[Mailman-Users] Exim mailman transport fails

[Mark Sapiro]

Steve Garcia wrote:
>
>I've set up my Exim4 and Mailman configuration largely as shown on
>list.org at http://list.org/mailman-install
>
>However, when I send a message to the list, I get the following in
>exim's mainlog:
>
> mailman at helios.cs.csubak.edu R=mailman_router T=mailman_transport:
>Child process of mailman_transport transport returned 2 from command:
>/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman

A return status of 2 from the wrapper is a 'group mismatch error'.
configure, builds in an expected group, either by default or with the
--with-mail-gid= option, and Exim is not invoking the wrapper as that
group. The wrapper prints an error message to stderr, and 'hopes' that
the MTA returns this message in the delivery status notification.

The error message gives the expected and actual groups. In the absence
of an error message, you can generate and see one by running

/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post

This will produce the error and show the expected group as long as you
invoke it from some other group (note that the actual group in a
message generated this way is your group, not the one exim is using).

If you set the Exim mailman_transport per
http://list.org/mailman-install, it includes

  user = MAILMAN_USER
  group = MAILMAN_GROUP

and MAILMAN_GROUP is defined by macros you added. In particular

    # User and group for Mailman, should match your --with-mail-gid
    # switch to Mailman's configure script.
    MAILMAN_USER=mailman
    MAILMAN_GROUP=mailman

Note that it says these should match your --with-mail-gid switch, i.e.
they're not necessarily supposed to be 'mailman'.

Search the FAQ wizard <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py> for
'group mismatch' (simple string, no quotes) for more info.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan