The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[David Verdin <address@concealed>]

Hi Brian,

First : thanks for entering the beta! Though we're running it here and had no troubles upgrading, it is very important to have feedback from other users with different settings.

Le 03/02/15 20:54, Brian Eliassen a écrit :

Hello David,

Sorry for the delay in the reply.  Here are the answers to your questions and a few other items I've discovered within 6.2b.2.  I will finish my installation and then upgrade to 6.2b.3 and I'll let you know if I discover anything else.

- db creation: Once I started sympa.pl, it successfully updated the tables that were created with create_db.mysql from the 6.1.24 package.  Having this process automated is a major improvement.
I agree. Though it works with MySQL / MariaDB, Postgres and SQLite only.
Oracle and Sybase (if there are any Sybase users left) will still need to upgrade by hand.
- The following CPAN modules failed and were manually installed.  After each of these, I attempted to run the "sympa_wizard.pl --check" command to complete the installation automatically.
   DBD::mysql - This failed the "make test" with a "__gxx_personality_v0: referenced symbol not found" error.  The perl Makefile.pl was created with my --testpassword value and --mysql_config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config to read in variables.  However, the Makefile needed to have "-lstdc++" added to the LDLOADLIBS line as the code is attempting a g++ call from within gcc.  Once this was done, it tested and installed properly.  I know, not your problem but I've let the DBD::mysql author know.
Yes, it is our problem. MySQL is certainly the most used RDBMS with Sympa. This module needs to install properly, so thank you for reporting this bug to the author!
   MIME::Lite - This module is reporting a huge number of errors on CPAN Testers.  I did the normal build but "make test" had most tests fail.  However, I did a "make install" without incident so I'm crossing my fingers on this one.
I don't know. We never had any troubles updtaing this module... I wonder why it didn't work for you.
Soji, if you read this, do you know why this problem arose? (Soji is NOT the author of this module but he's from far the most competents of the Sympa authors regarding any module related to mailing).
   XML::LibXML - The current module, 2.0117 is so buggy, I had to downgrade to 2.0113 to get it to build properly.  Again, CPAN Testers says the latest version is all screwed up.
No problem for us on this module either.
However, people having troubles installing a module - and not perl-savvy - should install the module using their OS package. Most of the time, it will be good enough for Sympa.
- The following CPAN modules entered an error loop within the "sympa_wizard.pl --check" script but were successfully installed manually with the "install" command within CPAN.  After each of these, I attempted to run the "sympa_wizard.pl --check" command to complete the installation automatically.
   Module::Runtime
   Module::Implementation
   Exporter::Tiny
   Params::Validate
   List::MoreUtils
   List::Util
   List::AllUtils
   DateTime::Locale
   DateTime::TimeZone
   DateTime
   Email::Date::Format
   HTML::StripScripts
   MIME::Types
   MIME::Lite
   Test::LeakTrace
   AppConfig
   Class::MethodMaker
   Term::ReadKey
   XML::NamespaceSupport
   XML::SAX::Base
   XML::SAX
   CGI::Fast (even though I disabled FastCGI within /etc/sympa/sympa.conf, this still needed to be installed for sympa.pl to start)
Yes, on one of our servers, we also had troubles with DateTime.
I'll check which is the one provoking the loop and have it installed first.
- The "sympa" init.d script has an error within it at line 177 where a Bash compare is being used in a Bourne script:
    if [ $1 == "sympa-creation" ]; then
   This should be:
    if [ "$1" = "sympa-creation" ]; then
Thanks on this one. I'll fix it.
- The "sympa" init.d script also uses "ps -A" which truncates the process name to eight characters.  As such, archived.pl, task_manager.pl and bounced.pl will not terminate on a "sympa stop" call.  I resolved the problem by replacing the three uses of `ps -A | grep "$pid ..* $process_name\\.pl"` with `pgrep $process_name"`.  Yes, not everyone has pgrep but most systems do at this point.
Soji fixed it yesterday. The fix will be in next beta.
- As mentioned in the code, "echo -c" does not work in Solaris but "echo \c" does.  Tougher to code as it needs to appear at the end of a string but possible.
We'll see what we can do.
- /var/lock/subsys was not present on my system so I had to "mkdir -p /var/lock/subsys" to allow sympa.pl to start.
Bad. We'll probably need to make an exception for Solaris.

