[Mailman-Users] Error during 1st install

[Richard Barrett]

At 10:27 19/07/2002 -0400, David Mir wrote:

Your problem isn't essentially a Mailman one and is probably not a Python 
one either. The Python socket module is only a thin layer over the standard 
UNIX socket library.

You are being told that the DNS on the machine is failing to resolve the 
hostname of the machine.

You can try running python from the command line and calling the socket 
functions and see what you get. For instance on my laptop system I get:

barrett at wickwar:~ > hostname
wickwar
barrett at wickwar:~ > python
Python 2.1 (#1, May 16 2001, 03:35:09)
[GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
 >>> import socket
 >>> socket.gethostname()
'wickwar'
 >>> socket.gethostbyaddr(socket.gethostname())
('wickwar.ftel.co.uk', ['wickwar'], ['172.16.5.70'])
 >>> socket.gethostbyaddr(socket.gethostname())[0]
'wickwar.ftel.co.uk'
 >>>

If in contrast I said (referring to a non-existent host):

 >>> socket.gethostbyaddr('wackwar')
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
socket.error: host not found
 >>>

You could also try the following from the command line to see if the DNS 
can look up the hostname:

hostname | xargs nslookup
Server:  your.dns.server.name
Address:  your dns.server.ip

Name:    wickwar.ftel.co.uk
Address:  172.16.5.70


If when you try this you do not get plausible results that fit with what 
you believe your system config is then you need to look at the networking 
related configuration of your machine.



>My first question is is there a way to search the archive of mailman mailing
>list?  If so can some one send me a link it will cut down on any repetitive
>posting by me :)
>
>As long as I'm here though my question is :
>
>I'm running a straight RH7.3 system (updated via up2date) I am running 
>courier
>as MTA and I have successfully added my mailman aliases etc.  I installed
>mailman via RPM (mailman-2.0.11-1) everything "seemed to install fine, and
>even the web page comes up, newlists, checkperm all work.  yet when I try to
>subscribe to a list (via web) this error pops up in the browser:
>********************************************************************************
>Bug in Mailman version 2.0.11
>
>We're sorry, we hit a bug!
>
>Please inform the webmaster for this site of this problem. Printing of
>traceback and other system information has been explicitly inhibited, but the
>webmaster can find this information in the Mailman error logs.
>********************************************************************************
>
>
>Mailman error log looks like this:
>
>Jul 19 10:11:21 2002 admin(29069):
>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>admin(29069): [----- Mailman Version: 2.0.11 -----]
>admin(29069): [----- Traceback ------]
>admin(29069): Traceback (innermost last):
>admin(29069):   File "/var/mailman/scripts/driver", line 96, in run_main
>admin(29069):     main()
>admin(29069):   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/subscribe.py", line 76, in main
>admin(29069):     process_form(mlist, doc)
>admin(29069):   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/subscribe.py", line 187, in
>process_form
>admin(29069):     mlist.AddMember(email, pw, digest, remote)
>admin(29069):   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 1007, in
>AddMember
>admin(29069):     text)
>admin(29069):   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Message.py", line 211, in __init__
>admin(29069):     OutgoingMessage.__init__(self, text)
>admin(29069):   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Message.py", line 205, in __init__
>admin(29069):     self['Message-ID'] = Utils.make_msgid(idstring='Mailman')
>admin(29069):   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Utils.py", line 769, in make_msgid
>admin(29069):     idhost = socket.gethostbyaddr(socket.gethostname())[0]
>admin(29069): error: host not found
>admin(29069): [----- Python Information -----]
>admin(29069): sys.version    = 1.5.2 (#1, Apr  3 2002, 18:16:26)  [GCC 2.96
>20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.2 2
>admin(29069): sys.executable = /usr/bin/python
>admin(29069): sys.prefix     = /usr
>admin(29069): sys.exec_prefix= /usr
>admin(29069): sys.path       = /usr
>admin(29069): sys.platform   = linux-i386
>~~~~then some stuff about html (no errors though!)~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>I see the "host not found" but the server's DNS works fine (including
>localhost, etc.) The mailman folder is owned by root and mailman group (it
>did complain about some perm when I first executed check perm, but I fixed
>it).
>
>Any ideas?
>
>Thanks
>
>--
>David Mir
>System Administrator
>Soar Technology, Inc.
>3600 Green Ct, Ste 600
>Ann Arbor, MI  48105-2588
>734-327-8000 ext. 222
>734-913-8537 (Fax)
>www.soartech.com
>mir at soartech.com
>
>
>
>
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