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

[Mailman-users at davefisher.co.uk]

On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 04:56:06PM -0500, Jon Carnes wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for that, Jon!

I did intimate I didn't want to screw up my rather orderly Debian system
by installing from sources ;-) I'm long past the age when one might
enjoy the game of 'hunt the library files'. 

I've managed without source since I converted my home server to Debian 2
years ago (after 4 years of RPM hell and over a decade wrestling with
tarballs) ... and I'm relieved to discover that I don't have to concede
now ;-)

Moments after posting my premature plea for help, I pursuaded myself
that I probably did know enough Python to make digging around in .py
files a worthwhile exercise.

I quickly noticed that almost all of the bugs I was suffering stemmed
from two silly failures in the Debian package installation, i.e. 

1. The Python scripts in /var/lib/mailman/Mailman (linked to
/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman in Debian) did not have the executable bit set
for any user. Reading Utils.py pointed me to that possibility.

2. The templates that were supposed to be installed in
/var/lib/mailman/templates (linked to /etc/mailman in Debian) hadn't
actually been installed at all.  Copying the english language examples
from /usr/share/doc/mailman/examples into /etc/mailman/en did the trick.

I'd like to appologise for wasting mailing list members' bandwidth and
hope that the previous two observations may at least help anyone else
who encounters similar problems.

Best wishes,

Dave