[Mailman-Users] htdig error

[Richard Barrett]

Paul

On Thursday, August 28, 2003, at 08:27  pm, Paul H Byerly wrote:

> I've got ht://dig working nicely, but I get an error message each time 
> the nightly cron job runs:
>
> From: root at svr01.thcwd.com (Cron Daemon)
> To: mailman at svr01.thcwd.com
> Subject: Cron <mailman at svr01> /usr/local/bin/python2.2 -S 
> /usr/local/mailman/cron/nightly_htdig
> X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/sh>
> X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/var/mailman>
> X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/usr/bin:/bin>
> X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=mailman>
>
> /bin/sort: /opt/www/htdig/db/sort99SAvz: Permission denied
> htmerge: Word sort failed
>
> /bin/sort: /opt/www/htdig/db/sortTjcbiZ: Permission denied
> htmerge: Word sort failed
>
>
>      The cron job and /opt/www/htdig/db/ both have the permissions 
> root:mailman .  The /opt/www/htdig/db/ has no files in it.  My 
> /opt/www/htdig/conf/htdig.conf reads:
>
> database_dir:           /opt/www/htdig/db
>

When rundig is executed by nightly_htdig it uses the -c option so that 
the per-list htdig configuration file found as 
$prefix/archives/private/<listname>/htdig/<listname>.conf is used.

>      My individual list folders 
> (../mailman/archives/private/<LISTNAME>/htdig/) have the proper files 
> and they update correctly.  Everything seems to run correctly.  Is 
> this ht://dig "going back to it's roots" and trying to do something I 
> have no need for?
>
Take a look at the /opt/www/htdig/bin/rundig shell script.

My rundig, as installed by the standard htdig 3.1.6 build default, 
takes the default $DBDIR from the build and nominates it as the $TMPDIR 
when running htmerge. This probably explains why htmerge is using that 
directory for temporary sort files.

Why you are seeing the permissions failure if the cron job is being run 
from the mailman uid's crontab, and if that uid has write permissions 
over the /opt/www/htdig/db directory, is more of a mystery. You could 
try modifying the rundig script to try using another area like /tmp 
(but note the cautions in the rundig script's comments) and see if that 
resolves the problem.

Richard
> <>< Paul
>
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Richard Barrett                               http://www.openinfo.co.uk