The esteemed David Devereaux-Weber has said:

I'm having a problem with building mailman 2.1.9 on Solaris 10. No problems with configure or make, but make install breaks.

Here is an extract:

/opt/csw/lib/python2.3/distutils/dist.py:213:

There's your problem.

Does anyone see something here?

You're using the wrong Python. I don't know where you got this Python (/opt/csw is not a Solaris 10 directory), but it's behaving the same as the Python 2.3 that is in the Solaris 10 distribution installed in /usr/sfw. My recollection is that /opt/csw is being used by one or more prebuilt services who have religious tabus about using /usr/local, and presume you've downloaded a prebuilt Python package and installed it.

Download the Python 2.4.4 source (not 2.5 or later), configure, and build that. It will not build completely, but what doesn't build (tcl and the ssl functions) isn't needed for Mailman. Solaris 10 comes with gcc 3.4.2 in /usr/sfw/bin, which can be used to build both Python and Mailman.

When you've got Python 2.4.4 built and installed, use "which python" to make sure it's the first one in your path.
/usr/local/bin/python

Also, on a Solaris system (all versions), I strongly recommend renaming /usr/ucb/cc to something else so that configure scripts don't think the system has a working cc. That particular cc is a shell script stub that is there for historical reasons dating from the original SVR4 specification in 1988.

If you have downloaded and installed the Sun development system (Studio 11 is the current marketing name for it) that installs by default in /opt/SUNWspro, use that cc and CC instead of the GNU stuff. Note that you'll have to force the configure scripts not to use gcc when you run them.

Hank

The esteemed David Devereaux-Weber has said:

Hank,

Thanks for your help!

I installed Python 2.4.4. I did receive errors that tcl and something else didn't install. Now, the Mailman install script still finds /opt/csw/lib/python2.3/distutils/dist.py:213 . Can you tell me where Python 2.4.4 puts the distutils?

Dave

If you built python 2.4.4 to install in /usr/local, you should have a /usr/local/lib/python2.4 directory that has the distutils in it.

I assume you're building Mailman 2.1.9 from downloaded source; if not, I recommend you do that, rather than using somebody else's prebuilt source.

Make sure the correct python is in your PATH. If you've already built Mailman with the /opt/csw python2.3, do a make clean, rerun configure, make, and make install on Mailman.

As I've said, /opt/csw is not a Solaris 10 directory, but is used by one or more of the package prebuilders. I would do an audit on what is in that directory and pkgrm anything you don't actually need on your system.

Using the Solaris release sendmail and apache works well, but I'd build Python 2.4.4 and Mailman 2.1.9 from source. The default gid for sendmail is "other" and for apache is "nobody", for the Mailman configure script on Solaris 9/10.

Hank

The esteemed David Devereaux-Weber, P.E. has said:

Hank,

I'm still not succeeding in building Mailman. I'd like to follow another path. Can you explain why Tcl/TK don't build? The Python make install command fatals there, and doesn't complete copying some of the modules into the right places.

Dave

You're running into problems I haven't encountered, if you can't install Python without tcl and ssl. I'd suggest clearing the build and install directories, doing a fresh unpack of the Python sources, and running through the build process again. My recollection is that both Python and Mailman will build with the gcc 3.4.2 that is in the Solaris 10 distribution /usr/sfw directory tree, but that you have to do some jiggery-pokery with LD_RUN_PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, or crle to get the builds to find the GNU libraries. My installations were built with the Sun development system (Studio 11, installs in /opt/SUNWspro), so I haven't explored the implications of running with a GNU build on Solaris 10 very far.

Why Python won't build with the extensions in Solaris is that the build process doesn't look in /opt/sfw. I've done enough porting exploration to see that a "fix" involves adding a search to those directories in setup.py (in the Python build base directory), but haven't explored everything I need to know to assure that I've got an appropriate fix. Some queries to the Python users and Python developers mail lists didn't produce meaningful results, and I'm left with the feeling that "yer on yer own" with Python reliability. What I can tell you is that my builds of Python 2.4.4 and 2.5, using the Sun devsys, and without doing any porting work, install and support Mailman on my systems.

I'd suggest capturing the outputs of the configure and make steps and reviewing them. Also, the various log, makefile, and status files that configure generates. I'm not really prepared to wear a Python developer hat and try to work Python-on-Solaris problems beyond getting a Python that will support Mailman.

Hank