1. Introduction

This HOWTO is divided into several sections. The Sendmail portion is a general discussion about Majordomo and how Majordomo interfaces with Sendmail, as well as the various ways Majordomo can be set up and the consequences of such decisions. In contrast, the rest of the HOWTO is a tutorial guiding a user through a plain installation process of Majordomo. I recommend going over the generic installation process described in the sections after Sendmail, referencing the appropriate portions of the Sendmail section when necessary (the appropriate sections are mentioned in the appropriate places). Then, read the Sendmail section carefully and decide exactly how to configure your system. Finally, a List of Terms provides definitions for some of the more abstruse terms.

Also, if the official sites for downloading any of the software mentioned in this document are down, the tarballs can be found at my web site.

1.1. Credits

Thanks go out (in alphabetical order) to a few people for their invaluable help.

Lee Archie for proofreading
James Bruce and Bill Poston for the opportunity to set up my first permanent machine running Majordomo
Joseph D. Sloan for reading the Sendmail portion and making helpful suggestions

1.2. References

Although I have tried to make this HOWTO as complete as possible, it is always a good idea to look at more than one source. Below is a list of the resources that I found helpful when trying to configure Majordomo for the first time.

Books:

Bryan Costales with Eric Allman, sendmail. Cambridge: O'Reilly, 1997.
Alan Schwartz, Managing Mailing Lists. Cambridge: O'Reilly, 1998.

Free resources:

the documentation accompanying Sendmail especially README.cf
the documentation accompanying Majordomo especially INSTALL and NEWLIST
the Majordomo-Users Mailing List Archive.
the documentation accompanying MajorCool