[Mailman-Users] Error running bin/mailmanctl restart

[Larry Stone]

I recognize some of my words in what Paul has quoted below so let me 
comment. The discussion Paul is quoting from dealt with running Mailman on 
Mac OS X CLIENT whereas Paul is dealing with Mac OS X SERVER. OS X Server 
comes with a bastardized version of Mailman where as OS X Client has 
nothing except a Mailman account (Why is the account already there? Who 
knows!). The undocumented changes Apple has made have been talked about 
much before and I thought with the conclusion that the Apple provided 
version in Server is unsupported here due to the kind issues Paul is 
having.

My suggestion would be to remove the Apple provided version of Mailman, 
the install the official version from source. Once the Apple version is 
gone, I see no reason that instructions for installing from scratch that 
I've previously posted would not work. Heck, they might even work fine in 
parallel with the Apple version (which obviously then should not be 
allowed to run). I'm pretty sure, if I remember my own instructions 
correctly, that I have Mailman self-contained within /Applications/mailman 
except for the startup file in /Library/LaunchDaemons (which might need to 
be given a slightly different name to avoid a conflict), the modifications 
to the Apache configuration file, and the modifications to the Postfix 
configuration file for the aliases (all of which should be preserved by 
any Apple upgrades).

-- Larry Stone
    lstone19 at stonejongleux.com

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, Paul Kleeberg wrote:

> I am ready to tear my hair out.
>
> Thanks to Mark, I got mailman up and running except for one minor hitch.  In my log file I see an endless stream of:
>
> 	12/17/09 11:56:49 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.list.mailmanctl) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
> 	12/17/09 11:57:00 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.list.mailmanctl) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
>
> Searching the archives, I found this (The thread starts at http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/msg53952.html):
>
>
>> The only difference between my org.list.mailmanctl.plist and Apple's is my verb *start*, as opposed to Apple's *startf*. I'm baffled by *startf*, which is not supported by mailman and does nothing, either in the CLI or in org.list.mailmanctl.plist.
>
> Further on down in the messages I read:
>
>> I just caught that Bryan notes that he receives an "endless succession" of those messages where as I see one and that's it.
>> Comparing our launchd .plist files, I see a few differences:
>> Bryan:
>>         <key>OnDemand</key>
>>         <false/>
>> Me:
>>         <key>OnDemand</key>
>>         <true/>
>>         <key>RunAtLoad</key>
>>         <true/>
>
> So I made that change to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.list.mailmanctl.plist.
>
> Everything appeared to work fine, web interface works, creating a list works but qrunner does not to appear to start on bootup.  it appears that I now have to manually run:
>
>  sudo /usr/share/mailman/bin/mailmanctl start
>
> to get mailman to start.  That concerns me.  I need to know how to get it to start on boot and how to restart itself if it dies.
>
> When this is all done, I would be happy to summarize what I learned for http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030530.
>
> Paul
> --
> Paul Kleeberg
> paul at fpen.org
>
>
> On Dec 17, 2009, at 9:35 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
>
>> Paul Kleeberg wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> and get the following error:
>>>
>>> 	***** Installation directory /var/mailman is not configured properly!
>>> 	***** Directory must be owned by group _mailman: /var/mailman
>>>
>>> /var/mailman is has the settings root:wheel while the files inside are root:_mailman.
>>>
>>> Do I need to change the group of the /var/mailman directory for the install?  I know that change is probably not significant, but I an not sure enough of my knowledge to know.
>>
>>
>> It is only significant to configure in your case, but configure whant
>> the prefix and var_prefix directories to be SETGID and Mailman's group
>> so that subordinates created by make install will be the same.
>>
>> When you originally asked about this off line, I thought what you had
>> would be OK because it was a working installation, but apparently it
>> only works for Apple :(
>>
>> You need to
>>
>> chgrp _mailman /var/mailman
>> chmod g+s /var/mailman
>>
>> to make configure happy. The prefix directory (/usr/share/mailman in
>> your case) needs to be the same.
>>
>>> Once I get this right, I plan on upgrading a 10.6.2 production server running 2.1.12rc1 to 2.1.12.
>>
>>
>> FYI, 2.1.13rc1 is released and 2.1.13 final will be released next week
>> barring the unexpected. It fixes several minor bugs in 2.1.12.
>>
>> --
>> Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
>> San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan
>>
>
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