[Mailman-Users] Digest not working on Mac 10.3.6 running mailman2.1.4

[John W. Baxter]

On 6/11/10 6:51 AM, "Mark Sapiro" <mark at msapiro.net> wrote:

> Bob Bader wrote:
> 
>> I still have a Macintosh 10.3.9 server running the default mailman  (version
>> 2.1.4) for mail lists.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> We have noticed digests have stopped working, I can send them manually, or if
>> I set the trigger size to 0 they go. If I run the command  /usr/bin/python -S
>> /usr/share/mailman/cron/senddigests   That also works.
>> 
>> I suspect it has something to do with cron.
>> 
>> 
>> I look in the file /usr/share/mailman/cron/crontab.in   and it all  looks
>> good.
>> 
>> 
>> Is there is setting for  mailman in the Mac's crontab?
> 
> 
> No. crond normally looks at the system crontab /etc/crontab and all the
> user crontabs in /var/spool/cron/* (or in Mac OS X 10.6 at least,
> /usr/lib/cron/tabs/*). It doesn't look at
> /usr/share/mailman/cron/crontab.in which is the input intended to be
> installed in /usr/lib/cron/tabs/ by a command like
> 
>   crontab -u _mailman /usr/share/mailman/cron/crontab.in
> 
> (assuming the Mailman user is _mailman).  See 'man crontab' and 'man
> cron'.
> 
> 
> Since Mailman's cron jobs used to run, I suspect the issue is that
> crond is not running on your server. It's either that or Mailman's
> crontab has gone missing. If
> 
>  crontab -u_mailman -l
> 
> shows Mailman's crontab, then crond is not running. How to fix that is
> a Mac OS X question.

On my Mac OS X 10.6.3 system, crond is not running, but cron is. The man
page for cron makes it look like crond by the shorter name. This is 10.6.3
client, not server (and I don't run Mailman on it).

A quick test suggests that cron acts like crond.

* * * * * /bin/date >> /tmp/dates

(Which I think I'll turn off now.)

It produced:
cat /tmp/dates
Sun Jun 13 09:10:00 PDT 2010
Sun Jun 13 09:11:00 PDT 2010

  --John