[Mailman-Users] Mailman under Cygwin - won't add list

[Ben]

Thanks Mark, the source code change you gave me made it work: I was able
to use newlist, and it completed successfully!  However, when I attempt
to connect to the Admin page (http://localhost/mailman/admin.exe) it
says:

"Bug in Mailman version 2.1.6  We're sorry, we hit a bug! ... the
webmaster can find this information in the Mailman error logs."

The error log says:
 admin(428):   File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 591,
in __load
 admin(428):     fp = open(dbfile)
 admin(428): IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied:
'/usr/local/mailman/lists/friends/config.pck'

I looked, and found that the file exists, although the permissions look
questionable:
	$ ls -l /usr/local/mailman/lists/friends
	total 4
	-rw-rw----  1 Ben None 3607 Dec 21 23:22 config.pck

I tried running the 'newlist' command as user 'mailman' instead, which
produced the same "bug!" error, even though the user/group was now set
as mailman.mm:
	-rw-rw----  1 mailman mm 3605 Dec 21 23:29 config.pck

I tried explicitly forcing permissions with 'chmod 777 config.pck', and
that made the Admin page work.  So, the "660" permissions are the
problem, not the owner/group.  However, when I tried the Admin page for
the list, I got "We're sorry, we hit a bug!" again:

admin(4088):   File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 512,
in __save
admin(4088):     fp = open(fname_tmp, 'w')
admin(4088): IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied:
'/usr/local/mailman/lists/friends/config.pck.tmp.LittleGuy.4088'

This seems to be a widespread issue with Mailman under Cygwin -
permission don't behave as under Unix, so Mailman chokes easily.  I
don't blame Mailman, I'm sure it's reasonable for it to expect
permissions to behave they way they should.

However, at this point I'm wondering whether the Mailman + Cygwin
combination is workable.  The Mailman website, Manual and FAQ reasonably
state that Mailman "does not currently work on Windows" and "some
source-code level changes are currently necessary to get Mailman working
under Cygwin" and "It probably does not work on Windows, although it's
possible you could get it running on a Cygwin system."

This makes me sad, as I had high hopes, as I cannot find any real
alternative to Mailman in the Windows world, neither free nor
commercial.  All I wanted to do was to create a small mailing list on a
plain XP box, but it's become a week-long ordeal ending in frustration.

I'm wide open to advice, although I suspect "Get a Linux machine" is the
likely response :(  (I do have a Linux box, but this XP box is the
quiet, low-power always-on server machine in our office which runs our
website with Apache wonderfully, hence that's where I must install a
mailing list.)

Thanks,
Ben

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Sapiro [mailto:msapiro at value.net] 
> 
> Ben wrote:
> >Now, when I try to add a list, I get a python error!
> >IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
> >'/usr/local/mailman/locks/<site>.lock.LittleGuy.2992.0'
> 
> The MailList.Create() method needs to obtain a lock for the 
> create process. Unfortunately, the name of the 'site' lock is 
> not a valid Windows name. Thus on Cygwin, you need to patch 
> MailList.py similarly to
> 
> --- mailman-2.1.6/Mailman/MailList.py	2005-02-15 16:21:41
> +++ mailman-mas/Mailman/MailList.py	2005-10-15 14:29:56
> -            os.path.join(mm_cfg.LOCK_DIR, name or '<site>') '.lock',
> +            os.path.join(mm_cfg.LOCK_DIR, name or '_site_') '.lock',