Mailing Lists
Mailing lists are an important means of communication among users and developers
of OpenBSD. With the exception of announce, the lists are not moderated.
We deliberately restrict the number of different mailing lists. This helps reduce the
amount of cross-posting and makes sure that the information gets distributed to a
wide audience.
Netiquette
Be considerate of other subscribers on the mailing lists.
- Plain text, 72 characters per line
- Many subscribers read their mail on text-based mailers (mail(1), emacs) and they
find HTML-formatted messages, or lines that stretch beyond 72 characters often
unreadable. MIME encapsulated enclosures also cause problems. Only send non-text
if you have received the OK from the intended recipient. We realise that many
newcomers are stuck with Windows-based mailers that don't give them any control over
what they send, but we ask that they make a conscious effort to switch over as soon
as possible to a more reader-friendly mailer.
- Do your homework before you post
- If you have an installation question, make sure that you have read the relevant
documents such as the INSTALL.* text files in the FTP installation directories, the
FAQ and the relevant man pages (start with
afterboot(8)). Make sure you include relevant
details (version, hardware, dmesg(8)) that will help in troubleshooting. We want to
help, but we wouldn't want to deprive you of a valuable learning experience.
- Trim your signature
- Keep the signature lines at the bottom of your mail to a reasonable length. Posts
are rarely critical enough to warrant a PGP signature, and those automatic address
cards are merely annoying.
- Stay on topic
- Please keep the subject of the post relevant to users of OpenBSD.
Spam
Spam is always forbidden but sometimes things to slip through the
cracks. If you get spam through one of the OpenBSD mailing lists,
you might want to submit it to spamcop.
In general, you don't have to send a copy to the list owner--chances
are he's already seen it.
The OpenBSD mailing lists will deny mail from any host on the
MAPS RBL,
MAPS Dialup,
MAPS RSS, or
ORBS blacklists. In addition,
the list server also has regex-based rules to reject based on some
common spam telltales.
The Mailing Lists
To subscribe to a given list, send mail to
majordomo@OpenBSD.org
with a message body of "subscribe mailing-list-name".
- announce
- Important announcements. This low volume list
is excellent for people who just want occasional news about the project.
- security-announce
- Security announcements. This low volume list receives OpenBSD
security advisories and pointers to security patches as they become
available.
- misc
- User questions and answers, general questions. This is the most active list.
Please read the FAQ and the installation documents
before you post.
- tech
- Technical topics for OpenBSD developers and advanced users.
Please direct 'new user' and installation-related questions
to misc. Please do not cross-post to both
misc and tech.
- bugs
- Bug reports as sent in via sendbug(1) and follow-up discussions.
- source-changes
- Automated mailout of CVS source tree changes.
- ports
- Discussions about using and contributing to the 'ports' source tree.
- advocacy
- Promoting the use of OpenBSD. Non-technical discussions in
misc often get shunted here.
- smp
- Discussion of Symmetric Multi-Processing design and implementation
on OpenBSD.
OpenBSD also maintains several lists specific to given architectures and special
projects. These lists are public in the sense that anyone can subscribe to them, but
they should be considered reserved for developers and testers. In keeping with
the openness principle of OpenBSD, there are no private mailing lists.
For further assistance, send a message body of "help"
to majordomo@OpenBSD.org
and you will receive a reply outlining all your options. Your domain
MUST resolve properly or the mail will not go through!
The clever monkeys at monkey.org
maintain the openbsd-mobile list for people using OpenBSD
on mobile and laptop computers. To subscribe:
echo subscribe | mail openbsd-mobile-request@monkey.org
Non-English Lists
A
Japanese-language mailing list related to OpenBSD is also available
separately.
A Polish-language mailing list related to OpenBSD is also available
separately. To subscribe, send mail to
OpenBSD-request@hack.pl.
openbsd@bofh.kyrnet.kg is a
Russian-language mailing list related to OpenBSD available
separately.
To subscribe, send mail to
majordomo@bofh.kyrnet.kg.
sikurezza.org, an italian language
non-commercial security portal hosts openbsd@sikurezza.org.
To subscribe just send an empty message to openbsd-subscribe@sikurezza.org.
Mailing List Archives:
www@openbsd.org
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