[Mailman-Developers] mailman setup

[Guillaume Rousse]

Hello.

I'm one of the guy managing the mailman package for mandrake-linux. I've 
currently trying to make setup a bit more standard and FHS compliant. I need 
developpers help however, first to make sure my changes won't cause trouble, 
second as I think some of these change should get merged upstream, as they 
would benefit more people.

The first issue is file location. We are trying to achieve FHS compliance, so 
i had to move things a bit.

I'm using the --with-var-prefix configure option to have variable files 
in /var/lib/mailman and non-variables files in /usr/lib/mailman. That is 
supported by mailman install. 

Then i move logs from /var/lib/mailman/logs to /var/log/mailman through a 
symlink. 

The config file location, however, is still puzzling me. Having a 
configuration file (mm_cfg.py) under /usr is non-standard, as /usr is 
supposed to be read-only. Moreover, it is a pain for us packagers, as we have 
to include everything but this file as normal files, then tag it as config 
file. I'd really think it should be moved in /etc instead, either by me using 
a symlink, but much better by an upstream change.

The second issue are perms. The default install make everything owned by the 
uid/gid determined at configure stage (mail/mail for me), and make all 
directories setgid, even for non-variables files, which is quite really a 
non-standard practice. So i tried to clean it a bit.

I made everything under /usr/lib/mailman owned by root.root, with standard 
perms (644 for files, 755 for directories) except the binaries 
in /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin and usr/lib/mailman/mail which are setgid, and 
owned by mail group. I tested, it seems to work.

I also made top-level directory for variable files (/var/lib/mailman) owned by 
root/root with standard 755 perms, but i didn't tried yet further perm 
modifications there, as mailman need write permissions in subdirectories.

You can have a look at the spec file in CVS if you want details 
(http://cvs.mandrakesoft.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/SPECS/mailman/mailman.spec). 
Your comments on my changes are welcome, as well as what could get integrated 
into mailman.
-- 
Those who hesitate under fire usually do not end up KIA, MIA or WIA
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