[Mailman-Users] Can Someone Explain This?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

sherwin writes:

 > <midfex at lists.ibiblio.org>: Command died with status 2:
 >      "/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post midfex". Command output: Group mismatch
 >      error.  Mailman expected the mail wrapper script to be executed as group
 >      "mailman", but the system's mail server executed the mail script as group
 >      "nobody".  Try tweaking the mail server to run the script as group
 >      "mailman", or re-run configure,  providing the command line option
 >      `--with-mail-gid=nobody'.

I would bet a week's worth of beer that the Mailman installation has
been upgraded recently, and they forgot to give the wrapper program
sgid privilege and/or forgot to give it group "mailman".

It's also possible that the actual problem is with the mail server,
but usually mail servers are not given sufficient permissions to run
other programs as arbitrary users or groups.

To fix it, run the bin/check_perms program in the Mailman installation
to see if I'm correct.  If I am, run "bin/check_perms -f" to actually
make the necessary changes.

Of course you need to have root permission on the Mailman host to do
this.