# Set your GNU mailman away message
In my formative years working odd jobs in IT at small startups, I have to admit I never had enough time off to warrant an out-of-office auto-response.
Recently, though, I've discovered that some companies promote a healthy work-life balance and not only enable but encourage employees to take a break.
As with the all-powerful `sudo` command, however, with great power comes great responsibility, and a holiday demands an away message.
## GNU Mailman
GNU Mailman is one of the most common open source mailing list services.
It's self-hostable, there's a [fancy web UI called Postorius](
https://gitlab.com/mailman/postorius)/ that not near enough people deploy, and it's both reliable and effective.
There are a lot of options, though, so here's how to find and modify your auto-responder.
### 1. Log in as a list administrator.
I use the open source [Bitwarden](
https://bitwarden.com/) to manage my passwords, so I open Bitwarden and click on the weblink to the mailing list admin panel, which otherwise I'd never remember myself.
However you get there, you must be a list administrator to change list functions.
If you're not a list administrator, your admin can add you from the **General Options** page, which is by default the first screen after logging in.
### 2. Navigate to the auto-responder panel
Once you've logged in as an administrator, look through the main menu of Mailman at the top of the front page.
Find **Auto-responder** and click the link.
### 3. Set your away message
There are lots of options for the auto-responder, but the good news is that you decide what's actually important.
Your options mostly come in couples: first you're asked whether you want to auto-respond to a specific group of users, and then you're asked what the auto-response ought to be.
**Respond to mailing list posters?** Select this if you want to respond to people who post messages to your list. You probably want this when your team is going to be out but normally would respond to posts promptly.
If you do choose this option, set your message in the next block.
**Respond to mailing list owner?** Select this if you're the owner of the list and expect to receive emails about the list itself. In some organizations, this is important for mitigation of list abuse.
**Respond to list requests?** The **-request** address is an automatically-generated email address for your mailing list that accepts mailing list commands from users. It's designed to enable automation and user autonomy, and they aren't intended for humans. They speak directly to Mailman. You probably do not want to auto-respond to these emails.
If you're nervous about your Mailman robot receiving commands from users in your absence, you do have the ability to discard them. Alternately, you can let the commands be processed, and auto-respond anyway.
### 4. Set the number of responses to send
I hear horror stories of auto-responders responding to auto-responders, creating an infinite loop of out-of-office emails until the server crashes from insufficient disk space.
You know your own mailing list best, so set your own value here, but I set mine to 90 days.
Realistically, that means that anyone who mails my list while I'm on even a 2 week holiday gets an auto-response just once.
That's it. With these settings, you can control how your list responds to email while you're away from the office.
## Automate it
Mailing lists are an important way to facilitate communication, and to keep your communities and teams organized.
Don't be afraid to use the features of your mailing list!
