[Mailman-Users] Debian Exim 4 Won't Play With Mailman - Group mismatch error

[Dave Fisher]

Hi all,

I've received the error message reproduced below.

I think that I understand the basic problem, and the two generic solutions,
i.e. I either have to change the GID that exim executes the mail script as, or
I have to reconfigure mailman to accept the mail GID "Debian-exim".

Unfortunately I'm under some pressure to get the list back up immediately and
(for various reasons) I fear that I might not have the time to learn enough
about the Debian package and Exim to implement a quick fix on that side of the
problem.

So I was hoping that the mailman re-configuration might be a bit simpler (e.g.
a single command line or a simple config file edit) and that someone on the
list might be able to point me to a suitable recipe.

I wouldn't normally ask, but I am under time pressure and the error message
saying "re-run configure, providing the command line option
`--with-mail-gid=Debian-exim'" does need a bit of extra context to disambiguate
with absolute certainty.  

Does the author want me to configure and recompile a binary, or is there a
mailman configure script that I haven't found yet?  In either case, which
binary or script?

As far as possible, I try to keep production machines using Debian
package management free of source packages.  So if there isn't any means
of reconfiguring the GID in mailman from the shell or a text editor,
I'll probably just have to go digging around in Exim.

Dave

P.S. The whole thing was working fine until a few days ago, but I think
a recent upgrade to the Debian Exim 4 has introduced some config changes
which I probably wouldn't have accepted if I had known/understood them
properly.



error> A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
error> recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
error>                                 
error>   pipe to |/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post mylist
error>     generated by mylist at mydomain.zz
error>     local delivery failed
error>                                   
error> The following text was generated during the delivery attempt:
error>                                  
error> ------ pipe to |/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post mylist
error>        generated by mylist at mydomain.zz ------
error>                                    
error> Group mismatch error.  Mailman expected the mail
error> wrapper script to be executed as group "daemon", but
error> the system's mail server executed the mail script as
error> group "Debian-exim".  Try tweaking the mail server to run the
error> script as group "daemon", or re-run configure,
error> providing the command line option `--with-mail-gid=Debian-exim'.