Mail Lists

Reviewed by Brian White 4/11/2012

Both the Computer Science Department and the campus have mail servers, which allow you to easily send email to groups of people.  The Computer Science Department maintains three forms of email lists, and the campus has one list server.  These are described below, along with some frequently used lists in the department.  To have a list created, send a request to help@cs.unc.edu.  The default for a departmental list is to use a Google group, since they are simple to use and users can set them up on their own.

Google Groups

In Google, groups serve both as mail lists and for giving permissions.  Many of the standard department mail lists are handled via Google groups now, e.g., faculty, staff, and grads.  These are system-wide groups that everyone can see, but it is also possible for users to make their own groups.  For more information on Google Groups, see http://www.cs.unc.edu/cms/help/help-articles/google-groups.

Computer Science flat file lists

The older form of email list is a flat text file, which can be easily read and modified from within UNIX.  The files are accessible from either of two UNIX servers, login.cs.unc.edu and compute.cs.unc.edu, in this directory:

/usr/local/lib/mail-list

This directory contains close to a hundred files, each of which contains email addresses, and the file name is the same as the list name.  To send mail to one of these lists, you address your email to listname@cs.unc.edu, where listname is the name of the list.

Mailman lists

The newer form of email list on the department's mail server is called a 'mailman' list, because it uses the mailman list management package.  Users can administer their own mailman lists via the web.  The mailman web interface provides a great number of options, including the option to exclude email from users not on the list.  To send mail to a mailman list, you address your email to listname@cs.unc.edu, where listname is the name of the list, exactly as you would do with a flat file list or a Google group, above.  If you need the extensive control afforded by mailman lists, send email to help@cs.unc.edu, and specify that you want a mailman list and why.  If we cannot provide the same function with a Google group, Computer Services will set up the list, with the requester of the the list as owner, and mailman will send the owner a random password.  The email to the list administrator also includes a link to the web administration page for the newly created list.  Publicly visible email lists in the department can be viewed at https://fafnir.cs.unc.edu/mailman/listinfo.

The UNC-CH Lyris Listserver

ITS runs a Lyris List Server, and you can access the user interface for the campus list server at http://mail.unc.edu/lists.  You can send mail to a list on this server at listname@listserv.unc.edu, where listname is the name of the list.  Besides the web interface, list commands, such as subscribe or review, may also be sent directly to the server for processing with an email to listserv@unc.edu.  ITS plans to replace the Lyris List Server in the near future, but the details so far are sketchy.

Some frequently used lists in the department:

adminstaff - Administrative staff

classes-only - Non-majors with Computer Science class accounts.

dfc - Departmental Facilities Committee, aka Facilities and Web Committee

facil-all - All Computer Services employees

computer-services - Full-time Computer Services employees

faculty - Faculty whose main appointment is in this department and who have an office here.

faculty-other - Adjunct faculty, retired faculty, and visiting faculty.

fac-meeting - Faculty, faculty-other, postdocs, and staff with an interest in the faculty meetings.

glabcomm - Graphics Lab Committee - graphics faculty

grads - Computer Science graduate students

majors - Declared computer science undergraduate majors

rsac - Research Support and Communications staff

staff - All staff members

The "standard" naming convention for class mail lists is

compNNN[-XXX] where NNN is the class number, and [-XXX] is the section number, if there are multiple sections.

For example,

comp051
comp410
comp790-005