Mailman breaks right after turnkey-pylib upgrade (any correlation?)

I removed the turnkey-pylib installed package (version 0.3+31+g3e22221). Naturally, as a result this will break some packages (confconsole tklbam turnkey-sysinfo). These are essential for the backup to function, but not essential for the instance to run.

When sending emails to the list I get good results.

Mar  4 15:54:22 tech postfix/pipe[8716]: 3D0A820119: to=<xxx@xxx.xx>,
  relay=mailman, delay=1.7, delays=1.2/0.04/0/0.46, dsn=2.0.0,
  status=sent (delivered via mailman service)

The conclusion for me is that turnkey-pylib (or tklbam or related software) breaks something in the python installation due to which mailman does not function anymore.

Basic test is the following command from the commandline:

Correct working example (without turnkey-pylib 0.3+31+g3e22221 installed):

# /usr/lib/mailman/bin/postfix-to-mailman.py
Illegal invocation: '/usr/lib/mailman/bin/postfix-to-mailman.py'

Incorrect example (with turnkey-pylib 0.3+31+g3e22221 installed):

    # /usr/lib/mailman/bin/postfix-to-mailman.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/mailman/bin/postfix-to-mailman.py", line 91, in <module>
from Mailman import mm_cfg
ImportError: No module named Mailman

['/var/lib/mailman/pythonlib', '/var/lib/mailman', '/etc/mailman',
'/usr/lib/python2.6', '/usr/lib/python2.6/plat-linux2', '/usr/lib/python2.6/lib-tk',
'/usr/lib/python2.6/lib-old', '/usr/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload',
'/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6',
'/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/mailman/bin',
'/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages']

incorrect pythonpath (by paths.py with turnkey-pylib installed)

['/var/lib/mailman/pythonlib', '/var/lib/mailman', '',
'/usr/lib/python2.6', '/usr/lib/python2.6/plat-linux2', '/usr/lib/python2.6/lib-tk', '
/usr/lib/python2.6/lib-old', '/usr/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload',
'/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6',
'/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/mailman/bin',
'/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages']

I will check if I can revert back to an old release of turnkey-pylib (version 0.2+10+gcb57296) and if that seems to work. Right now I have no tklbam because of the removal of turnkey-pylib.

All is working fine when I downgraded to tklbam 1.0 (requires turnkey-pylib 0.2) and turnkey-pylib 0.2.

http://archive.turnkeylinux.org/ubuntu/pool/lucid/main/t/turnkey-pylib/turnkey-pylib_0.2%2b10%2bgcb57296_i386.deb

and

http://archive.turnkeylinux.org/ubuntu/pool/lucid/main/t/tklbam/tklbam_1.0_all.deb

I set the versions for these two packages on 'hold' until this issue is resolved.

I suspect this is a regression introduced by the fix to this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/turnkeylinux/+bug/910515

Sorry I have no experience with Mailman (or mailservers in general) so I'm probably not much help to you. I suggest you have a look through the Ubuntu forums/wiki and see what you can find there (TKL v11.x is based on Ubuntu 10.04/Lucid).

Failing that you may find a tutorial somewhere else online (via google). Anything for Ubuntu 10.04/Lucid should work with minimal tweaking (eg don't need to use the 'sudo' command - so just omit that from any instructions). After that any other Ubuntu server based tutorials should work (or be close), tutorials for Debain may also work (although some may need minor tweaks due to different package naming between Ubuntu and Debian). Tutorials for other distros may have general relevance but will require more extensive tweaking to get them to work (eg RHEL/CENTOS use 'yum install' instead of 'apt-get install').

Hopefully that gets you heading in the right direction. If you have any problems, please feel free to start a new thread (I'll see it) describing what you are trying to do, the instructions you are following and where the problem is occuring and I will do what I can to help. If you don't get any response after a few days feel free to bump your new thread).

Liraz's instructions are fairly clear to me. Is there something you are missing? It may require you to restart mailman to get it to pickup the changes perhaps (or just reboot)? 

Long story short, edit /etc/mailman/postfix-to-mailman.py and change the line after import sys.os like this:

import sys, os
sys.path.insert(0, "/usr/lib/mailman/bin")
import paths

turnkey-pylib has a paths.py module. So does mailman. Normally this wouldn't be a problem as local modules are preferred over system modules. But the postfix-to-mailman.py script is installed in /etc/mailman so /usr/lib/mailman/bin/paths.py isn't even in its path.

The postfix-to-mailman.py attempts to correct this by manipulating sys.path but it does so incorrectly by appending /usr/lib/mailman/bin to sys.path instead of inserting it at the beginning.

That's why turnkey-pylib's paths.py overrode mailman's paths.py.

Cheers!