[Mailman-Developers] (long) queue problems: an analysis

[Ken Manheimer]

Scott, from what i know of the queue mechanism and error notices, i
think your assessment of the situation is a good one (and a wise move,
to take a comprehensive look at what's going on).

I think one thing that _might_ alleviate some of the difficulty concerns
the permissions issue.  I know that in many unices you can use setgid
directories to ensure that files created in the dir inherit the group id
of the directory.  By setting the group id appropriately to that of the
process that will be servicing stuff left on the queue, and making sure
that the processes putting stuff in the queue have group permissions
enabled, then the queue servicing process has access if the placing
process fail to do the send, and the placing processes have access by
virtue of owning the files.

I've used this setgid directory mechanism for many things with very good
results - my only uncertainty is whether this behavior - that a setgid
directory forces files created in the directory to assume the same group
ownership as that of the directory - is common across all unices.
Anybody know of prevalent contemporary unix systems where it doesn't
hold?

Ken
klm@python.org