The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Steve Shipway <address@concealed>]

(Please bear with me; this is Sympa related, I promise you).

 

There is a meme currently spreading over the Internet to honour the memory of the author Terry Pratchett by adding a hidden header to various transmissions (HTTP, SMTP, etc), in the same way as mentioned in his book “Going Postal”.  (If you don’t know who Terry Pratchett is, then take a visit to your local library or bookstore.  Your brain will love you.)

 

The header added is X-Clacks-Overhead.  This refers to the transmission data in his semaphore-based email system devised in the book Going Postal; the ‘GNU’ is the code for ‘Send on, Do not log, bounce back’.  In the story, the names of  Clacksmen who died on the job are constantly transmitted over the network because “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”

 

If anyone is interested in how to achieve this extra header using Sympa, then wonder no longer!

 

To add to the headers of a single mailing list

·         Go to the list Admin page, then Edit List Config

·         Go to Sending/Receiving Setup

·         Scroll down to Custom Header Field (custom_header)

·         Add this:  
 X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

 

To add to outgoing headers on all mailing lists

·         Edit your sympa.conf configuration file

·         Add this line, with a blank line above and below: 
custom_header X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

 

To add to your Apache webserver HTTP headers

·         Find your HTTP configuration directory ( often /etc/httpd/conf.d )

·         Add the new file gnu.conf with the following lines:
<IfModule headers_module>
header set X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Terry Pratchett"
</IfModule>

·         Depending on your other configuration, it may be necessary to add this line to your httpd.conf
Include: conf.d/gnu.conf

·         Reload your web server ( /etc/init.d/httpd reload )

 

To add to outgoing emails using Postfix
Note that this is different to the way recommended by Reddit as mail goes both in and out with Sympa and we don’t want to add the header twice)

·         Find your postfix directory (usually /etc/postfix )

·         Add this line to  header_checks:
/^X-Loop:/i PREPEND X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

·         Make sure this line in main.cf is uncommented:
header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/header_checks

·         Reload Postfix ( /etc/init.d/postfix reload )

 

Maybe, many years from now, someone will notice this strange header still being transmitted by an old webserver or mailserver, and will discover a whole world of new books.  And he will live on.

 

Steve

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11474455/Terry-Pratchett-will-live-on-in-the-clacks-thanks-to-fans-programming-code.html

 

 

Steve Shipway

University of Auckland

UNIX Systems Design Team Lead

address@concealed

+64 (9) 3737 599 ext 86487

(GNU Terry Pratchett)

 

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