[Mailman-Users] New List Creation Hangs

[Mark Sapiro]

Trevor Antczak wrote:
>
>3) The data/aliases file is being updated


This says that Mailman.MTA.Postfix.create() is being called by the
create CGI and is successfully adding the aliases to data/aliases.

Assuming you have nothing in mm_cfg.py for
POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS, and there's no reason why you would,
the next step is to run the command defined by POSTFIX_ALIAS_CMD
(/usr/bin/sudo /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases). Since this copies
Mailman's data/aliases to /etc/mailman.aliases, and that doesn't
happen, presumably that's where the hangup is.

Note that is this command fails, and returns a failure status, that
will be logged in Mailman's error log. You can check Mailman's error
log for a message like:

'command failed: /usr/bin/sudo /usr/local/sbin/mailman.aliases
/path/to/data/aliases (status: <status>, <error message>'

but I suspect you won't find it, because if it were there, create would
also have returned this to apache and it would be in the apache log
which it isn't.  I think it is just waiting on something until apache
times out and kills it. The most likely thing it is waiting on is
sudo's password request.


>4) httpd error logs show the following:
>
>   [Fri Feb 08 10:44:18 2008] [warn] [client 172.20.8.19] Timeout  
>waiting for output from CGI script /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin/create,  
>referer: http://goldfinger.lite3d.com/mailman/create
>   [Fri Feb 08 10:44:18 2008] [error] [client 172.20.8.19] Premature  
>end of script headers: create, referer: http://goldfinger.lite3d.com/mailman/create
<snip>


I still think in this case, sudo is asking for a password which isn't
provided. Why it is doing this, I don't know, but note that the
Mailman create CGI wrapper is group mailman and SETGID. It should
still be running as user apache, but with effective group mailman.
This may have something to do with it.

You could do a 'ps' while the CGI is hung to try to see exactly what
process is running and under what user.

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