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.
Most OpenBSD mailing lists strip messages of MIME content before
sending them out to the rest of the list.
If you don't use plain text your messages will be reformatted or,
if they cannot be reformatted, summarily rejected.
The only mailing list that allows attachments is the ports list,
they will be removed from messages on the other mailing lists.
- 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.
- Include a useful Subject line
- Messages with an empty Subject will get bounced to the list manager and
so they will take longer to show up. Including a relevant Subject in the message
will ensure that more people actually read what you've written.
Also, avoid Subject lines with excessive capitalization.
- 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 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. Please note that complaining about
spam on the list proper is counter-productive as it generates more
traffic than the spam itself...
The OpenBSD mailing lists will deny mail from any host on the
MAPS RBL,
MAPS Dialup or
MAPS RSS 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.
- ports-changes
- Automated mailout of ports-specific CVS source tree changes.
- ipv6
- Discussions about OpenBSD IP version 6.
- 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.
If you want to be sent a complete list with all mailing lists available
at openbsd.org, send the command "lists" on the body of
a message to
majordomo@OpenBSD.org.
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 fine folks at squish.net
run mailing lists with daily and weekly digests of the OpenBSD
source-changes mailing list. This is handy for those
who don't like the typically high volume of that list.
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
A mailing list for OpenBSD FTP, Web, AnonCVS and CVSup mirror maintainers is
available at rt.fm.
Non-English Lists
Several non-english speaking mailing lists related to OpenBSD are available
separately. Here is a list of the currently known mailing lists:
Chinese:
openbsd@shellhung.org
To subscribe, visit the URL at:
http://www.shellhung.org/mailman/listinfo/openbsd/.
Czech:
users@openbsd.cz
To subscribe, visit the URL at:
http://openbsd.cz/mailman/listinfo/users/.
Greek:
openbsd@bsd.gr
To subscribe send a mail to
majordomo@bsd.gr with a message
body of "subscribe openbsd".
Italian:
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.
Japanese: Please visit the URL at:
http://www.openbsd.ics.nara-wu.ac.jp/wakakus
for more information.
Polish: to subscribe, send mail to
OpenBSD-request@bsdzine.org.
Portuguese:
openbsd@neei.uevora.pt
To subscribe, visit the URL at:
http://neei.uevora.pt/mailman/listinfo/openbsd/.
Russian: Two lists are available.
Spanish: Two lists are available.
Mailing List Archives:
www@openbsd.org
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