Re: [Exim] Getting lists of users from odd databases?

On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 12:12:50PM +0000, Yann Golanski wrote:

> How are your students downloading mail? If it is via POP there is a
> clever trick (tm) you can do -- basicly check if the last time they
> logged was before the new newsletter and if so, copy it to their
> maildir.

Most use imap. Unfortunatly, this is not an option as we deliver users
to a number of machines that are run by depts - we have no access or control
of these machines.

> Otherwise, it's a mailman setup I'm afraid.

Hmmm...

> I like your idea of doing a mailing list per course and year. Then you
> could build some aliases such as
> all-astro: astro-1, astro-2, astro-3, astro-4, astro-pg, astro-staff
> Of course, every year you'll need to update them -- which is probably a
> good thing (tm).


This is why I want to query the db directly. It is upto date and has enough
info to allow us to select on whatever group we want (year, course, dept,
faculty etc etc)

Dumping the data to a series of mail lists seems to be unecessary duplication
of data. Using the live data gets around all of these problems is only I
could work out how to do it :-) The idea of using the suffix of the email
addr to create a simple query would be icing on the cake. Exim seems
to have had an answer for everything I have wanted so far - surely I
can't have beaten it can I? ;-)


> > Suggestions?

> How about creating news groups that students can post/read?

The already do have. However, they "are too complicated to use" and
"nobody will read them" apparantly :-(

>
> > Senior Computing Officer
> > University of Kent
>
> Hey, that's my old Uni!

Cool! How long ago?

Cheers

Darren