Is the List Down??
What I've written below is probably very
obvious to the vast majority of the people subscribed to this
list, and I apologize to you in advance.
But based on the "Hey, is the list
alive?", or "Testing, testing 1,2,3...anyone
there?" messages that appeared here when the list came back
on the air this time (and also previous times), I thought I'd
share my list of very simple things I do when I find
myself suddenly cut off from my normal flow of Miata list
messages.
I hope other, more technically astute
people will point out my errors or contribute their own tips.
What I do when I stop receiving Miata list
messages
- Go out and drive my Miata...
...or do many other enjoyable things, rather than worry
about not getting Miata list messages. It'll probably fix
itself eventually. But if I just can't wait, then...
- I make sure NOT to send e-mail
to "miata@list.miata.net"
No matter how tempting it is when the list is broken,
sending a message like "Testing testing...anyone
there?" to the hundreds of people on this list
really provides me with very little useful information.
Like Gary mentioned earlier, it's like asking "Are
you awake?" to someone in bed who's snoring loudly.
If he isn't awake, he won't be responding to my message.
If he *was* awake, he would be talking to me already and
probably asking me what I was doing in his bed annoying
him with my stupid questions :-)
- Check if I've been getting
other pieces of email from the outside world:
Have I been getting other email from other lists? Or
email from other people? If I send email from my work
account to my ISP do I receive it? If I send email to an
autoresponder, will I get a message back? If the answer
to these questions is yes, then most likely, my service
provider is functioning properly, and I'll start checking
the state of the Miata listserver machine. If the answer
is no, then something must be wrong with my ISP and it's
not the Miata list machine's fault.
- Check if the listserver
machine is alive:
On my ISP, I have a UNIX shell account (not a dial-up
POP) and I'll use the "ping" command to
determine if the Miata listserver is still alive. I think
the machine where the listserver software is called
"list.miata.net", so I do:
ping list.miata.net
If the listserver machine is responding, I'll get this
message...
list.realbig.com is
alive
If I get a "not responding" message, that's
probably a bad sign and indicates that the listserver
machine is not doing too well. I'll just wait a while and
check again later.
- Check if I'm still subscribed
to the miata list:
I'll send a message to " listserv@list.miata.net " with the command "set
miata" in the body of the message. If things are ok,
I'll get back an e-mail message automatically from the
listserver with the body of the message containing
something like this...
Current settings are:
MAIL = ACK
If it says instead that I'm not subscribed to the miata
list, I'll either resubscribe to the list or mail a
message to list administrator to ask what's up. If I don't get back a
return message in a reasonable amount of time, then I
know something is wrong with the listserver machine, and
I'll wait a while before checking again.
- Check if new messages have
been posted to the list:
If the machine list.miata.net is alive, and I'm
still not getting any new messages, I'll use ftp to
retrieve a file (or files) containing an archive of
todays messages from the listserver machine:
ftp list.miata.net
ftp> cd
pub/mailing-lists/miata
ftp> mget todays_messages*
ftp> quit
The filenames for today's messages are:
todays_messages-1, todays_messages-2, etc. I'll check
both the dates of the file and the date of the last
article in the file. If the files are missing, or they
look unusually small, or if it hasn't been updated in a
long while, then I know something is wrong with the
listserver and I'll just wait till it fixes itself. Hope
this helps someone. Happy motoring and list'ing!