[Mailman-Users] installing mailman

[Dan Mick]

The SUID bit on the group permissions is supposed to cause any
subdir or file in that directory to inherit the parent's group.
Here's an excerpt from the Solaris manpage for chmod(1), talking
about the SUID bit on the group-exec bit:

	20#0  Set group ID on execution if # is 7, 5,  3,
	      or 1.

	      Enable mandatory locking if # is 6,  4,  2,
	      or 0.
	      
	      For directories, files are created with BSD
	      semantics  for propagation of the group ID.
	      With this option, files and  subdirectories
	      created  in the directory inherit the group
	      ID of the directory,  rather  than  of  the
	      current  process. For directories, the set-
	      gid bit may only be set or cleared by using
	      symbolic mode.

Does your Linux not do this?  (Try a manual experiment..)	    
	   
> Hello,
> 
> I am trying to install mailman (2.0beta6) on a RedHat 7.0 system.
> I am following both the steps in the INSTALL file and on this
> page:
> 
> 	http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/install-config.html
> 
> There seems to be a problem with the "make install" and the
> "bin/check_perms" steps.
> 
> The $prefix directory looks like this:
> 
> drwxrwsr-x   18 wes      mailman      1024 Dec  5 16:50 mailman/
> 
> When I run configure, I use these options:
> 
> 	./configure --with-cgi-gid=apache --with-cgi-ext=.cgi
> 
> When I type "make install" as myself (i.e. not as root), it installs
> the $prefix/cgi-bin directory contents like this:
> 
> wes at kirby> ls -l cgi-bin/
> total 360
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34825 Dec  5 16:50 admin.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34829 Dec  5 16:50 admindb.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34857 Dec  5 16:50 archives.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34857 Dec  5 16:50 edithtml.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34865 Dec  5 16:50 handle_opts.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34857 Dec  5 16:50 listinfo.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34829 Dec  5 16:50 options.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34829 Dec  5 16:50 private.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34825 Dec  5 16:50 roster.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34861 Dec  5 16:50 subscribe.cgi*
> 
> Notice that it did not use the gid that I specified:
> 
> wes at kirby> fgrep apache /etc/group
> apache:x:48:
> 
> 2212 is my own gid.
> 
> When I run bin/check_perms -f, I get these errors:
> 
> 
> @kirby> bin/check_perms -f
> directory permissions must be at least 02775: /home/mailman/logs (fixing)
> directory permissions must be at least 02775: /home/mailman/archives (fixing)
> .
> .
> .
> directory permissions must be at least 02775: /home/mailman/scripts (fixing)
> directory permissions must be at least 02775: /home/mailman/cron (fixing)
> directory permissions must be at least 02775: /home/mailman/Mailman (fixing)
> directory permissions must be at least 02775: /home/mailman/icons (fixing)
> directory permissions must be at least 02775: /home/mailman/cgi-bin (fixing)
> directory permissions must be at least 02775: /home/mailman/mail (fixing)
> /home/mailman/archives/private bad gid (has: <anon gid 2212>, expected 
mailman) (fixing)
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "bin/check_perms", line 269, in ?
>     checkall()
>   File "bin/check_perms", line 129, in checkall
>     os.path.walk(d, checkwalk, STATE)
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/posixpath.py", line 271, in walk
>     walk(name, func, arg)
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/posixpath.py", line 265, in walk
>     func(arg, top, names)
>   File "bin/check_perms", line 92, in checkwalk
>     os.chown(path, -1, MAILMAN_GID)
> OSError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: '/home/mailman/archives/private'
> 
> but it doesn't seem to do anything to the cgi-bin directory:
> 
> wes at kirby> ls -l cgi-bin/
> total 360
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34825 Dec  5 16:50 admin.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34829 Dec  5 16:50 admindb.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34857 Dec  5 16:50 archives.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34857 Dec  5 16:50 edithtml.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34865 Dec  5 16:50 handle_opts.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34857 Dec  5 16:50 listinfo.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34829 Dec  5 16:50 options.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34829 Dec  5 16:50 private.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34825 Dec  5 16:50 roster.cgi*
> -rwxr-sr-x    1 wes      2212        34861 Dec  5 16:50 subscribe.cgi*
> -- 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Wes Barris                                            wes at networkcs.com
> Network Computing Services, Inc.                           612.626.8090
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Today's fortune: As goatherd learns his trade by goat, so writer learns
> his trade by wrote.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Mailman-Users maillist  -  Mailman-Users at python.org
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users