[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#494065: mailman: Incorrect properties of symbolic links makes it crash hard on startup

[Magnus Danielson]

Package: mailman
Version: 1:2.1.11-2
Severity: grave

The Debianization of Mailman 2.1.11 has failed on a critical aspect, the
properties of /var/lib/mailman/locks and /var/lib/mailman/logs made it
impossible for Mailman to operate properly. The symbolic links used to point
to ../../locks/mailman and ../../log/mailman (respectively) was not sufficient
to make Mailman operational. The locks failed directly, causing Mailman to fail
on start. The logs made it die within a minute. Removing those links and
replacing them with the (in Mailman context) traditional locks and logs
directories and by checking the properties of those useing
/var/lib/mailman/bin/check_perms made Mailman operational. Thus, this is a
workaround to use while the package maintainer fix things up.
It is a serious bug that /var/lib/mailman/bin/check_perms does not run without
problems, as this script is intended to avoid this situation, and it should be
run with the -f flag at upgrades etc. to ensure everything including user
data is properly setup.

This bug is mainly caused by the wish to keep the standard filestructure.
However, if the symbolic links can not be made to function properly, then the
directories should be kept at /var/lib/mailman with proper bits and then
symbolic links point into that directory rather than out of. Unless a stable
symbolic link fix can be made, all directories needs to move "home" rather than
be distributed out.

If the proposed method is unacceptable, then it still needs to be applied until
upstream has handled the bug.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  adduser                       3.109      add and remove users and groups
ii  apache2                       2.2.9-6    Apache HTTP Server metapackage
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork [httpd]   2.2.9-6    Apache HTTP Server - traditional n
ii  cron                          3.0pl1-104 management of regular background p
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]         1.5.23     Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                         2.7-13     GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  logrotate                     3.7.1-3    Log rotation utility
ii  lsb-base                      3.2-19     Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  postfix [mail-transport-agent 2.5.2-2    High-performance mail transport ag
ii  pwgen                         2.06-1     Automatic Password generation
ii  python                        2.5.2-2    An interactive high-level object-o
ii  python-support                0.8.5      automated rebuilding support for P
ii  ucf                           3.007      Update Configuration File: preserv

mailman recommends no packages.

Versions of packages mailman suggests:
ii  listadmin                  2.40-1        command line mailman moderator que
ii  lynx                       2.8.7dev9-1.2 Text-mode WWW Browser (transitiona
ii  spamassassin               3.2.5-1       Perl-based spam filter using text 

-- debconf information:
* mailman/used_languages: da en fi no sv
* mailman/create_site_list:
* mailman/gate_news: false
  mailman/update_passwords:
* mailman/site_languages: da (Danish), en (English), fi (Finnish), no (Norwegian), sv (Swedish)
* mailman/queue_files_present:
* mailman/default_server_language: en (English)
  mailman/update_aliases: