[Mailman-Users] Group id Catch-22 after list move

[Barry Warsaw]

On Sun, 2003-04-06 at 13:25, Nick Arnett wrote:

> Perhaps I should ask a more specific question... Where does the id under
> which Postfix runs the mail wrapper come from?  

If you're using the alias_maps integration (as described in 2.1's
README.POSTFIX), then the user and group come from the owner of the
data/alias.db file.  You want it to be mailman:mailman and you want
--with-mail-gid=mailman.

> How can it be executing
> under two different ids in the same Mailman installation?  Isn't it always
> the same Postfix id that is executing the mail wrapper?  I'm baffled.

The only way I can see this happening is if you have some aliases in
data/aliases.db and some in Postfix's /etc/aliases file.  In the latter
case, I believe the user and group will come from Postfix's defaults.

> For new lists, Mailman is expecting the mail wrapper to be executed as
> "nobody," but it is running as "mailman."  Old lists produce no error, they
> work fine.  If I re-install Mailman with "--with-mail-gid=mailman", then new
> lists work, but old ones give that error, with the user names reversed.  In
> other words, after the re-install, new lists work, but for old ones, Mailman
> is expecting the mail wrapper to be executed as "mailman," but it is running
> as "nobody" (which I guess was how my old installation was set up).

Don't mix where your list aliases exist, at least within a single
Mailman installation.  Run bin/genaliases, make sure all your aliases
are in data/aliases -- and more importantly bin/aliases.db -- and make
sure aliases.db is mailman:mailman.  If you do this, I can't see any way
your old lists would inherit some different user and group.

-Barry