[Mailman-Users] Mailman 2.1b1 on MacOS X problem - public archives inaccessible

[Richard Barrett]

At 14:59 07/05/2002 +0200, Peter Bengtson wrote:
>A while ago I upgraded from Mailman 2.0.9 to 2.1b1. No problems
>encountered. However, I created a new list today using the web
>interface. All our other lists use private archives, but this one's
>archives should be public. Under 2.1b1, it doesn't work - accesses
>result in a "Forbidden - You don't have permission to access /pipermail/
>on this server", which is strange since private archives work perfectly,
>and they use pipermail as well.
>
>Switching the new list to private archives works fine - all messages
>show up. But switching back to public archives give the "Forbidden"
>message above.
>
>Running bin/check_perms reveals several errors (2.1b1 definitely does
>_not_ set up privileges correctly in all cases, particularly on
>extracted attachments, so it is a good idea to run bin/check_perms -f
>now and then). Correcting these errors using -f does not get rid of the
>pipermail permission problem.
>
>Checking the actual permissions, there is an 's' flag in there. Also,
>the public archives are merely symbolic links into the private hierarchy.
>
>The machine is an Mac OS X 10.2 one.
>
>         / Peter Bengtson

I'd hazard a guess that your problem is in your web server, presumably 
Apache, setup rather than the file permissions per se.

With MM normally installed in conjunction with Apache, public archives are 
reached through an Alias while private archives are through a ScriptAlias.

If you cannot access the /pipermail/ path element then you need to look to 
the changes you made to Apache's httpd.conf when you installed mailman and 
make sure they are correct.

A common problem can occur if your Apache httpd.conf does not allow 
FollowSymLinks on the pipermail location; as you noted the contents of the 
$prefix/archives/public directory that pipermail usually resolves to is all 
symlinks.

Normally, the reason why private archives can be reached OK when the 
pipermail Alias is screwed is that the $prefix/Mailman/Cgi/private.py is 
being called (because of the Apache Scriptalias) and is returning the 
archive mail file's contents.