[Mailman-Users] New List Creation Hangs

[Mark Sapiro]

Trevor Antczak wrote:

>I used the excellent instructions here:
>
>http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/msg47309.html
>
>to allow Mailman to do it's own alias creation in Sendmail.  This has  
>been partially successful, and I can now create lists with the newlist  
>command, and aliasing is handled automatically.  When I try to create  
>lists with the web interface though, something goes wrong.


Because your web server is doing this as a different user.

Something in the process works for the user (mailman?) doing
bin/newlist, but not for the web server user.

The most obvious thing I can guess is that you followed the
instructions literally and put

nobody ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases
mailman ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases

in /etc/sudoers and in fact, your web server runs as apache or
something else other than nobody.

If this isn't it, then exactly how much gets done? The list gets
created. Does Mailman's data/aliases get updated? If so, this tells
you that the problem is in trying to execute the
/usr/sbin/mailman.aliases script.


>Upon  
>hitting submit, the little firefox wheel starts spinning, but the list  
>creation never returns.  The list is at least partially created ( I  
>can see it on the main page), but the aliasing isn't done, so I assume  
>that somewhere between creating the list and running the aliasing  
>stuff, there is some kind of hang up.   Absolutely nothing nothing  
>appears in any of the logs that seems helpful (The most obvious log,  
>the error log, is actually completely empty).


Have you looked in the web server logs?

It won't be in Mailman's logs because the hangup is probably in running

POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD = '/usr/bin/sudo /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases'

which is outside mailman (and the very last step). Since it works with
newlist, my best guess is still that the web server doesn't have
permission do do the sudo without a password, so when you run it from
the web, it hangs waiting for password input.

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