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 ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org