[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#614218: mailman: Upgrade fails if /var/lock/mailman does not exist (e.g. due to /var/lock being tmpfs)

[Axel Beckert]

Package: mailman
Version: 1:2.1.11-11+lenny1
Severity: normal

I expected that /var/lock does not need to retain any data over
reboots, so I use tmpfs for it. But FHS doesn't seem to require this
like it does for /var/cache/, so this is merely a convenience bug.

Upgrading to the recent security update failed since lock files
couldn't be create in /var/lock/mailman since that directory didn't
exist. Creating it solved the issue.

So I suggest that the maintainer scripts (and maybe also the init.d
script) check for its existence and if it doesn't exist yet, create
it.

Haven't yet tested if this still happens in Squeeze, Wheezy or Sid,
too.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.8
  APT prefers oldstable
  APT policy: (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  adduser                  3.110           add and remove users and groups
ii  apache2                  2.2.9-10+lenny9 Apache HTTP Server metapackage
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork [htt 2.2.9-10+lenny9 Apache HTTP Server - traditional n
ii  cron                     3.0pl1-105      management of regular background p
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]    1.5.24          Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                    2.7-18lenny7    GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  logrotate                3.7.1-5         Log rotation utility
ii  lsb-base                 3.2-20          Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  postfix [mail-transport- 2.5.5-1.1       High-performance mail transport ag
ii  pwgen                    2.06-1          Automatic Password generation
ii  python                   2.5.2-3         An interactive high-level object-o
ii  python-support           0.8.4lenny2     automated rebuilding support for P
ii  ucf                      3.0016          Update Configuration File: preserv

mailman recommends no packages.

Versions of packages mailman suggests:
pn  listadmin                  <none>        (no description available)
ii  lynx                       2.8.7dev9-2.1 Text-mode WWW Browser (transitiona
pn  spamassassin               <none>        (no description available)

-- debconf information:
  mailman/gate_news: false
  mailman/site_languages: it, fr, de, en
  mailman/queue_files_present: abort installation
* mailman/used_languages: de en fr it
  mailman/default_server_language: en
  mailman/create_site_list: