[Mailman-Users] Re: Every day

[Kyle Rhorer]

On Wednesday 08 January 2003 08:40, Ivan Van Laningham wrote:
> > What makes you think that message is coming from Mailman?
> >
> > That looks like a message from stock Redhat processes.
>
> You might be right, but I never received those messages until Mailman
> was installed on RH 6.1, and I have continued to receive them daily
> through several changes/upgrades of RH to and including 7.3.  I think
> it's perfectly normal to suspect something that was install the day
> before the messages started.

It may be perfectly normal, but it's also perfectly presumptuous.  From 
the tmpwatch man page:

"When  changing  directories, tmpwatch is very sensitive to
       possible race conditions and will exit with  an  error  if
       one  is detected. It does not follow symbolic links in the
       directories it's cleaning (even  if  a  symbolic  link  is
       given as its argument), will not switch filesystems,
        and only removes empty directories and regular files."

Since it will not switch filesystems, tmpwatch needs to know on what 
mount point each filesystem is mounted.  The way to do that is to read 
/etc/mtab.  There is no direct connection between Mailman and tmpwatch 
or /etc/mtab, so your assumption that Mailman is at fault is plain 
wrong.  It is possible that if you installed Mailman from a binary RPM 
some random person created, it might fiddle with /etc/mtab; however, 
your gripe then would be with the person who created the package 
incorrectly.  It's also possible (neigh, likely) that other (unrelated) 
changes were made or software installed in the same session with 
Mailman.  If you've only done in situ upgrades since the time your 
/etc/mtab permissions got hosed, it's quite likely that the permissions 
haven't been changed.  An "rpm -qf /etc/mtab" will reveal that the file 
isn't part of any RPM package thus an upgrade wouldn't in and of itself 
touch the file.

This is all a very drawn-out way of saying "it's not Mailman's fault."  
It's a system administration issue.

Kyle
-- 
Since the general civilizations of mankind, I believe there are more
instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual
and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden
usurpations.
                                                  -James Madison