[Mailman-Users] mailman does not send E-mails

[Jon Carnes]

On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 09:36, Thorsten Brabetz wrote:
> 	 	 
> Hello List, 
> 
> Ok, new to the list, and probably not a good start, since 
> it turns out that I am too stupid to search the list 
> archives. If I go to the page
> 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
> 
> and click on "searchable archives", I get a "time-out" 
> error... 
> 
> So, I am probably asking a question that has been asked 
> probably at least a hundred times in the past, and my 
> apologies in advance, but I still need an answer somehow: 
> 
> I tried to install mailman, and for all I can tell 
> successfully since I did not get any error messages at any 
> stage, but it still does not work. Unfortunately, there are 
> only very few hints as to what the problem might be. 
> 
> The best one is probably in mailman/logs/errors, where 
> everytime I execute "./mailmanctl restart" it says: 
> 
> Feb 26 14:00:39 2004 (24372) Warning: unable to 
> setgroups([101, 101])
> 
> Assuming it refers to the $prefix directory, I can't 
> however see why: 
> 
> redwolf:/usr/local# ll | grep mailman
> drwxrwsr-x   20 mailman     mailman      1024 Feb 25 14:44 
> mailman
> 
> Running mailman/bin/check_perms shows no problems either: 
> 
> redwolf:/usr/local/mailman# bin/check_perms
> No problems found
> 
> Other log entries that seem to refer to the problem are in 
> mailman/logs/smtp-failure: 
> 
> Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) Low level smtp error: host not 
> found, msgid: None
> Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) delivery to mailman-owner (at) 
> redwolf.org.uk failed with code -1: host not found
> Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) Low level smtp error: host not 
> found, msgid: <mailman.0.1077753904.16057.test7 (at) 
> redwolf.org.uk>
> Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) delivery to webmaster (at) 
> brabetz.de failed with code -1: host not found
> Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) Low level smtp error: host not 
> found, msgid: <mailman.0.1077755635.15842.mailman (at) 
> redwolf.org.uk>
> Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) delivery to webmaster (at) 
> brabetz.de failed with code -1: host not found
> 
> (there are literally thousands of these entries, they are 
> referring to test messages that I have sent to test lists)
> 
> However, if I "su mailman", I can mail no problems to any 
> E-mail account locally or remote, including those that the 
> error messages refer to, e.g. webmaster (at) brabetz.de, 
> and I have tried quite a few. MTA is exim (in the log entry 
> above, I have replaced the @ with (at) to make it at least 
> a tiny bit harder for spammers to harvest my E-mail 
> address). 
> 
> Install is on a Debian system, but I did not use apt-get, 
> but instead downloaded the source code and used 
> "./configure ; make install". Mailman user is mailman, 
> mailman group is mailman. mailman is a member of group 
> mailman, and only the group mailman. 
> 
> I have been through all FAQs and README files I could find 
> for two days now, without finding even as much as a hint to 
> what the problem might be, and have reached that stage 
> where I would really appreciate *any* hint as to where to 
> start looking for it. 
> 
> Thank you in advance for any prospective advice!
> 
> Best wishes
> 	 
> 	 
> Thorsten

Sounds like you've done a great job of troubleshooting so far, 
so I'm sure you've looked here (or soon will):
  Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py
  Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/

FAQ 3.14 covers a lot of ground in getting folks up and running, but it
sounds like you've got a few problems that may not be covered in there.

What in particular are your settings in ~mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py (or
Defaults.py) for the "Delivery Defaults":
  DELIVERY_MODULE = 'SMTPDirect'
  MTA = 'Manual'
  SMTPHOST = 'localhost'
  SMTPPORT = 0               # default from smtplib
  SENDMAIL_CMD = '/usr/lib/sendmail'


You might need to specify SMTPPORT = 25 or play with the SENDMAIL_CMD
setting.

Also, is the mailman group number 101 on your system?  If so, you may
have problems with using SetGID on this system.  

I'm not a regular Debian or Exim user so I can't give you any specifics,
but I would look at those two areas, based on the errors you are
getting.

Hope that is helpful - Jon Carnes