Mailman setup

[David Southwell]

On Friday 13 April 2007 06:37:36 Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
> On Apr 13, 2007, at 7:17 AM, David Southwell wrote:
> >> Thanks very much - very helpful.
> >>
> >> May I trouble you with two additional questions..
> >>
> >> 1. File ownership in the /usr/local/mailman hierarchy.. should
> >> that remain
> >> in group and owner mailman? All files in my /usr2/virtualwebs/
> >> hierarch are
> >> owner & group www.
>
> Yes, those should remain with the mailman owner and group.  You can run
>
> /usr/local/mailman/bin/check_perms
>
> to check that most of these are set up correctly.
>
> This is explained in /usr/local/share/doc/mailman/mailman-install.txt
>
> >> 2. What do I need to do to provide a link to mailman from an existing
> >> webpage? I must be missing the obvious I guess..wouldn't be the first
> >> time..but  I often find docs do not state stuff that is simple
> >> enough for
> >> developers to take for granted.  When writing docs it is difficult
> >> to think
> >> like someone who has never seen their stuff (or perhaps anything
> >> like it)
> >> before!!!
>
> This is also in the same document.  Once a list is set up, you can
> find its main page at
>
>     http://Your.Dom.ain/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME
>
> I do understand that it is tricky to figure out which bits of mailman-
> install.txt you need to pay attention to.  Much of the instructions
> there are already done for you by the ports installation.  But
> setting up mailman for the first time, does require a fair bit of
> work to understand a complicated system (particularly if you are not
> already familiar with mail transport principles, mailing lists in
> general, or Apache configuration).
>
> Also take a look at
>
>    http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/site.html
>
> And
>
>    http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py
>
> You should probably also join the mailman-users mailing list
>
>   http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
>
> But of course you should check the FAQs before posting a question to
> that mailing list.
>
>
> If you feel that it is all a bit much, you can always hire somebody
> the help you set things up initially (ask on the mailman-users
> list).  Once everything is up and running, almost all tasks can be
> performed from the web interface.
>
> > Another query..
> > After making the modifications I have had the following apache error:
> >
> > [root at dns1 /usr/local/mailman/cgi-bin]# /usr/local/sbin/apachectl
> > restart
> > Syntax error on line 26 of /usr/local/etc/apache22/Includes/
> > virtualhosts.conf:
> > Invalid command '\xa0', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module
> > not included
> > in the server configuration
> > httpd not running, trying to start
>
> What editor did you use to edit the apache configuration file?  It
> looks like it added some non-printing junk to the file.
>
> -j

very very helpful.. I seem to have hit another snage, which is, I guess 
something to do with the way my system is set up.

The path to my virtual webs is
/usr2/virtualwebs/my.virtual.site.name

In attempting to create the first list I received no advice email from the 
list but did find the following errors in httpd-errors-log

[Fri Apr 13 10:16:55 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/create
[Fri Apr 13 10:16:55 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/create
[Fri Apr 13 10:16:55 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/create
[Fri Apr 13 10:16:55 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2
[Fri Apr 13 10:19:20 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/create
[Fri Apr 13 10:19:20 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/create
[Fri Apr 13 10:19:20 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/create
[Fri Apr 13 10:19:39 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/listinfo/myhomelist
[Fri Apr 13 10:19:39 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/listinfo/myhomelist
[Fri Apr 13 10:19:39 2007] [error] [client 192.168.15.1] File does not 
exist: /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net/usr2, referer: 
http://www.vizion2000.net/mailman/listinfo/myhomelist

So clearly mailman is tacking usr2 onto the path for the virtual server whcih 
I accessed using http://www/vizion2000.net/mailman/create

I then tried:
[root at dns1 /usr/local/mailman]# fgrep -R usr2 ./*
./Mailman/mm_cfg.py:IMAGE_LOGOS = '/usr2/virtualwebs/icons/'
Binary file ./Mailman/mm_cfg.pyc matches
./Mailman/mm_cfg.py~:IMAGE_LOGOS = '/usr2/virtualwebs/icons/'
[root at dns1 /usr/local/mailman]# 

After some digging around I find that mailman is looking for the icons in
http://www.vizion2000.net/usr2/virtualwebs/icons/ rather than in
/usr2/virtualwebs/icons

My mm_cfg.py has the following entry line:
IMAGE_LOGOS = '/usr2/virtualwebs/icons/'
so it seems as though the path is being read as relative 
to /usr2/virtualwebs/vizion2000.net rather than as an absolute path.

How can I change this behaviour?

Thanks in advance

David