I have been battling a weird archives issue with our GNU Mailman mailing list server. We have some lists that archive properly when e-mail is sent to them. We have other lists where the e-mail is delivered but does not show up in the archives. We also have lists where e-mail sent to them disappears and is never heard from again. I have been hassling with this permissions issue literally for years now. I picked the baton up again today and decided to try to bring this one home. First I started in the mailman error logs:
/var/log/mailman/error
Jul 26 12:25:43 2010 (2755) Uncaught runner exception: [Errno 13] Permission denied: ‘/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/listname/index.html’Jul 26 12:25:43 2010 (2755) Traceback (most recent call last):File “/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py”, line 112, in _oneloopself._onefile(msg, msgdata)File “/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py”, line 170, in _onefilekeepqueued = self._dispose(mlist, msg, msgdata)File “/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/ArchRunner.py”, line 73, in _disposemlist.ArchiveMail(msg)File “/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.py”, line 217, in ArchiveMailh.close()File “/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/pipermail.py”, line 324, in closeself.write_TOC()File “/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/HyperArch.py”, line 1094, in write_TOCtoc = open(os.path.join(self.basedir, ‘index.html’), ‘w’)IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: ‘/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/listname/index.html’Jul 26 12:25:43 2010 (2755) SHUNTING: 1280155615.876646+a19c8dce602a83897d29592d36d618fc80195ec7
>>I ran several times check_perms -f and it says all is fixed.>>> check_perms is lying (actually, there are many files, as opposed to> directories, that check_perms doesn’t check). The above file and all> files in /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/ excluding those in> /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/*/database/ need to be group> writable.>> Once you fix these permissions, you could run bin/unshunt to add the> shunted messages to the archive, but there is an issue in that the> messages have been successfully added to> /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/mylist.mbox/mylist.mbox, and> unshunting will add them again.>> Rather than trying to fix archive permissions, I suggest you verify> that /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/mylist.mbox/mylist.mbox> contains all the lists posts from inception to date, and mayby verify> there are no stray “From ” lines in message bodies with bin/cleanarch,> and then stop Mailman and rebuild the archive with>> bin/arch –wipe listname>> and then start Mailman. This way, the pipermail archive will be> completely rebuilt with correct permissions.>> This is one reason why I always recommend when moving lists to just> move the LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox file and build the archive on the> new machine with bin/arch.>> Note if you do this, remove the shunted messages from qfiles/shunt/ so> they don’t accidently get unshunted in the future.


