[Mailman-Users] Mailman+Exim in Ubuntu

[Barry S. Finkel]

On 12/16/2018 3:05 AM, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 at 20:13, Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 12/15/18 1:35 AM, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
>>>
>>> # User and group for Mailman, should match your --with-mail-gid
>>> # switch to Mailman's configure script.  Value is normally "mailman"
>>> MM_UID=list
>>> MM_GID=list
>>>
>>> Now, posts cannot be delivered because:
>>> 2018-12-15 00:00:58 1gXuEg-0006Hn-2J ** testing at lists.my.co.ke <
>>> testing-bounces at lists.my.co.ke> R=mailman_router T=mailman_transport:
>> Child
>>> process of mailman_transport transport returned 2 from command:
>>> /var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman
>>
>>
>> Status = 2 is a group mismatch error as you apparently discovered.
>>
> 
> Yes, and got stumped as well.
> 
> 
>>
>>
>>> After consulting Google, I got advised to run a test:
>>>
>>> root at lists:/home/wash# /var/lib/mailman/mail/wrapper post
>>> Group mismatch error.  Mailman expected the mail
>>> wrapper script to be executed as group "daemon", but
>>> the system's mail server executed the mail script as
>>> group "root".  Try tweaking the mail server to run the
>>> script as group "daemon", or re-run configure,
>>> providing the command line option `--with-mail-gid=root'
>>
>>
>> This test is irrelevant. It would be expected to produce a group
>> mismatch because you are running the wrapper as root:root and not as the
>> user:group that Exim runs it as.
>>
> 
> Ah, that explains it. Every change I did to MM_UID and MM_GID was producing
> that
> error, leaving me wondering.
> 
> 
>> Also, even in Debian/Ubuntu, the wrapper is normally named
>> mailman/mail/mailman, not mailman/mail/wrapper, so I'm not sure what's
> 
> going on here.
>>
> 
> I saw the wrapper is a symlink so I did not find it odd to just use the
> name.
> 
> root at lists:/home/wash# cd /var/lib/mailman/mail/
> root at lists:/var/lib/mailman/mail# ls -al
> total 24
> drwxrwsr-x 2 root list  4096 Dec 15 13:51 .
> drwxr-xr-x 7 root list  4096 Dec 15 13:44 ..
> -rwxr-sr-x 1 root list 14672 Nov 30 19:01 mailman
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     7 Nov 30 19:01 wrapper -> mailman
> root at lists:/var/lib/mailman/mail#
> 
> 
> 
>>
>> As far as how to fix it, this is really a Debian/Ubuntu question. See
>> <https://wiki.list.org/x/12812344>.
>>
>>
>> That said, there are a couple of things going on here:
>>
>> It appears from your above test that the expected group is 'daemon'.
>> This is strange as in Debian/Ubuntu , it is normally 'list' which is why
>> in your Exim config you have MM_GID=list. You could try MM_GID=daemon to
>> fix this.
>>
>> The Debian/Ubuntu package has patches to avoid the group mismatch test
>> if the real gid of the caller is < 100 or = 65534.
>>
>> My recomendation, especially if you want help from this list is to junk
>> the Ubuntu package and install from source.
>>
> 
> Actually, you've just woken me up - install from source :-)
> I just don't seem to get things right with packages I am not sure how to
> manipulate because
> I am not too familiar with the OS. I just did not think about installing
> from source, because I
> was relying on all the supposedly working HOWTOs online, so I wanted to
> leave the ecosystem
> as natural as possible.
> 
> 


When I was managing a Mailman installation on Ubuntu, I looked at the
Debian/Ubuntu package, and it had a number of undocumented patches.
I did not trust these, and I discovered that one patch deletes a file
that is sometimes needed.  So, I took the Mailman source and built
my own package.  I included a few patches from Mark that I needed,
and I kept the D/U patches that put the files in the proper directories.
The rest of the patches I discarded.  This was for, IIRC, Mailman 2.14.
I assume that what I did would work for the current Mailman 2.x release.
Those who want details can contact me off-list.

--Barry Finkel