[Mailman-Users] Mailman website problems. some cgi's work, some don't

Fri Apr 11 01:51:45 CEST 2003

At 23:30 10/04/2003, ben strawbridge wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I have posted this in the past, but not recieved a reply.
>
>I can access all the user pages fine, to edit a user and login to change
>user prefs, so I am assuming that CGI is working correctly -- Is this a
>good assumption?
>
>When I go to log in to the Administrative page, I get an error
>"Authorization Failed" from mailman.

A bit more detail might help get you more assistance. What OS, what version 
of MM what version of Python? What URL is giving the failure? What URLs are 
working? What did you put in your httpd.conf for Mailman? Are you using the 
correct password for the list?

>I am positive this has nothing to do with cookie settings on my browser,
>I have checked it from multiple browsers, running on every platform
>available -- and I checked to be sure the browsers was correctly saving
>cookies, and it is b/c other sites are using them just fine.
>
>As a test, one which i don't know if it means the right thing, I ran
>cgi-bin/admin program from the command line. -- the error message is at
>the bottom of this messgae -- I just ran it as my own user through the
>ssh shell, so it is probably not the right user anyway... however it may
>be something.

This is probably a red herring.

The CGI programs in $prefix/cgi-bin are wrappers written in C. Among other 
things, they check the gid under which the wrapper is being executed. The 
wrapper will then only run its associated Python script from 
$prefix/Mailman/Cgi if the gid is the one it expects, usually the one set 
by the Group directive in your Apache server's httpd.conf, and defined with 
the --with-cgi-gid option on the ./configure during MM  installation,

This is why running Mailman CGI scripts in $prefix/cgi-bin from the command 
line using your own uid will usually fail, reporting the expected gid is 
wrong.

You will find the same is also true if you try to run MM's scripts to 
deliver mail to MM  with a gid that is other than the one designated by 
--with-mail-gid option for ./configure.

>This was installed from rpm, and i did a find on my system and there is
>no source installed on the system, so i'm not sure where to begin if i
>need to reconfigure, ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!
>
><head>
><title>Mailman CGI error!!!</title>
></head><body>
><h1>Mailman CGI error!!!</h1>
>The expected gid of the Mailman CGI wrapper did not match the gid as set
>by the Web server.<p>The most likely cause is that Mailman was
>configured and installed incorrectly.  Please read the INSTALL
>instructions again, paying close attention to the
><tt>--with-cgi-gid</tt> configure option.  This entry is being stored in
>your syslog:
><pre>
>Failure to exec script. WANTED gid 48, GOT gid 501.  (Reconfigure to
>take 501?)</pre>
>
>
>Ben Strawbridge - Senior Interface Engineer
>-------------------------------------------------
>Cenozoa Corporation
>33 Little West 12th St. #106A
>New York, NY 10014
>http://www.cenozoa.com