[NTLUG:Discuss] Mailman weirdness

[Greg Edwards]

Stephen Davidson wrote:
> 
> All the dirs seem to be rws.  As for group/owner, this is where things get
> tricky.  To run, sendmail needs some files belonging to root:mail (with no
> rws set - specifically the aliases files in the data directory).  
> Otherwise,
> newalieses throws permission exceptions. Other files & directories need 
> group
> mailman, and  owner of either root, mailman, or wwwrun, depending.  I am 
> guessing it
> is one of these that I have "misowned".  Question is, which one, and where?
> I am hoping one of the Gurus on this list can come up with the clue 
> needed to
> solve this.
> 

Ok I think we may be on to something here.

As far as ownership and permissions, mailman and sendmail don't have 
anything in common when it comes to files.  When you setup mailman you 
give it the gid that your MTA uses and the gid that your web server 
uses.  Beyond that mailman just needs a valid owner/group (default 
mailman) setting.  The mailman progs use setgid to access files while 
running.  On disk they end up with mailman group and owner.

My config setup was

./configure  --prefix=/server/mailman --with-mail-gid=mail 
--with-cgi-gid=apache

I use sendmail and apache.

My /server/mailman and entire mailman top dir is

drwxrwsr-x   NN   mailman   mailman     subdir

I have my mailman directory on my mail server over an nfs mount (autofs) 
from my webserver.  The export requires that suid be allowed.  The cgi 
dir needs follow sym links allowed in apache.

-- 
Greg Edwards
New Age Software, Inc. - http://www.nas-inet.com
======================================================
Galactic Outlaw        - http://goutlaw.nas-inet.com
   The ultimate cyberspace adventure!