NHFTRich-
Majordomo was designed for its primary interface to be email. The DA interface is another means of accessing the frequently used features in majordomo. It sounds clunky, but the majordomo setup on the DA servers sends its replies fairly briskly - in my experience, majordomo replies to commands get back to me from the hostpc servers within 30 seconds. Of course, YMMV, depending on how many hops your email has to make between your desktop and the server.
One quick way that you can gain insight into the inner workings of majordomo is to retrieve the overview document within it by email. For instance, send an email to majordomo@nameofyourdomainhere.whatever and put only the word "help" in the body of the message. Majordomo will email you back with an overview of the commands available.
Since the docs describe this better than I can, here are a couple of excerpts from the "help" message from majordomo:
This is version 1.94.5 of Majordomo.
If you're familiar with mail servers, an advanced user's summary of
Majordomo's commands appears at the end of this message.
Majordomo is an automated system which allows users to subscribe
and unsubscribe to mailing lists, and to retrieve files from list
archives.
You can interact with the Majordomo software by sending it commands in the body of mail messages addressed to "majordomo@namedeleted.com". Please do not put your commands on the subject line; Majordomo does not process commands in the subject line.
You may put multiple Majordomo commands in the same mail message.
Put each command on a line by itself.
If you use a "signature block" at the end of your mail, Majordomo may
mistakenly believe each line of your message is a command; you will
then receive spurious error messages.* To keep this from happening,
either put a line starting with a hyphen ("-") before your signature,
or put a line with just the word
<SNIP>
It understands the following commands:
* * subscribe <list> [<address>]
Subscribe yourself (or <address> if specified) to the named <list>.
* * unsubscribe <list> [<address>]
Unsubscribe yourself (or <address> if specified) from the named <list>.
"unsubscribe *" will remove you (or <address>) from all lists.* This
_may not_ work if you have subscribed using multiple addresses.
* * get <list> <filename>
* * * * Get a file related to <list>.
* * index <list>
* * * * Return an index of files you can "get" for <list>.
* * which [<address>]
Find out which lists you (or <address> if specified) are on.
* * who <list>
Find out who is on the named <list>.
* * info <list>
Retrieve the general introductory information for the named <list>.
* * intro <list>
Retrieve the introductory message sent to new users.* Non-subscribers
may not be able to retrieve this.
* * lists
Show the lists served by this Majordomo server.
* * help
Retrieve this message.
* * end
Stop processing commands (useful if your mailer adds a signature).
Many of the switches in the DA CP for majordomo relate to who can access the functions by email. If you setup large email lists, spammers (or competitors) could potentially retrieve all of the lists and all of the email addresses on those lists from your majordomo server by sending it commands through the email interface. The default settings are wide open, so if you use a lot of lists and are concerned about this, you will want to use the DA CP to set the commands for "Who access" and "Which access" to "Closed."
In general, syntax is critical in majordomo email commands. A punctuation mark out of place will yield an error message more often than not. On the other hand, majordomo tends to be very forgiving in that it is difficult to accidentally send the wrong command and really foul something up! :)
Majordomo has a lot of great features that are not accessible via the DA CP. If you want to do some serious email list setup, you may want to explore those settings with some practice lists before you populate your lists with real addresses.