[Mailman-Users] config questions

[Darren]

I am setting up my first list server on FreeBSD.  I used the ports/packages
to install Mailman.  Anyway, following the setup directions on the Mailman
website has raised a couple of questions.

The first question is in regards to the warning in the Mailman online
documentation to not be root while running ./configure.  Since I didn't have
to run configure, and since I was root when I installed the Mailman pkg, I
was concerned that I might need change the owners from root to mailman.  The
group is already set to mailman.  But, the owner is root for all of the
files (recursively) in /usr/local/mailman/*.  So, should I chown -R mailman
/usr/local/mailman?

The second question that I ran into was while checking permissions.  As
root, the permissions checked OK.  But, I wanted to run the permissions as
mailman.  So, I tried to su to mailman.  But, su'ing to mailman returns the
message, "This account is currently not available".  Now that I have gone
back and re-read the directions again, I see that they tell you to "become
the user that did the installation (and that owns all the files in $prefix),
or root".  So, going to user mailman wouldn't have worked anyway.  But, here
again, it seems like root and the "user that did the installation" should
not be the same.  My question here is, why can't I su to mailman?  I thought
it might be because no password was set for mailman.  So, I gave it one.
Was that a mistake?

The ability to su to mailman looks like it is going to be a problem when I
get to the crontab step.

Thanks in advance,
Darren