[hobbit] Web page to subscribe to Hobbit email alerts

[Jeff Stoner]

On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 16:46 -0500, Maschino, Shawn (GE Advanced 
>             Hello follow Hobbit admins (hobmins?).  I’m fairly new to
> the list but have been running Hobbit for a while now.  I’ve had a
> request come to me to put a web page together to let people register
> for getting Hobbit email alerts.  It would just need to allow someone
> to select a server (or servers), the tests they want alerts for, and
> then enter their email address.  When they submit the form it would
> automatically add a line in hobbit-alerts.cfg so they would get the
> alerts.  

It would probably be much easier to manage this through your mailer than
with Hobbit. A couple thoughts:

- have script edit the /etc/mail/aliases (or whatever your mail handling
program uses)
- set up a user account, configure procmail with that account then have
your script modify that

Considerations:

1. The first approach above would possibly require root privs somewhere
along the line (either modifying the file or rebuilding the aliases
database) Again, this depends entirely on your mail handling software.

2. Approach number 2 helps isolate failures with malformed email
addresses to the procmail facility. When Hobbit gets an alert, it will
never be adversely affected by a bad email address. Procmail might so
you need to be careful writing the .procmailrc file.

3. Editing the hobbit-alerts.cfg directly from a cgi script leaves you
vulnerable. People screw up. If they screw up bad enough, they could
really futz up your alerting which would be a really Bad Thing(tm) all
around. Avoid doing this if possible, especially when you may not know
who is utilizing your system.

A better solution would be to use a listserv. There are several mailing
list software packages out there that can be employed...which would
provide:

- possibly a web interface already exists for people to
subscribe/unsucscribe (why reinvent the wheel?)
- the ability to make a moderated list so people couldn't spam everyone
else unnecessarily (think: Out of Office notices or bounce messages)
- archiving of the alerts for auditing purposes
- more clear division between alerting by Hobbit and mail handling by
the list software

Choose your fate.

-- 
--Jeff
"Go to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200."