[Mailman-Users] mailman does not send E-mails

[Thorsten Brabetz]

Hello List, 

Ok, new to the list, and probably not a good start, since 
it turns out that I am too stupid to search the list 
archives. If I go to the page

http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users

and click on "searchable archives", I get a "time-out" 
error... 

So, I am probably asking a question that has been asked 
probably at least a hundred times in the past, and my 
apologies in advance, but I still need an answer somehow: 

I tried to install mailman, and for all I can tell 
successfully since I did not get any error messages at any 
stage, but it still does not work. Unfortunately, there are 
only very few hints as to what the problem might be. 

The best one is probably in mailman/logs/errors, where 
everytime I execute "./mailmanctl restart" it says: 

Feb 26 14:00:39 2004 (24372) Warning: unable to 
setgroups([101, 101])

Assuming it refers to the $prefix directory, I can't 
however see why: 

redwolf:/usr/local# ll | grep mailman
drwxrwsr-x   20 mailman     mailman      1024 Feb 25 14:44 
mailman

Running mailman/bin/check_perms shows no problems either: 

redwolf:/usr/local/mailman# bin/check_perms
No problems found

Other log entries that seem to refer to the problem are in 
mailman/logs/smtp-failure: 

Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) Low level smtp error: host not 
found, msgid: None
Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) delivery to mailman-owner (at) 
redwolf.org.uk failed with code -1: host not found
Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) Low level smtp error: host not 
found, msgid: <mailman.0.1077753904.16057.test7 (at) 
redwolf.org.uk>
Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) delivery to webmaster (at) 
brabetz.de failed with code -1: host not found
Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) Low level smtp error: host not 
found, msgid: <mailman.0.1077755635.15842.mailman (at) 
redwolf.org.uk>
Feb 26 14:15:45 2004 (24376) delivery to webmaster (at) 
brabetz.de failed with code -1: host not found

(there are literally thousands of these entries, they are 
referring to test messages that I have sent to test lists)

However, if I "su mailman", I can mail no problems to any 
E-mail account locally or remote, including those that the 
error messages refer to, e.g. webmaster (at) brabetz.de, 
and I have tried quite a few. MTA is exim (in the log entry 
above, I have replaced the @ with (at) to make it at least 
a tiny bit harder for spammers to harvest my E-mail 
address). 

Install is on a Debian system, but I did not use apt-get, 
but instead downloaded the source code and used 
"./configure ; make install". Mailman user is mailman, 
mailman group is mailman. mailman is a member of group 
mailman, and only the group mailman. 

I have been through all FAQs and README files I could find 
for two days now, without finding even as much as a hint to 
what the problem might be, and have reached that stage 
where I would really appreciate *any* hint as to where to 
start looking for it. 

Thank you in advance for any prospective advice!

Best wishes
	 
	 
Thorsten