[Mailman-Users] Digest options -> list configuration

[Hank van Cleef]

The esteemed Brad Knowles has said:
> 
> On 8/7/08, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> 
> >  After some off list back and forth, Alan determined that the problem was
> >  that the mailman user had /bin/false as a login shell. Once that was
> >  changed, the script worked as expected.
> 
> Was this on a Solaris box?  I've had problems with them lately not 
> allowing cron jobs to run under a specific userid, even if they were 
> in the /etc/cron.allow list, unless the user had a valid password 
> hash and a valid shell.
> 
> One of the more screwed-up things I've seen from a Solaris box 
> lately, I tell you....
> 
Nothing particularly "screwed up" about Solaris as a platform for
mailman.  When setting up the mailman account, set up the account as a
normal account, then use vipw to edit /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. 
Just delete specification of any shell from the passwd line.

Shadow line should look like:
mailman:NP:::::::

The letters "NP" in the password hash field are important.  But there
are already plenty of examples in the file for you to follow.

When setting up the crontab, and changing it, su from root to mailman,
and follow the Solaris instructions.  They are in the man pages.  

You don't need to fuss with cron.allow and cron.deny to get cron to
process the mailman crontab.  

Just because:
Solaris isn't Linux, and sendmail isn't Postfix, isn't a reason to
call either one of them "screwed up."  The Mailman build-install
instructions work just fine on Solaris/sendmail, if you pay attention
to doing things the Solaris way, and treat Mailman as "just another 
sendmail user" on an existing and functioning sendmail installation.

julie:vancleef:$ uptime
  9:54am  up 194 day(s), 17:24,  3 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.01,
0.02

It would be longer than that if we hadn't had a power outage shutown
last winter.

Hank