[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Problem after mailman upgrade

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 09:01:48PM -0300, Ismael Luceno wrote:
> Hi, I'm having a problem with Mailman, apparently after an upgrade. I
> received the following error:

> <initng at initng.org>: Command died with status 2:
> "/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post initng". Command output: Group
> mismatch error.  Mailman expected the mail wrapper script to be
> executed as group "daemon", but the system's mail server executed the
> mail script as group "list".  Try tweaking the mail server to run the
> script as group "daemon", or re-run configure,  providing the command
> line option `--with-mail-gid=list'.

> I'm wondering if it's a problem with the package or not... do you
> guys have any idea?

The package is patched with respect to upstream to accept any group
with numeric gid less than 100 as well as gid 65534; on Debian
GNU/Linux (and AFAIK, also the non-Linux ports of Debian), both daemon
and list fall in that category and 65534 is "nogroup".

In other words, I strongly suspect your installation has a deviation
from Debian (i.e. you made a change) that breaks the mailman
package. That is not necessarily fatal. At worst, you have to follow
the instructions in the error message.

Possibly your installation uses a different groups database than the
one shipped by Debian, e.g. because you use NIS or synchronise the
groups database among different Unices. You then need to either:

 - configure your mail server to run the said wrapper with any group
   with number smaller than 100
 - configure your mail server to run the said wrapper with group
   daemon
 - change your group database so that group "list" is < 100
 - update the patch to accept whatever number "list" is in your
   non-standard installation

If you use an absolutely unchanged 2.6.11-11 .deb from Debian (and not
your own patch-added recompilation of it) on Debian (and not, for
example Ubuntu), "list" is indeed gid 38 in your active group database
(the latter may or may not be /etc/groups, see your
/etc/nsswitch.conf), then please file a bug report with the
"reportbug" program.

-- 
Lionel