Fixing Majordomo/Majorcool error: majordomo.cf Not Readable; Stopped.

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on June 19th 2012 - Listed in Linux Mail

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Today I came across a problem with Majorcool (a tool to manage Majordomo mailing lists) where the following message showed up for any mailing list:

/usr/local/majordomo/3725/majordomo.cf Not Readable; Stopped.

Where 3725 was the ID of the mailing list. So depending on the list, the ID of the error message varied.

Naturally, I was thinking of a permissions problem so I checked all file and folder permissions on /usr/local/majordomo. But they all looked good, most files were owned correctly by user and group 'majordomo', the ones for majorcool were owned by 'bin'. I compared the permissions with another majordomo/majorcool installation on another server and they were the same.

Then I came across a hint which suggested to use the majordomo wrapper script for a config-check. This is the output:

/usr/local/majordomo # ./wrapper config-test
------------------------------------------------------------
---------------- Config-test for Majordomo ----------------
------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------- Obvious things: ---------------------
------------------ environment variables ------------------
HOME=/usr/local/majordomo
LOGNAME=root
MAJORDOMO_CF=/usr/local/majordomo/majordomo.cf
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb
SHELL=/bin/sh
USER=root
--------------------- euid/egid checks ---------------------
effective user = ckremote (uid 1002)
effective group = cmadm root (gid 1001 0 )
---------------------- uid/gid checks ----------------------
real user = ckremote (uid 1002)
real group = cmadm root (gid 1001 0 )
------------------------------------------------------------
Non obvious things that cause headaches:
------------------------------------------------------------
Good: 'require'd /usr/local/majordomo/majordomo.cf okay.
Good: found ctime.pl okay.
Good: found majordomo_version.pl okay.
Good: found majordomo.pl okay.
Good: found shlock.pl okay.
Good: found config_parse.pl okay.
You're running Majordomo Version 1.94.5.
--==> Majordomo home directory is /usr/local/majordomo.
------------------- Include directories -------------------
/usr/local/majordomo
/etc/perl
/usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.1
/usr/local/share/perl/5.10.1
/usr/lib/perl5
/usr/share/perl5
/usr/lib/perl/5.10
/usr/share/perl/5.10
/usr/local/lib/site_perl
--------------------------- Home ---------------------------
Good: changedir to /usr/local/majordomo succeeded.
BAD: Couldn't create a mock lock file.
$homedir (/usr/local/majordomo) needs to be writable.
---------------------- temp directory ----------------------
Good: Created a temp file in $TMPDIR (/tmp).
---------------------- list directory ----------------------
BAD: list directory /usr/local/majordomo/lists has bad permissions
--------------------------- log ---------------------------
BAD: logfile /usr/local/majordomo/Log exists, but is not writeable or isn't a file.
------------------------- Mailers -------------------------
You have defined a mailer for delivery.
Attempting to verify that this is a valid mailer...looks okay.
You have defined a mailer for delivering administrative messages.
Attempting to verify that this is a valid mailer...looks okay.
------------------ Checking majordomo.cf ------------------
Checking to see if there are new variables that should be in your majordomo.cf file...Nope, none that I see.
Have you configured where Majordomo is?
$whereami is example.com
Good: yup!
----------------------- end of tests -----------------------
3 bad things were found.
Please fix before attempting to run Majordomo.

So the 3 bad things mentioned show problems with permissions (Couldn't create a mock lock file for example). But actually the problem doesn't come from file permissions, but rather from the wrapper script. If you take a look at the first few lines (euid/egid checks and uid/gid checks) it is strange, that the mentioned user and group is not majordomo.

Let's compare that to the output on the server with the working installation:

--------------------- Obvious things: ---------------------
------------------ environment variables ------------------
HOME=/usr/local/majordomo
LOGNAME=root
MAJORDOMO_CF=/usr/local/majordomo/majordomo.cf
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb
SHELL=/bin/sh
USER=root
--------------------- euid/egid checks ---------------------
effective user = majordomo (uid 2136)
effective group = majordomo root (gid 2116 0 )
---------------------- uid/gid checks ----------------------
real user = majordomo (uid 2136)
real group = majordomo root (gid 2116 0 )
------------------------------------------------------------

And indeed - the wrapper uses majordomo as user and group on the working installation.

So to fix the "bug" on the wrapper script you can't just change the file permissions of /usr/local/majordomo/wrapper, no, you need to recompile it. The information of the majordomo user and group is hard-coded into the wrapper script. Go once again into your majordomo source (re-download it if necessary) and first clean the previous compilation:

# make clean
rm -f wrapper *~

Then check on your system the current User ID (UID) and Group ID (GID) of majordomo and note them down:

# grep majordomo /etc/passwd
majordomo:x:1007:1007::/home/majordomo:/bin/sh

# grep majordomo /etc/group
majordomo:x:1007:

Now open the file Makefile with vi oder another editor and edit the following lines (enter the previously noted UID and GID):

# You need to have or create a user and group which majordomo will run as.
# Enter the numeric UID and GID (not their names!) here:
W_USER = 1007
W_GROUP = 1007

If you've already installed majordomo, this is the only change you have to do on Makefile.
Then it's time to re-compile and re-install the wrapper script:

# make wrapper
# make install-wrapper

To see the difference I re-launched the wrapper config-test and now the following output was shown:

/usr/local/majordomo # ./wrapper config-test
------------------------------------------------------------
---------------- Config-test for Majordomo ----------------
------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------- Obvious things: ---------------------
------------------ environment variables ------------------
HOME=/usr/local/majordomo
LOGNAME=root
MAJORDOMO_CF=/usr/local/majordomo/majordomo.cf
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb
SHELL=/bin/sh
USER=root
--------------------- euid/egid checks ---------------------
effective user = majordomo (uid 1007)
effective group = majordomo root (gid 1007 0 )
---------------------- uid/gid checks ----------------------
real user = majordomo (uid 1007)
real group = majordomo root (gid 1007 0 )
-----------------------------------------------------------

This looks better, doesn't it?
After another try with majorcool, the lists were now able to being managed again.

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