[Mailman-Users] Postfix and ownership of the alias file

[Jeff White]

I recently migrated all my lists to a new Solaris system running 
2.1.14+patch but I'm having trouble determining who should own the 
aliases file and what uid/gid is used for what.

Apache httpd runs as the user httpd
Mailman runs as the user mailman
Postfix runs as the user postfix

I compiled with:

./configure --with-username=mailman --with-cgi-gid=httpd 
--with-groupname=mailman --with-mail-gid=nobody 
--with-var-prefix=/var/mailman --with-urlhost=list.pitt.edu 
--with-mailhost=list.pitt.edu


Aliases is owned by root:mailman

With this setup everything on the command line works such as 
bin/new_list and I can send mail to lists.  What does not work is 
creating lists via the Web interface which gives:
command failed: /usr/sbin/postalias /var/mailman/data/aliases (status: 
1, Not owner)

If I change the ownership of the aliases to httpd:mailman that error 
goes away and I can create lists via the Web, but mail stops flowing with:
Group mismatch error.  Mailman expected the mail wrapper script to be 
executed as group "nobody", but the system's mail server executed the 
mail script as group "httpd".  Try tweaking the mail server to run the 
script as group "nobody", or re-run configure,  providing the command 
line option `--with-mail-gid=httpd'.

The postfix guys in irc said NOT to have it owned by the user postfix, 
so I'm confused.  Who should own the aliases file?  What should my 
--with-mail-gid be?

The errors suggest that the ownership should be httpd:mailman with 
--with-mail-gid=httpd, but that seems silly.  I think it should be 
postfix:mailman and --with-mail-gid=postfix but then how would Apache, 
running as httpd, be able to do anything?

-- 
Jeff White
Linux/Unix Systems Engineer
University of Pittsburgh - CSSD
Jaw171 at pitt.edu