The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Data Vortex <address@concealed>]

Greetings,

I am a very new user of Sympa.  I was using Majordomo, but because Sympa
came with Mandrake 7.2, which I've just installed, I decided to give it a
try.  I installed it along with the operating system, using the RPM of
version 2.7.3.  I have not had it work properly yet, I'm having problems
with file permissions.

Here is what I see in the debug console of sympa when I send a help
request to sympa@myserver:

Processing /var/lib/sympa/spool/msg/sympa.973394766.7579 with priority 1
Can't open /var/lib/sympa/spool/msg/sympa.973394766.7579: Permission 
denied
No From found in message, skipping.
Renaming bad file sympa.973394766.7579 to BAD-sympa.973394766.7579    

And here are the file permissions for that file it's talking about:

-rw-------    1 root     mail          678 Nov  4 22:26
BAD-sympa.973394766.7579

I checked, and the permissions seem to be the same before it's renamed to
BAD:
-rw-------    1 root     mail          678 Nov  4 22:36
sympa.973395408.7711


Here is how I'm running sendail:
root      7256  0.0  1.1  3008 1456 ?        S    21:56   0:00
sendmail: accepting

From sendmail.cf, you can see the user(s) that sendmail is running as:
# default UID (can be username or userid:groupid)
O DefaultUser=8:12     
(User 8 is named mail, group 12 is also named mail)

Also from sendmail.cf, this line is commented out:
# what user id do we assume for the majority of the processing? 
#O RunAsUser=mail

I tried uncommenting this, but I could no longer send any mail at all.

sympa.pl is running as user 'sympa'

I've also tried adding sympa to the 'mail' group -- but because there's no
group permissions anyway, it doesn't work.

The only way I was able to get any response at all was using this command:
su -c 'chmod o+r BAD-sympa.<numbers> && mv BAD-sympa.<num> sympa.<num>'

And then it works fine for that one message.

I've also tried messing with the sticky bit (+s) for the bin/queue
executable.  With it set, the above happens, when I remove it, the mail
sent to sympa@ simply disappears.  No bounce, no errors, just the
following sendmail logs to prove that goblins did not eat my mail:

Nov  4 22:53:59 vortex
sendmail[7935]: eA53rxb07935: from=<address@concealed>, size=279,
class=0, nrcpts=1,
msgid=<address@concealed>,
proto=ESMTP, relay=beamer@localhost
Nov  4 22:53:59 vortex sendmail[7936]: eA53rxb07935: to="|
/var/lib/sympa/bin/queue sympa", ctladdr=<address@concealed> (8/0),
delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=30016, dsn=4.0.0,
stat=Deferred

Does anyone know how to make the messages in the spool be owned by my user
'sympa', or at least readable to it?  Or how to fix this at all?  I will
gladly provide you with more information, or, if you would like, a shell
account (which you are welcome to keep) if you can offer me some help on
this problem.

Thanks very much,
DataVortex

-- 
"Drawing on my extensive training and experience, I've decided to curl up
into a fetal position and whimper."