[Mailman-Users] The Dreaded Group Mismatch Error

[LuKreme]

I tried to send a message to a low-traffic announce-list which failed:

Mailman mail-wrapper: Group mismatch error.  Mailman expected the mail wrapper script to be executed as group "mailman", but the system's mail server executed the mail script as group "nobody".  Try tweaking the mail server to run the script as group "mailman", or re-run configure,  providing the command line option `--with-mail-gid=nobody'.

So I go to the /usr/ports/mail/mailman/ directory to build mailman 'by hand' so to speak:

 $ export MM_USERNAME=nobody
 $ export MM_GROUPNAME=nobody 
 $ export MM_USERID=65534
 $ make install
===>  Installing for mailman-2.1.12
===>   mailman-2.1.12 depends on file: /usr/local/bin/python2.5 - found
---> Starting install script:
---> Using existing group "nobody"
---> Using existing user "nobody"
---> Using existing Mailman directory (/usr/local/mailman)
     (There may be existing active mailing lists - this installation will
     attempt to preserve them.)
===>   Generating temporary packing list


etc etc

 $  /usr/local/etc/rc.d/mailman start
 $

Try to send another message, and I get the exact same error.

Apr 24 09:26:44 mail Mailman mail-wrapper: Group mismatch error.  Mailman expected the mail wrapper script to be executed as group "mailman", but the system's mail server executed the mail script as group "nobody".  Try tweaking the mail server to run the script as group "mailman", or re-run configure,  providing the command line option `--with-mail-gid=nobody'.

Now /etc/postfix/aliases.db (where all the aliases for mailman have been since at least 2004) is owned by root, and man 8 local says:

       When those files are
       owned by the superuser, delivery is made with the rights specified with
       the default_privs configuration parameter.

and the default for default_privs is nobody, which is what postfix is doing.

So, if mailman is built as above using group and user nobody why is it claiming it expected the wrapper to be run as mailman?

As far as I can tell, postfix is doing what it is supposed to, but mailman somewhere has a user mailman in it that it thinks should be being used. Where this is and why I cannot figure out.

All the mailman processes are running as 'nobody'

So, I went and grabbed the source and read up on <http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/node7.html>

~/src/mailman-2.1.13 $ ./configure --with-username=nobody --with-mail-gid=nobody --with-group-name=nobody
configure: WARNING: you should use --build, --host, --target
checking for --with-python... no
checking for python... /usr/local/bin/python
checking Python interpreter... /usr/local/bin/python
checking Python version... 2.5.5
checking Python's email package... ok
checking Japanese codecs... ok
checking Korean codecs... ok
checking that Python has a working distutils... yes
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for true... /usr/bin/true
checking for --without-gcc... no
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking whether #! works in shell scripts... yes
checking for --with-var-prefix... no
checking for --with-permcheck... yes
checking for --with-username... mailman
checking for user name "mailman"... okay
checking for --with-groupname... mailman
checking for group name "mailman"... okay
...

it completely ignores the flags (this is 2.1.13 downloaded a today from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mailman/mailman-2.1.13.tgz ).

and even if you try to make at that point, there is no Makefile

so, now what? What portion of mailman is expecting a gid of mailman? Since mailman seems to be totally insistent on running as mailman, I wen ahead and split the aliases out into a separate file and gave them the right permissions 

 $ chown mailman /usr/local/mailman/data/aliases.db

In the manual it say:

Run the bin/genaliases script to initialize your aliases file.
        % cd /usr/local/mailman
        % bin/genaliases
      

Make sure that the owner of the data/aliases and data/aliases.db file is mailman, that the group owner for those files is mailman, or whatever user and group you used in the configure command, and that both files are group writable:

However, when I run bin/genaliases I get:

To finish creating your mailing list, you must edit your /etc/aliases (or
equivalent) file by adding the following lines, and possibly running the
`newaliases' program:

followed by a list of all the aliases.

There are no files in data/ named anything like alias

 /usr/local/mailman $ ls -ls data/
total 20
 2 -rw-r-----  1 root    nobody     41 May 30  2009 adm.pw
 2 -rw-r--r--  1 root    nobody     10 Apr 24 10:30 last_mailman_version
 2 -rw-rw----  1 nobody  nobody      6 Apr 24 10:36 master-qrunner.pid
14 -rw-r--r--  1 root    nobody  14100 Apr 24 10:32 sitelist.cfg

But I created one, ran postalias on it, changed the permissions as noted above, and it STILL fails with the same error.



-- 
Anybody who tells me what happens to me after I'm dead is either a liar or a
fool because they DON'T KNOW --Stephen Fry