[Mailman-Users] Help debugging Debian package for Mailman 2.1.3-1

[Jon Carnes]

Your simplest option may be to install it from source. As long as you
know the webservers GID and the MTA's GID you are good to go.

Good Luck - Jon Carnes

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 14:58, Mailman-users at davefisher.co.uk wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm new to mailman and this list, so please forgive me if I've missed
> something obvious here or in the documentation (I have spent many hours
> looking, before resorting to this plea for help).
> 
> I suspect that most of my problems lie with the Debian GNU/Linux
> packages (Testing) that I've installed, but been unable to configure
> properly without resorting to dangerously insecure hacks on file
> permissions and symbolic links.
> 
> I notice that several of the obstacles I face have been reported and
> acknowledged as bugs on the Debian bug tracking system for quite some
> time.  Unfortunately, they remain open with few suggested workarounds
> and some of those few looking pretty dubious.
> 
> I was hoping that someone on this list might be able to refer me to
> either of:
> 
>   1. A simple overview of the roles and relationships between of
>   different components in a Mailman system ... so that I can set about
>   the debugging process in a reasonably logical manner.
> 
>   2. Other Debian users who have already worked their way through the
>   bugs that I have encountered.
> 
> I am now under some pressure to deliver a working Mailman system
> quickly, so the latter would be most useful.
> 
> Here are some of the problems that I've encountered:
> 
>   1. No permission for the web server to read any Mailman files.  
>   
>   By default Apache runs as www-data on Debian systems, but most of the
>   installed Mailman files are owned as root:list or list:list. I'm
>   reluctant to do a recursive chown on any branch of my filesystem
>   when there are so many chains of symlinks involved, when I'm not sure
>   what roles various files play and when I've seen specific advice
>   against adding the webserver user (www-data) to the list group.
> 
>   2. Acknowledged bugs:
>     
>     #204869 errors while creating initial mailman list
>             http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=204869
>     #214264 mailman: wrong permissions on archive directories
>             http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=214264
>     #202464 mailman: symlink cgi-bin pointing to itself after installing
>             http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=202464
>     #123297 wrong owner in pipermail directories
>             http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=123297
> 
>     ... the list goes on and on ..
> 
> I wouldn't expect any individual to give me all the answers on these points,
> but I would appreciate any help or advice people could offer in trying to work
> through them.
> 
> N.B. Despite the problems with this Debian package, I don't want to install
> from source tarballs (that's why I use Debian) and would prefer to fix it so
> that I can continue to benefit from the distro's basically sound package
> management and configuration system.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Dave Fisher
> 
> 
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