[Mailman-Users] permissions error with 'make install'

Mark Sapiro msapiro at value.net
Fri Apr 28 22:03:51 CEST 2006


Christopher Adams wrote:
>
>I am doing the install as a member of the Mailman group.
>
>I have made sure that the installation directory can be written to by that
>group.
>
>I have run 'configure' and 'make' successfullly.
>
>When I run 'make install', I get the following:
>
>[chris at gatsby mailman-2.1.8]$ make install
>Creating architecture independent directories...
>chmod o-r /usr/local/mailman/archives/private
>chmod: changing permissions of `/usr/local/mailman/archives/private':
>Operation not permitted
>make: *** [doinstall] Error 1
>
>So, assuming that the problem was changing the permissions for the
>archives/private directory, I made the change as root and then went back to
>do the 'make install'. I get the same message, even though I manually had
>changed the permissions.


That chmod is done unconditionally whether or not it is required. For
whatever reason, the user running make install does not have
permission to do the chmod on the /usr/local/mailman/archives/private
directory.

You have a few choices to finish the install:
 - run make install as root or as some user that does have permission
to do the chmod.
 - maybe chown /usr/local/mailman/archives/private to the user who's
running make install or figure out why the installing user doesn't
have permission and correct that.
 - remove the line
	chmod o-r $(DESTDIR)$(var_prefix)/archives/private
from the doinstall section of Makefile in the unpack directory

>
>If I run check_perms, I get this:
>
>[root at gatsby bin]# ./check_perms
>Warning: Private archive directory is other-executable (o+x).
>         This could allow other users on your system to read private
>archives.
>         If you're on a shared multiuser system, you should consult the
>         installation manual on how to fix this.
>No problems found


Don't worry about this one. check_perms probably shouldn't report it.
It's not really possible to have public archives at all within the
present Mailman framework without having the archives/private
directory be searchable by the web browser. See the thread that starts
at
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2006-April/050591.html>
for more on this.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan




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