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

[Ben Discoe]

Hi Mark,

> >Right.  Perhaps the trouble is that Apache runs outside of 
> >Cygwin (or more precisely, the trouble is that Mailman runs
> >inside it :)
> 
> This is the first time you mentioned Apache doesn't run under 
> Cygwin. I'm sure this adds a serious complication.

Wow.  I had no idea at all that it was possible to run Apache _inside_
Cygwin.  The Apache website directs Windows people to just install and
run, so the alternate route is not well known.

> 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.

Alas, experience seems to indicate that I cannot make them belong that
way.  Sometimes it's Adminstrators, but generally it's None.

> 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.

I've tried several users (e.g. Ben) which is a member of ONLY the
Administrators group (both in Windows and /etc/passwd), and yet it
produces files with 660 permissions and e.g. Ben.None ownership.  C'est
la Cygwin.

> 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.

Arrgh, it's hard to imagine that moving _closer_ to Cygwin is the right
direction, when all the trouble seems to stem from Cygwin itself.

In any case, I have found a solution of sorts!  It requires giving up
the web interface, which is unfortunate but I can live with it.  It
turns out that Exim itself is perfectly capable of processing simple
mailing lists (http://www.exim.org/exim-html-4.10/doc/html/spec_41.html)
including open, closed, and announcement-only lists.  I basically pasted
a few lines from that Exim documentation into my exim.conf, did some
tweaking, and I've got several mailing lists functional!

Someday, somebody will write a portable, open-source MLM that doesn't
fundamentally require Unixy permissions, and ideally doesn't require
command-line fiddling or hacks like Cygwin either.  As much as I am
drawn to the challenge, I fear it won't be me.

I wish best of luck to y'all in the Mailman community, and thanks for
helping out on my trip down this particular rabbit hole.

-Ben