[Mailman-Users] Mailman under Cygwin - won't add list

[Mark Sapiro]

Ben wrote:

>Right.  Perhaps the trouble is that Apache runs outside of Cygwin (or
>more precisely, the trouble is that Mailman runs inside it :) although
>Apache is simply executing a binary which is built and runs inside
>Cygwin, so that must not be it.


This is the first time you mentioned Apache doesn't run under Cygwin.
I'm sure this adds a serious complication. Apache is executing Python
under Cygwin and Cygwin is enforcing permissions on files based on
user/group/other permissions. Mailman is designed to be run under a
specific group and all access is based on that group. If you can make
the mailman files all belong to the group that Cygwin sees Apache as
(we think that's Administrators) it should work.

So far, the problems I think you've had when you tried this are that
when you use command line tools, files wind up in other groups, but I
think you can get around this by either not using command line tools
or possibly creating a user who is a member of ONLY the Administrators
group to run them or by changing the group on files after the fact.


>Perhaps the only real solution here is to port (fork) Mailman from
>Cygwin to native Win32.  I can't even imagine what kind of work that
>would entail.  I'm have to become far more python-savvy before the end,
>no doubt.


This would be difficult. Not the Python so much as the C wrappers which
expect a Unix like environment, and you'd still have the security
issues to deal with.

Maybe the solution is to run Apache under Cygwin or run a mailman only
version of Apache under Cygwin that listens on a different port.



>I'm beginning to wonder how on earth Cygwin fakes the group id for
>files.  Apparently there's nowhere to store it in Windows, so if Cygwin
>encounteres a file it didn't create, it must just guess.


I think that's right, but I don't know enough to be sure.

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