[Pkg-mailman-hackers] confused by directory owner of /var/lib/mailman/archives/private

[Liu Yubao]

Hi Mailman maintainers,

I installed mailman from Debian testing and found mailman can't
generate archives
due to file permission.

# ps -ef | grep -i mailman
list     20303     1  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/usr/lib/mailman/bin/mailmanctl -q start
list     20304 20303  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner --runner=ArchRunner:0:1 -s
list     20305 20303  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner --runner=BounceRunner:0:1 -s
list     20306 20303  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner --runner=CommandRunner:0:1 -s
list     20307 20303  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner --runner=IncomingRunner:0:1 -s
list     20308 20303  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner --runner=NewsRunner:0:1 -s
list     20309 20303  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner --runner=OutgoingRunner:0:1 -s
list     20310 20303  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner --runner=VirginRunner:0:1 -s
list     20311 20303  0 07:19 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/python
/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner --runner=RetryRunner:0:1 -s

This is perm and owner info of /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/ :
drwxrws--- 3 list www-data 96 Dec 30 06:49 private/

Currently I run mailman CGI scripts with Apache, so Apache user
"www-data" will create
directories under private/ for new lists, these directories have
owner/group "www-data:www-data",
and on command line, root user runs "newlist xxx" to create
directories under private/ too,
its owner/group is "root:www-data".

Because mailman service runs as user "list", it can't write to
private/ to generate archives.
I think the owner and group of private/ should be "www-data:list"
instead of "list:www-data",
so Apache and mailman service both can read and write that directory
and its child directories.

I checked mailman package on Debian stable, the owner/group is
"list:www-data", bugs.debian.org
doesn't record who complained about that,  so I'm not sure whether I
found a bug.

Please tell me if you want to check my mailman and Apache configuration,
they are basically taken from /usr/share/doc/mailman/README.Exim4.Debian.gz
and /etc/mailman/apache.conf, it's a little too long so I don't paste here now.

The steps I install mailman:
# aptitude install mailman
# ...copy mailman/exim4/apache configuration to proper directory...
# newlist mailman
# ...restart exim4, mailman, apache2...

Regards,
Yubao Liu