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The term “remote administration” is used to denote the ability of a list administrator by email to add or remove any email address from the subscriber list without the cooperation of the user. Normally, when ‘user@userhost’ sends a message to ‘list-subscribe-other=otherhost@listhost’ to subscribe ‘other@otherhost’, the confirmation request goes to ‘other@otherhost’. However, if remote administration is enabled and ‘user@userhost’ is a moderator, a confirmation request (with a different action code) is sent back to ‘user@userhost’ instead. The reply from the administrator is suppressed in the welcome message sent to the new subscriber (‘other@otherhost’). This protects the identity of the remote administrator.
Remote administration is enabled by creating DIR/remote and adding the remote administrator email address(es) to DIR/mod/:
% ezmlm-sub DIR mod remoteadm@host
To use an alternative basedir for remote administrators, place that directory name with a leading ‘/’ in DIR/modsub. Remote administrators and subscription moderators databases always consist of the same email addresses. If both are enabled and one of DIR/modsub and DIR/remote contains an alternative basedir name, this basedir is used for both functions. If both DIR/modsub and DIR/remote contain directory names, the one in DIR/modsub is used for both functions.
Remote administrators can add and remove addresses to the digest list, the ‘allow’ list (user aliases for lists using SENDER restrictions on posting and archive access), and if used the ‘deny’ list containing addresses that are denied posting rights to the list. The latter is easy to circumvent and intended to block errant mail robots, rather than human users.