5.4. Configuring cron to run with the correct privileges, troubleshoot cron error.

Note that this entry is only valid for Mailman version 2.0.x. Version 2.1 (and later) uses a different mechanism that is not based on cron.

When you install mailman either from source or from rpm you need to configure the cron jobs to run under the context of the user root. In your installation directory it will create this file: (This is my installation directory, yours might be /usr/local/mailman.)

/var/mailman/cron/crontab.in

You need to import this file as root with the following command crontab -u root /var/mailman/cron/crontab.in (note that this will overwrite your existing crontab, the correct way to do this is crontab -u root -l>>/var/mailman/cron/crontab.in; and then crontab -u root /var/mailman/cron/crontab.in) Then reload your crond daemon. service crond reload

It took me 4 months to track down this particular problem. This will spare you the effort of being so incredible stupid about figuring this out. To reiterate run the mailman deamons under user root, if you look at the scripts that run you will see they have the suid bit set to run as mailman when called by root. You will get these sorts of messages if you run cron jobs with the incorrect error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/var/mailman/cron/senddigests", line 94, in ?
    main()
  File "/var/mailman/cron/senddigests", line 82, in main
    mlist = MailList.MailList(listname, lock=0)
  File "/var/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 101, in __init__
    self.Load()
  File "/var/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 573, in Load
    dict, e = self.__load(file)
  File "/var/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 539, in __load
    fp = open(dbfile)

IOError: Errno 13 Permission denied: '/var/mailman/lists/mailman/config.pck'

Note that this entry is only valid for Mailman version 2.0.x. Version 2.1 (and later) uses a different mechanism that is not based on cron.

Converted from the Mailman FAQ Wizard

This is one of many Frequently Asked Questions.