[Mailman-Users] Crontab problems

[Ryan Hammond]

Wow, what luck. I solved this problem on my own system just today. ;P
You have quite a few options presented to you, depending on your system 
setup.
What I ended up doing was just changing the user apache runs under. Quick, 
easy, one file to change. Just jed /etc/apache/httpd.conf and somewhere in 
the "Main" configuration, there are 2 lines of User ____ and Group ____. 
(These lines were numbered 292 and 293 for me, just under the port)
I just changed User to mailman, and with my system setup, thats worked fine.
After you change the line, you need to run: apachectl restart to makeit load 
the CGI properly. **NOTE!!!* I had no need to, and you probably have no need 
to change the GROUP that apache runs under. It caused problems for me and 
might for you too.
Also, depending on your mailman install, you may not have given wrapper 
access to it under those names, so you could have to tinker with Defaults.py 
or recompiling to get everything in line.


The reason your file changes ownership is because Mailman is doing a very 
silly thing. Every time it updates the config.db file (which I believe is 
what holds ALL list configuration, members, etc) it renames the current 
config.db to config.db.old and then makes a NEW config.db file. Because it 
creates a new one, whatever program you're running that altered the list, be 
it apache, console, Zope, or whatever else you've got lying around, its 
gunna change the owner to whatever user that runs under.

Because anything that alters it is going to take ownership of it, you can 
either force other programs to run as whatever user / group mailman is 
under, or you can recompile mailman to be able to read those users/groups 
files as well, with the set-group-id, set-cgi-id or whatever functions that 
are mentioned on www.list.org's installation page.(I didn't try that, so if 
you do, I couldn't help you) Tinker and good luck.
>From: Michael Keukert <pmk at scp.de>
>To: mailman-users at python.org
>Subject: [Mailman-Users] Crontab problems
>Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 18:12:22 +0200
>
>Hi,
>
>after installing the most recent mailman on my system - AND after
>following all steps in the INSTALL as correct as possible, I keep
>getting the following error messages:
>
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727): Traceback (most recent call 
>last):
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):   File 
>"/home/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 222, in ?
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):      main()
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):   File 
>"/home/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 203, in main
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):      process_lists(lock)
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):   File 
>"/home/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 140, in process_lists
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):      mlist = 
>MailList.MailList(listname, lock=0)
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):   File 
>"/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 79, in __init__
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):      self.Load()
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):   File 
>"/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 892, in Load
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):      dict, e = 
>self.__load(dbfile)
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):   File 
>"/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 869, in __load
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727):      fp = open(dbfile)
> > Jul 17 18:10:02 2002 gate_news(28727): IOError :  [Errno 13] Permission 
>denied: '/home/mailman/lists/test/config.db'
>
>Actually the permissions of that very file vary from all other mailman
>permissions:
>
> > catbert:/home/mailman/lists/test # la
> > total 48
> > drwxrwsr-x   2 root     mailman      4096 Jul 17 18:07 .
> > drwxrwsr-x   3 mailman  mailman      4096 Jul 17 17:56 ..
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman      1706 Jul 17 17:56 
>admindbpreamble.html
> > -rw-rw----   1 wwwrun   mailman      2796 Jul 17 18:07 config.db
> > -rw-rw----   1 wwwrun   mailman      2796 Jul 17 18:07 config.db.last
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman       189 Jul 17 17:56 handle_opts.html
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman      1026 Jul 17 17:56 headfoot.html
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman      3136 Jul 17 17:56 listinfo.html
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman         0 Jul 17 17:56 next-digest
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman         0 Jul 17 17:56 
>next-digest-topics
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman      4106 Jul 17 17:56 options.html
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman      1169 Jul 17 17:56 roster.html
> > -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mailman       198 Jul 17 17:56 subscribe.html
>
>Where "wwwrun" is the user under which Apache runs on my system.
>
>Any ideas?
>
>Thanks!
>
>--
>Michael Keukert * SCP Software GmbH * http://www.scp.de
>Auf der Huels 120 * D-52068 Aachen * Tel: 0241-96830-0 * Fax: -50
>PGP Fingerprint: A4A8 EA96 166D 736D  14E8 7D86 2784 CA16
>
>
>
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