Jersey United States ICNUCEVM CNUCE Istituto del CNR, Pisa Italy UKACRL Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Great Britain QUCDN Queen's University Computing Services Canada FRMOP11 CNUSC, Montpellier France TREARN Ege University Bornova,Izmir, Turkey UCHCECVM Universidad de Chile, Santiago Chile TWNMOE10 Ministry of Education, Taipei Taiwan JPNSUT00 Science University of Tokyo Japan KRSNUCC1 Seoul National University South Korea UFRJ Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Brazil SEARN Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan i Stockholm Sweden ANDESCOL Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota Colombia SAKFU00 King Faisal University, Hofuf Saudi Arabia HKUVM1 The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong PTEARN Faculdade de Ciencias de Lisboa Portugal GREARN Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion Greece PLEARN Warsaw University Poland AEARN Vienna University, Wien Austria CSEARN Czech Technical University, Prague Czech Republic HUEARN Hungarian Academy of Sciences Hungary TAUNIVM Tel Aviv University Israel EARNCC EARN, Paris Office France Communicating with LISTSERV To use LISTSERV facilities, send electronic mail with your LISTSERV commands to: LISTSERV@host-id where 'host-id' is the host computer's NJE address (eg. TAUNIVM.BITNET) or its Internet domain name (eg. VM.TAU.AC.IL). There may be some local variation on the format needed to send mail to Bitnet or Internet addresses. Check with your local support people. More than one command can be sent to LISTSERV in the same mail message. Each command must be on a separate line. LISTSERV will ignore the "Subject: " line of the mail header. For Bitnet/EARN users, interactive messages are the fastest and most convenient way to send commands to LISTSERV, but bear in mind that interactive messages only work when the links between your computer and LISTSERV are up; if the message fails, you can always send your command via mail. To send interactive messages from an IBM computer running VM/CMS, the format is: TELL LISTSERV AT node_id listserv_command On a VAX VMS system, the format is: $ SEND LISTSERV@node_id "listserv_command" The LISTSERV command must be in quotes. NOTE: To join a list, you send a message with your SUBscribe command to LISTSERV. To make an announcement to the members of a list, you send mail to the list address. For example, to join the EARN Users Group list (list name: EARN-UG, host site: IRLEARN), send a SUBscribe command to LISTSERV@IRLEARN.BITNET This can be done interactively, from VM: TELL LISTSERV AT IRLEARN SUB EARN-UG Name Lastname or from VMS: $ SEND LISTSERV@IRLEARN "SUB EARN-UG Name Lastname" or by mail, to LISTSERV@IRLEARN.BITNET, with the line: SUB EARN-UG Name Lastname in the text of the message. To send a message to all list members, send mail to: EARN-UG@IRLEARN.BITNET How to get started with LISTSERV The first thing you'll want to know is what lists are of interest to you. Then you'll need to know how to get onto those lists. If you want to leave a list, you can do it quickly and automatically. You can also get more detailed information on the setup and members of a list. LISTSERV is also an excellent repository for files. You can ask LISTSERV to send you files which it has stored. Use the LIST command to find out what LISTSERV lists are available. LIST LIST GLOBAL LIST GLOBAL string Send the command LIST with no parameters to find out what lists are run locally. For example, to find out what lists are available at EARNCC, send mail (or an interactive message) to LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET with the word LIST in the message body. Send the command LIST GLOBAL to get a listing of all the lists in all the LISTSERVs throughout the world. This command should be sent to your closest LISTSERV (since all LISTSERVs have the same global list). Note that this file is rather large (over 3500 lines). To get a subset of the global file, send the command: LIST GLOBAL string. You will get a listing of all lists which contain 'string' in the listname, host computer, or title. Use the SUBSCRIBE command to join a list. SUBSCRIBE listname Your Full Name Note that you do not send your electronic mail address. LISTSERV automatically determines your electronic mail address from your mail (or interactive message.) For example, if you want to join the list EARN-UG which is based at the BITNET node IRLEARN, and your name is Bill Clinton, then you would send the command: SUBSCRIBE EARN-UG Bill Clinton to LISTSERV@IRLEARN.BITNET. Actually, you can send this command to any LISTSERV. They all know where the various lists are located, and they will forward your command to the appropriate machine for you. For most lists, subscription requests are accepted automatically. For others, the request is forwarded to the list manager for approval. Use the UNSUBSCRIBE command to leave a list. UNSUBSCRIBE listname For example, to leave the EARN-UG list, send the command: UNSUSCRIBE EARN-UG to LISTSERV@IRLEARN.BITNET Use the REVIEW command to get the parameters of a list and the names and addresses of the list members. For some lists, the names and addresses of the members are not available to non-members. REVIEW listname REVIEW listname SHORT REVIEW listname NOHEADER If you add the SHORT parameter, you will get only the list parameters without the list members. With the NOHEADER parameter, you will get the list of members without the list parameters. Use the GET command to get a file from LISTSERV. GET filename filetype The names of the files follow the IBM VM/CMS convention: the two parts of the name are each one to eight characters in length, separated by a space. No matter how you send your GET command (e-mail or interactive message), LISTSERV will automatically send you the file in the most appropriate way. For example, to get the text version of this brochure, send the command: GET LSVSTART MEMO to LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET Detailed documentation on LISTSERV, and related services, is available from: LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET For a list of available documents send the command: INDex DOC ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This document has been compiled and produced by the EARN Association. Permission to copy all or part of this document without fee is granted provided the copies are not used for commercial advantage and that the EARN Association is cited as the source of the document. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This document is available from: LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET Send the command: GET filename where the filename is either: LSVSTART PS (Postscript) LSVSTART MEMO (plain text)