[Mailman-Users] Installing Mailman on a Debian system with Apache 2.4.2, CGI error!

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,


This is a weird one. I think of myself as knowing my way around Mailman 
pretty well for a user/admin/installer/upgrader. I'm upgrading to a 
Debian 9 system from CentOS 6.5. Debian's Apache configs took a bit of 
getting used to, but I actually like them better. It uses Apache 2.4.2.

I wanted to install Mailman from source, since the latest version is 
2.1.26, Debian has 2.1.23, and IIRC that's too old to have some screen 
reader optimizations I want. So I built, installed, all working well. I 
copied over the Mailman config from my CentOS system to use in Apache, 
making some changes so it'd work under 2.4.2. Here it is:


--------------------


#
#  httpd configuration settings for use with mailman.
#

ScriptAlias /mailman/ /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin/
<Directory /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin/>
     AllowOverride None
     Options ExecCGI
     Require all granted
</Directory>


Alias /pipermail/ /var/lib/mailman/archives/public/
<Directory /var/lib/mailman/archives/public>
     Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
     AllowOverride None
     Require all granted
     AddDefaultCharset Off
</Directory>

# Uncomment the following line, to redirect queries to /mailman to the
# listinfo page (recommended).

# RedirectMatch ^/mailman[/]*$ /mailman/listinfo

--------------------


The problem is that the CGI isn't working. If I go to 
http://temphostname/mailman/listinfo/mailman for example, Apache says 
/usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/mailman doesn't exist. If I just go to 
/mailman/listinfo I get an Elf binary thrown at me, rather than the page 
saying there are no advertised lists. If I do the same thing from the 
server using the Lynx web browser, I get the same binary thrown at me, 
with a page title, "Mailman CGI error!" It sounds to me like Apache 
2.4.2 isn't seeing that /usr/lib/mailman/cgi-bin is, in fact, CGI 
scripts, and is trying to treat them like regular files. Has something 
else changed between Apache versions?


Thanks,


Jayson