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)