Common Problems FAQ
Problem: All Mailman web pages give a 404 File not
found error.
Solution: Your web server has not been set up properly
for handling Mailman's cgi commands. Make sure you've:
- Configured the web server to give permissions to
$prefix/cgi-bin
- Restarted the web server properly.
Consult your web server's documentation for instructions
on how to do these things.
Problem: All Mailman web pages give an Internal
Server Error.
Solution: The likely problem is that you are using the
wrong GID or UID for CGI scripts. Check your syslog. If you
see, for example, a line like:
Attempt to exec script with invalid gid 51, expected 99
You need to reinstall Mailman, and specify
$CGI_GID to be 51, as described in the
installation instructions.
Problem: I send mail to the list, and get back mail saying the
list is not found!
Solution: You probably didn't add the necessary aliases
to the system alias database, given to you when you ran the
newlist command. If you did add them, you likely
did not update the alias database, or your system requires you
to run newaliases explicitly. Refer to section 5
above for more information.
Problem: I send mail to the list, and get back mail saying,
unknown mailer error.
Solution: The likely problem is that you are using the
wrong GID or UID for mail. Check your syslog. If you see, for
example, a line like:
Attempt to exec script with invalid gid 51, expected 99
You need to reinstall Mailman, and specify
$MAIL_GID to be 51, as described in the
installation instructions. see notes on Postfix below, as by
default it will create these problems on installation.
Problem: I use Postfix for my MTA and the mail wrapper programs
are logging complaints about the wrong GID.
Solution: Create a separate aliases file for Postfix in its
main.cf config file under the variable
alias_maps. Put the file somewhere in Mailman's home
directory, or somewhere else where the user
mailman has write access to it; as user
mailman call Postfix's postalias on the
alias file.
% postalias the-alias-file
Also as user mailman, run
% python -c'import os; print os.getgid()'
This should print out the group id that Mailman should be
configured to expect when the mail wrapper programs are run.
Call it thegid. Rebuild Mailman with
% ./configure --with-mail-gid=thegid
Problem: I send mail to the list, and get back mail saying,
sh: wrapper not available for sendmail programs
Solution: Your system uses sendmail restricted shell
(smrsh). You need to configure smrsh by creating a symbolic
link from the mail wrapper ($prefix/mail/wrapper )
to the directory identifying executables allowed to run under
smrsh.
Some common names for this directory are
/var/admin/sm.bin , /usr/admin/sm.bin
or /etc/smrsh .
Note that on Debian Linux, the system makes
/usr/lib/sm.bin , which is wrong, you will need to
create the directory /usr/admin/sm.bin and add
the link there. Note further that any aliases
newaliases spits out will need to be adjusted to
point to the secure link to the wrapper.
Problem: I messed up when I called configure. How do I clean
things up and re-install?
Solution:
% make clean
% ./configure --with-the-right-options
% make install
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