openSUSE:Mailing lists

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
User/Support Lists
Architecture Lists
Development Lists
Topic Lists
Localized mail lists
Misc Lists

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

Subscribing

Mail subscription

Warning: Instructions here are obsolete and do not work. The mail address has changed. This article needs revision or removal.
Instead, go to https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_lists_subscription

To subscribe to a mailing list, send e-mail to <LISTNAME>+subscribe@opensuse.org
Choose <LISTNAME> from the list of available mailing lists.

Nomail 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@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@opensuse.org

Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing mail

To unsubscribe from a mailing list, send e-mail to <LISTNAME>-leave@lists.opensuse.org and don't forget to reply to server (mlmmj) message that is asking you 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 "indentity" 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 ands 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 nomail

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

Unsubscribing digest

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

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

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

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

For background information see e.g. Reply-To Munging Considered Harmful

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 'no'. We may strip attachments that contain something other than plain text and bounce email that only contains attachments. Likewise, HTML email is *strongly* discouraged and will be blocked as well.

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).

Mailinglists owners

To reach a human being that can help you with problems that you might have with the mailinglist software send e-mail to <LISTNAME>+owner@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

to:(opensuse -opensuse-factory) OR cc:(opensuse -opensuse-factory) to:(opensuse-factory) OR cc:(opensuse-factory)

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

Attachments

The lists will strip attachments that contain something other than plain text and bounce email that only contains attachments.

HTML

HTML in email is *strongly* discouraged and may be blocked in the future, as well.

Spam

We use the most effective way of preventing SPAM on the mailing lists. We allow only subscribers to post. All subscribers are encouraged not to write SPAM! Please keep the topic and abstain from sending nonsence-mails!

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.