[Mailman-Users] Trouble getting htdig to work

[Richard Barrett]

At 22:57 08/02/2003, Paul Kleeberg wrote:
>Hooray!  (And thank you)  It works!  ...but there is still a troubling 
>message...
>
>At 6:23 PM +0000 2/8/03, Richard Barrett wrote:
>>At 16:53 08/02/2003, Paul Kleeberg wrote:
>>>I am attempting to get htdig to work on a RedHat 8.0 system with Apache 
>>>2.0, htdig 3.2.0 and Mailman 2.1
>>>
>>>[install steps deleted.  PK]
>>>
>>>and then ran the indexing engine:
>>>
>>>   /var/mailman/cron/nightly_htdig -v
>>>
>>>and I get:
>>>
>>>   /usr/bin/rundig: line 48:  1104 Aborted       $BINDIR/htnotify $opts
>>>   htfuzzy: Unable to open word database /var/lib/htdig/db.words.db
>>>
>>>but I would think htfuzzy should look in:
>>>
>>>   /var/mailman/archives/private/<listname>/htdig/db.words.db
>>
>>Have you checked out the section under heading "htdig Permissions 
>>Considerations"[...]
>
>Guilty as charged.  I confess my eyes glazed over and assumed that these 
>would be correct given they were part of the RedHat RPMs. Permissions 
>corrected and the installation showed me a warning I had not seen before 
>in between the two lines that appeared once again:
>
>   htdig'ing archive of list: <listname>
>   /usr/bin/rundig: line 48:  1425 Aborted     $BINDIR/htnotify $opts
>    Warning:
>          The following is a lengthly process, but it is run only
>          the first time you start ht://Dig. Initializing database...
>    Warning:
>          The following is a lengthly process, but it is run only
>          the first time you start ht://Dig. Initializing database...
>   htfuzzy: Unable to open word database /var/lib/htdig/db.words.db
>
>Still that odd error.  Searching for the db.words.db file, I find:
>
>   /var/mailman/archives/private/<listname>/htdig/db.words.db
>   /var/mailman/archives/private/<listname>/htdig/db.words.db_weakcmpr
>
>but the search appears to work and it appears to fuzzify it finding "fancy 
>or fancied or fancying or fanciness or fancier or fancies or fanciest or 
>fanciers" when searching "fancy"
>
>>>In addition, when I look at the source for the search form on an archive 
>>>page I see <form method="post" action="/cgi-bin/htsearch">. But on my 
>>>system, htsearch exists in /usr/bin.
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>If all else fails, as root, copy htsearch into the web server's cgi-bin 
>>directory and make sure that it readable and excutable but not writable 
>>by owner, group and other.
>
>I did what you said it appears to work.  However, since I continually 
>update my system with the RedHat up2date program, I do not like having two 
>copies of an executable unless it is necessary.  I know there is a way I 
>can alias it from the cgi-bin directory and still have it executable even 
>though it is outside the cgi directory "blessed" by apache but I have to 
>look that one up (unless someone can tell me) :-/  I'm pretty 
>inexperienced in all this.

I guess you could put a symbolic link in the server's cgi-bin directory to 
wherever the htsearch  is installed by the htdig RPM. But then you've got 
the issue of getting Apache to follow the link, and generally it is bad 
security to tell the server to follow links out into your main file system 
rather than restricting it to working under the ServerRoot. I'll get access 
to a Redhat running sytem and try an check out the Redhat RPMs. If/when 
I've got some useful input I'll e-mail you.

>Should I just live with the db.words.db issue?  Will it matter?

This may be an htdig version related issue. The testing I did was with the 
'production' htdig 3.1.6; that's what I am running on my 'production' 
system. On checking the htdig.org web site, htdig 3.2 still seems to be at 
beta status. But it appears from what you say that Redhat are including it 
as a 'production' RPM.

On Monday I will try bringing up htdig 3.2-latest-I-can-find on my test 
system and see I can reproduce the problem you are seeing. I'll get back to 
you after I've fooled around with that.

>Thanks for your work.  This looks great.

Glad its working, after a fashion, for you.

>Paul
>--
>Paul Kleeberg
>paul at fpen.org