14 Troubleshooting

If you encounter problems with running Mailman, first check the question and answer section below. If your problem is not covered there, check the online help, including the FAQ and the interactive FAQ wizard.

Also check for errors in your syslog files, your mail and web server log files and in Mailman's $prefix/logs/error file. If you're still having problems, you should send a message to the mailman-users@python.org mailing list⁷; see http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users for more information.

Be sure to including information on your operating system, which version of Python you're using, and which version of Mailman you're installing.

Here is a list of some common questions and answers:

Problem: All Mailman web pages give a 404 File not found error.
Solution: Your web server has not been set up properly for handling Mailman's CGI programs. Make sure you have:
1. configured the web server to give permissions to $prefix/cgi-bin
2. restarted the web server properly.
Consult your web server's documentation for instructions on how to do check these issues.
Problem: All Mailman web pages give an "Internal Server Error".
Solution: The likely problem is that you are using the wrong user or group for the CGI scripts. Check your web server's log files. If you see a line like
```
            Attempt to exec script with invalid gid 51, expected 99
```
you will need to reinstall Mailman, specifying the proper CGI group id, as described in the section.
Problem: I send mail to the list, and get back mail saying the list is not found!
Solution: You probably didn't add the necessary aliases to the system alias database, or you didn't properly integrate Mailman with your mail server. Perhaps you didn't update the alias database, or your system requires you to run newaliases explicitly. Refer to your server specific instructions in the 6 section.
Problem: I send mail to the list, and get back mail saying, ``unknown mailer error''.
Solution: The likely problem is that you are using the wrong user or group id for the mail wrappers. Check your mail server's log files; if you see a line like
```
            Attempt to exec script with invalid gid 51, expected 99
```
you will need to reinstall Mailman, specifying the proper mail group id as described in the section.
Problem: I use Postfix as my mail server and the mail wrapper programs are logging complaints about the wrong GID.
Solution: Make sure the $prefix/data/aliases.db file is user owned by mailman (or whatever user name you used in the configure command). If this file is not user owned by mailman, Postfix will not run the mail programs as the correct user.
Problem: I use Sendmail as my mail server, and when I send mail to the list, I get back mail saying, ``sh: mailman not available for sendmail programs''.
Solution: Your system uses the Sendmail restricted shell (smrsh). You need to configure smrsh by creating a symbolic link from the mail wrapper ($prefix/mail/mailman) to the directory identifying executables allowed to run under smrsh.
Some common names for this directory are /var/admin/sm.bin, /usr/admin/sm.bin or /etc/smrsh.
Note that on Debian Linux, the system makes /usr/lib/sm.bin, which is wrong, you will need to create the directory /usr/admin/sm.bin and add the link there. Note further any aliases newaliases spits out will need to be adjusted to point to the secure link to the wrapper.

Problem: I messed up when I called configure. How do I clean things up and re-install?

Solution:

        % make clean
        % ./configure --with-the-right-options
        % make install

Footnotes

... list ⁷: You must subscribe to this mailing list in order to post to it, but the mailing list's archives are publicly visible.