Mailman + Apache + Cookies + FreeBSD

[mdh]

--- On Thu, 10/9/08, Grant Peel <gpeel at thenetnow.com> wrote:
> From: Grant Peel <gpeel at thenetnow.com>
> Subject: Mailman + Apache + Cookies + FreeBSD
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Date: Thursday, October 9, 2008, 5:59 PM
> Hi all,
> 
> I am not a fan of cross posting, but, I have to make a
> exception in this 
> case as I can't seem to nail down whether its the
> software or OS causing me 
> the problem.
> 
> Software: Apache 2.2, Python 2.5, Mailmain 2.1.11
> OS: FreeBSD 6.2 Release #0
> 
> Apache and Python were built from ports, Mailman was built
> from source.
> 
> Problem: I can't stay logged into the Mailman web
> interface. Each time I 
> submit a form, I am logged out. When I do log in, If I look
> on my local 
> machine, I cant find a session cookie anywhere. It like is
> never set. And 
> the Mailman documentation clearly states that none of the
> changes will be 
> saved in that scenario.
> 
> Question: are there any people out there who can point me
> in the right 
> direction? I assume that Python should be setting a cookie,
> but thats just a 
> guess ... could it be OS related?

In short, no, there's really no way that the OS could be at fault unless you had some weird TCP stack bug that caused it to drop the same packet every time, which someone else would've noticed by now.  ;)

The long answer is that Cookies are set by headers in the HTTP protocol response, and sent back to the server in the request headers of the clients subsequent requests.  Python doesn't set cookies, Apache does, but python can command Apache to do so, and Mailman can, as a python script, command python to do so.  Chances are mailman is what's misconfigured.  
- mdh