[Mailman-Users] DEFAULT_HOST_NAME change

[berto at gsbrgo.uchicago.edu]

Folks:

We have a working Mailman 1.0 installation on a machine named

  xyz.uppity.edu

We want to move our installation to a machine named

  xyzpop.uppity.edu

(Actually, the system's hostname is 'xyzpop'.  'xyz' is an alias for 'xyzpop'.
We have to set up a new machine with hostname 'xyz' that will be our new Web
server.  By means of mx records, we will be redirecting mail traffic from
the new 'xyz' to 'xyzpop'.)

As an experiment, I wrote a simple Perl filter.  All it does is substitute
the string

  xyzpop.uppity.edu

for the string

  xyz.uppity.edu

in the test list's config.db file.

Now, when I try to access the list, Mailman gives the complaint

raceback (innermost last):
  File "/opt/mailman/scripts/driver", line 112, in run_main
    main()
  File "/opt/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admin.py", line 65, in main
    lst = MailList.MailList(list_name)
  File "/opt/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 61, in __init__
    self.Load()
  File "/opt/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 809, in Load
    raise Errors.MMBadListError, ('Failed to unmarshal config info: '
TypeError: __add__ nor __radd__ defined for these operands

The code in MailList.py reads:

        try:
            dict = marshal.load(file)
            if type(dict) <> DictType:
                raise Errors.MMBadListError, \
                      'Unmarshaled config info is not a dictionary'
        except (EOFError, ValueError, TypeError), e:
            raise Errors.MMBadListError, ('Failed to unmarshal config info: '

I seem to be experiencing some sort of EOF error.

I verified (through a 'wc -c' and 'ls -l') that the replacement config.db
is exactly 9 bytes longer than the original config.db:  the added 'pop' times
three, for the three times that 'xyz.uppity.edu' appears in the source
config.db.  So I don't think the Perl filter added any extraneous
characters, or subtracted anything, beyond the desired substitution.

As an experiment, I tried editing the original config.db with Emacs.  Same
result.

So, is my naive strategy for doing this translation doomed?  Will we be
forced to set up an entirely new installation as 'xyzpop.uppity.edu', and
subject our 350+ list owners, not to mention our thousands upon thousands
of list members, the agony of starting again from scratch?

Please tell me it ain't so!

Bob Osterlund

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Osterlund, Unix Systems Manager                berto at gsbrgo.uchicago.edu
Grad School of Business, U of Chicago                       phone: 773/702-8898
1101 E. 58th Street, #309, Chicago, IL 60637, USA             fax: 773/702-0233