[Mailman-Users] Sending mail to lists gets stuck

[Reuven M. Lerner]

I've just installed Mailman on a Red Hat 7.2 machine (with all
non-kernel updates).  I used the RPM version (2.0.13-1).  We're
running the stock Sendmail version, also from an RPM (8.11.6-3).

Everything seemed trivially easy until it came time to send mail to
members of a list.  The list members receive a welcome message.  I can
send e-mail from the machine to the members, and vice-versa.

The only trouble, mail-wise, appears to be the Mailman lists: Anything
that I send to a list disappears into a black hole, or so it seems.
That is, if I send e-mail to the "reuventest" list, I see the
following in the Sendmail logs:

    Sep 26 16:34:07 mail sendmail[32214]: g8QDY7j32213:
    to="|/var/mailman/mail/wrapper post reuventest",
    ctladdr=<reuventest at THEORG.org.il> (8/0), delay=00:00:00,
    xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=30047, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent

Following this, I get nothing at all.  In other words, the e-mail
reached Mailman, but Mailman didn't pass the message along to members
of the list.  Nothing appears in the archives either.

I followed the directions included in the RPM for configuring for Red
Hat Linux.  I also used check_perms, and discovered that the
permissions used by the RPM aren't acceptable to Mailman, since they
use gid 0 rather than the "mailman" user's gid.  I used "check_perms
-f" to fix this, and now check_perms indicates that everything is OK.

We're running behind a firewall with only ports 25 (SMTP), 53 (DNS),
and 110 (POP3) open.  But I find it hard to believe that the firewall
is causing any trouble here.  Neither the FAQ nor the manual were of
any obvious help.

Has anyone else encountered this?  If so, I would be happy to hear
ways to get around this very puzzling problem.

Reuven