[Mailman-Users] Nightly Messages Show Problems

[Steve Matzura]

This should have gone to the list instead of where it went.

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 07:45:07 -0700, Mark Shapiro <mark at msapiro.net>
wrote:

>These occur because you have installed a crontab which has been
>formatted as a system crontab and intended to be installed in a place
>like /etc/cron.d/mailman as a user contab somewhere in /var/spool/cron.

Interesting. I followed the directions at
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/node41.html which
say:

If your version of crontab supports the -u option, you must be root to
do this next step. Add $prefix/cron/crontab.in as a crontab entry by
executing these commands: 

    % cd $prefix/cron
    % crontab -u mailman crontab.in

>System crontabs have an extra field between the days/times and the
>command which is the user to run as. In this case, that user (mailman)
>is interpreted as part of the command because the crontab is installed
>for a user.

Should I remove the mailman ones and install it as root instead?

>The four are all permissions issues. Since check_perms thinks the
>permissions are OK, the issue could be that the user as which the crons
>are running is not in the 'mailman' group, or it could be a SELinux or
>other policy manager issue.

mailman is not a group in root's passwd record. Sounds like the
crontab.in needs editing to remove the mailman username from it?

>It seems there are at least two mailman crontabs. One is a user crontab
>in /var/spool/cron/mailman (or maybe /var/spool/cron/crontabs/mailman or
>??) that is not formatted as a user crontab and is responsible for the
>/bin/sh: mailman: command not found messages. The other is probably in
>/etc/cron.d/mailman and is the one giving the permission exceptions.
>
>What are the contents of these crontabs? You only want one of these.
>Which may be important if there are SELinux issues, but otherwise, it
>doesn't matter as long as the one is correct.

The two in /etc/cron.d and /var/spool/cron are identical. Here's the
contents with the comment lines removed:

MAILTO=sm at noisynotes.com
0 8 * * * mailman /usr/lib/mailman/cron/checkdbs
0 9 * * * mailman /usr/lib/mailman/cron/disabled
0 12 * * * mailman /usr/lib/mailman/cron/senddigests
0 5 1 * * mailman /usr/lib/mailman/cron/mailpasswds
27 3 * * * mailman /usr/lib/mailman/cron/nightly_gzip
30 4 * * * mailman /usr/lib/mailman/cron/cull_bad_shunt