[Mailman-Users] Installation problem: 500 internal server error

[Brad Knowles]

At 11:28 AM +0100 2005-04-28, RT wrote:

>  Problem 1: my 'ISP', for want of a better word, enables suEXEC on Apache,

	Ouch.

>  and I obviously can't change that (aside: doesn't everyone run
>  Apache/suEXEC?

	No.

>                 If not, why?

	In large part, because that's not what is shipped by default by 
most vendors.

>                               And surely most mailman users are in the
>  same situation that I'm in - I don't have a real internet connection,
>  and I rely on someone else's virtual server, on which I don't get a
>  root password?)

	Actually, that's a pretty rare configuration, based on what I've 
seen in the past.  Had it been more common, others would have run 
into this problem before, the documentation would have been 
corrected, and you would not have had these problems yourself.

>  But *none* of this is in the installation instructions, unless I've
>  missed something.

	Nope, it's not in the documentation.  Your problem with suEXEC is 
only the second time I've ever heard this feature mentioned, and you 
may be the first person I've heard of that has resolved the issues 
and documented them to this degree.

>                     And, this isn't my day job, and I'm worried that
>  this isn't secure. Is it a good idea to run mailman's scripts with
>  Apache's permissions?

	Dunno.  Not sure that anyone else has ever tried to do this with Mailman.

>  How does everyone else manage to install this?

	With suEXEC in your kind of configuration?  I don't know that 
anyone else has ever managed to do that.

>                                                  Would someone mind
>  updating INSTALL?

	If you can give us suitable instructions to include (preferably 
as a patch to the INSTALL document), we should be able to get that 
updated before 2.1.6-RELEASE is cut.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.