[Mailman-Users] Rather perplexing set of problems with a new 2.1.14 vhost install on a DirectAdmin box -- and I'm new to Mailman

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

Hi all,

After becoming frustrated with Majordomo I decided to install Mailman on a
DirectAdmin box I fell into managing. After some research I found Mark
Sapiro's 2.1.14 vhost port
(https://code.launchpad.net/~msapiro/mailman/vhost) which includes some
fixes and merges of virtual hosting patches to the 2.1.13 base; I followed
the instructions on
http://projects.ict4schools.nl/public/wiki/linux-alg/Installing_Mailman_on_D
irectAdmin and initial install seemed to finish OK.

I configured it with the default_email_host of lists.primarydomain.tld and
default_url_host of lists.primarydomain.tld (I'm obfuscating all URLs) in
mm_cfg.py; I also set up three additional virtualhosts in mm_cfg.py with the
add_virtualhost() command, let's call those lists.domain[2-4].tld.

I could load the mailman listinfo page -- and after a couple of small fixes
to Apache aliases, including realising that running "check_perms -f" on an
already-functional installation resets the permissions on "/cgi-bin/" and
breaks the install, I thought I was up and running.

After checking DNS had refreshed, I could bring up the mailman/listinfo
welcome page for all of the domains configured. Having created the mailman
list as part of the installation at the command prompt without issue, and
received the email as expected, I went straight to the
http://lists.domain1.tld virtualhost and set up a new list named
'announce-test' via "http://lists.domain1.tld/mailman/create". This seemed
to work ok and threw no errors; however when clicking on the list from the
success page, I just got "No such list announce-test at domain1.tld". NB that
this error message also shows "domain1.tld" and not "lists.domain1.tld" as
expected, so it looks like it's ignored the subdomain -- why, I do not know.


I then went back to my email and noticed that mailman had sent me an
approval email with two attachments: the original "confirm" email and a
"gate_news" email, containing the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 293, in ?
    main()
  File "/home/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 268, in main
    lock.lock(timeout=0.5)
  File "/home/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 243, in lock
    self.__write()
  File "/home/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 422, in __write
    fp = open(self.__tmpfname, 'w')
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied:
'/home/mailman/locks/gate_news.lock.node1.customhost.org.uk.12404.0'


The body of the main message reads:

As list administrator, your authorization is requested for the following
mailing list posting:

    List:    mailman at lists.primarydomain.tld
    From:    root at sub.primarydomain.tld  [note -- node1.primarydomain.tld
was the Xen subdomain assigned to the CentOS VPS when it was first
configured]
    Subject: Cron <mailman at node1> /usr/bin/python -S
/home/mailman/cron/gate_news
    Reason:  Post by non-member to a members-only list

At your convenience, visit:
    http://lists.primarydomain.tld/mailman/admindb/mailman
to approve or deny the request.

If I then visit http://lists.primarydomain.tld/mailman/admindb/mailman

But attempting to log in with any password just shows "Bug in Mailman
version 2.1.14 We're sorry, we hit a bug!" and an indication to check
tracebacks and the Mailman error logs (which I have done, and can see
nothing untoward except this:

admin(17706): Traceback (most recent call last):
admin(17706):   File "/home/mailman/scripts/driver", line 112, in run_main
admin(17706):     main()
admin(17706):   File "/home/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py", line 106, in
main
admin(17706):     cgidata.getvalue('adminpw', '')):
admin(17706):   File "/home/mailman/Mailman/SecurityManager.py", line 244,
in WebAuthenticate
admin(17706):     print self.MakeCookie(ac, user)
admin(17706):   File "/home/mailman/Mailman/SecurityManager.py", line 262,
in MakeCookie
admin(17706):     path = parsed.path
admin(17706): AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'path'



Calling 'list_lists' from the commandline shows 'announce-test' and
'mailman', as expected. The only thing I haven't done is added the list's
aliases yet to the 'aliases' file -- I'm guessing they need to go into
/etc/aliases rather than in a DirectAdmin /etc/virtual/<domain> aliases file
(which don't currently exist anyway, as the subdomains are only set up as A
records in DA's DNS management panel).

Finally, tailing /home/mailman/logs/error shows the following when I try to
load the announce-test listinfo page:

No such list "announce-test at domain1.tld":

I'm at my wit's end; I feel like I'm so close but I'm still building up my
Linux experience and this has gone beyond the scope of my current knowledge.
I really don't want to have to revert to Majordomo but I don't honestly know
what to look at yet to try and fix these misconfigurations.

Any help *greatly* appreciated -- happy to let people examine the system if
they so desire, I understand it's difficult chasing bugs without being able
to examine specific settings impromptu.

Regards
Chris