[Mailman-Users] Mailman installation on Solaris 10 crashes

[vancleef at lostwells.net]

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> On Feb 2, 2007, at 1:25 AM, vancleef at lostwells.net wrote:
> 
> > crashing on install of the Japanese and Korean Codecs.  I swapped some
> > offlist E-mails with Barry Sapiro and told him that I would
> 
> I'm almost afraid to ask who "Barry Sapiro" is.  Is that some kind of  
> mashup of me and Mark?  :)
> 
And another "WHOOPS!"  Another over-the-hill geezer special.  But
since I saw the backside of the big 70 a while back, I suppose I'm
entitled to one once in a while.  

> > WHOOPS!  What is with the very clear "/opt/sfw/lib/python2.3" when I
> > just installed 2.5 and put it in /usr/local/bin?
> 
> I would additionally make sure /usr/local/bin is first on your $PATH.
> 
There is a great deal of discussion (and some religious fervor) on the
Solaris newsgroups about having (or refusing to have) a /usr/local
directory on a Solaris system.   The anti faction has some very strong
points.  Putting the /usr filesystem on its own filesystem mounted
read-only is a good security measure.  I bypass the arguments by
putting /usr/local on its own filesystem.  

A better PATH layout for Solaris 9 or 10 would probably end with 
/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/sfw/bin:/usr/sfw/bin  
Those directories all have to be added locally to the Solaris
distribution defaults.  

Sun has moved to including more and more of what was known to Unix
developers as "the GNU suite" in Solaris in the /usr/sfw directory,
with some GNU things (bash, gzip) in /usr/bin.  Time was (Solaris
2.5.1) that the "GNU suite" was all add-on from packages on the bonus
software companion disk.  

What I'm working out is "a suitable layout for a Solaris 10
development system" that requires a minimum of jiggery-pokery for 
compiling various open source software packages.  The system that
actually runs Mailman in "production" is a different 
minimally-configured hardened-up Solaris box.  A lot of this is
OS-specific and site-specific, and probably discussion here should be
limited to getting Python and Mailman installed.    

> > An additional (and very well-known) Solaris "gotcha" is the error line
> >
> > /usr/ucb/cc:  language optional software package not installed
> >
> > Evidently, the Solaris Python looks for a "cc" in the path.
> > /usr/ucb/cc is simply a stub that most Solaris sysadmins rename or
> > move after installation.  The Sun Studio 11 native compiler is
> > probably compatible with it, but there is still the objection to
> > using an older Python.
> 
> It's actually probably the Makefile that's finding /usr/ucb/cc.   
> Pretty well-known failure mode on Solaris.  Make sure a usable C  
> compiler (either named gcc or cc <wink>) is first on your $PATH.
> 
No doubt.  What I posted was the result of some offlist discussions I
had with Mark about problems building Mailman on Solaris that were 
posted here a week or so ago.  I offered to investigate a few of these
on a fresh install of Solaris 10 11/06 before I had fully configured 
the box to my normal layout.  Ultimately, that box will be configured
to use the Sun development system (Studio 11, has cc and CC <wink>).    

There are decisions that a Solaris administrator has to make, such as
whether to download and compile sendmail, apache, and bind; or to use
the Sun distribution versions.  I think that the decision is clear 
about Python---download and build your own, and configure your system
so that it is the Python of choice on your site.  (I'll note in
passing that I didn't like the looks of the additional compiling in
the Python install, and am going to go back to revisit that).  

Hank