At this point, sympa is running and I can connect via the webGUI.  I will be creating a few "robots" as I have multiple domains to utilize.  Once I'm done getting those working and I have an initial test list working, I will upgrade to 6.2b.3 and let you know what I find.
Once it is installed, it runs very smoothly. I noticed that, since we no longer use database for bulk mailing, message sending looks quicker than before.

Thanks for all these feedbacks!

Best regards,

David

Brian


On Jan 27, 2015, at 8:54 AM, David Verdin wrote:

Hi Brian, and sorry for this late answer.

Soji took care of your issues:

    • make install fail: Soji fixed the problem in code.
    • db creation: you don't actually need the db creation script with MySQL, as sympa.pl --health_check does it for you. Soji removed the forme creation scripts. I'll update the documentation accordingly,
    • I don't know why you had troubles with the CPAN install. What were the module causing the troubles?
    • Finally, I'm glad you switch from majordomo! We have a set of migration scripts that were contributed by Mathias Warkus, to move from Sympa to Majordomo. You can find them here: https://www.sympa.org/contribs/migration_and_archives/index#majordomo2sympa6
I'll tag a new Sympa 6.2 beta tomorrow. You can then try to use it to finish your install.

Best regards,

David

Le 25/01/15 08:57, Brian Eliassen a écrit :

Greetings everyone,

I'm in the process of installing a new Sympa server and elected to use the 6.2b.2 beta version.  During the installation process, I've discovered a few items that probably should be addressed.

Environment: Solaris 10, gcc 3.4.6, GNU make 3.82, perl v5.14.2, MySQL 5.6.22, everything built from source

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/sympa
make
make install

The "make install" fails as file src/libexec/Makefile on line 677 contains:

    install -d -m755 $(DESTDIR)$(smrshdir)

In order to get this to install, the Makefile needed the space between "-m" and "755":

    install -d -m 755 $(DESTDIR)$(smrshdir)

After the extensive "sympa_wizard.pl --check" process where several modules needed to be manually created as the automated process enters several error loops, it was time to create the database.

/usr/local/mysql/bin> mysql -u root -p < ~sympa/bin/create_db.mysql
Enter password:
ERROR 1064 (42000) at line 38: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ') DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8' at line 18

The file create_db.mysql appears to have a line missing and the reported error with create_db.mysql looks like this:

CREATE TABLE admin_table (
         comment_admin   varchar(150),
         date_admin      datetime,
         include_sources_admin   varchar(50),
         included_admin          int(1),
         info_admin      varchar(150),
         list_admin      varchar(50),
         profile_admin   enum('privileged','normal'),
         reception_admin         varchar(20),
         robot_admin     varchar(80),
         role_admin      enum('listmaster','owner','editor'),
         subscribed_admin        int(1),
         update_admin    datetime,
         user_admin      varchar(100),
         visibility_admin        varchar(20),
,
         INDEX admin_user_index ( user_admin )
 ) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;

Figuring MySQL didn't like the extra comma, I removed it but the error remains.  It appears to dislike the DEFAULT CHARACTER SET command for some reason.  I tried the example create_db.mysql from the website which showed the missing line was "PRIMARY KEY (robot_admin, list_admin, role_admin, user_admin)," but the same error occurs.  Any idea what is happening?  I'll admit my MySQL skills are limited and I hope I'm not just missing something simple.  Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm finally at the "create database and then make mailing lists" stage.  Time for me to finally retire Majordomo.

Thank you.

Brian

-- 
A bug in Sympa? Quick! To the bug tracker!
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David Verdin
Études et projets applicatifs

Tél : +33 2 23 23 69 71
Fax : +33 2 23 23 71 21

www.renater.fr
RENATER
263 Avenue du Gal Leclerc
35042 Rennes Cedex

--
A bug in Sympa? Quick! To the bug tracker!

David Verdin Études et projets applicatifs
Tél : +33 2 23 23 69 71 Fax : +33 2 23 23 71 21   www.renater.fr	RENATER 263 Avenue du Gal Leclerc 35042 Rennes Cedex

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