lists-archives: ownership of files

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@efis.ucr.ac.cr>]

Hi,

 in the last two weeks I've been working with netgod's lists-archives
 package.  Some people told me wmf would be a more adequate choice for
 list archiving software, I looked at it, but I still like mhonarc's
 approach better. [ oh, btw, this is on debian-mentors because I'm
 packaging lists-archives for local use.  If I can do something useful
 with it, I could adopt the package but that's a different issue ]

 I've faced several problems.  First, netgod's package says one should
 add an `archive' alias to /etc/aliases, like this:

 archive: "|/usr/bin/procmail /etc/lists-archives/procmailrc"

 I tried it under smail (I think, it's either that or exim) and the
 alias is run as nobody/somegroup.  The procmail recipe needs to write
 to /var/lib/lists-archives/lists, but as nobody it can't do this.

 I _think_ sendmail provides some way to expand the aliases as another
 user, but I'm not really sure.  I'd guess the other MTA's can do
 that, too.

 The only way out I could find was to create an `archive' system user,
 like this:

 adduser --system \
         --quiet \
         --disabled-password \  # superfluous, system does this already
         --home /var/lib/lists-archives 
         --ingroup daemon \
         archive

 with a symlink like this:
 
 /var/lib/lists-archives/.procmailrc -> /etc/lists-archives/procmailrc

 this way I can subscribe archive@somehost to the mailing list and
 everything is ok. (Now that I think about this, maybe
 /usr/lib/lists-archives would be a better home for this user)

 Is `archive' too generic?  Any suggestions?

 I can grep /etc/passwd and use ypcat if available to check for the
 existance of `archive'.  How should I do that?  Use ypcat _first_ or
 grep /etc/passwd first?

 Taking a look at listar's (0.121a) postinst, it does this:

    UNAME=listar
    HOMEDIR=/usr/lib/listar
    adduser --system --home $HOMEDIR --group $UNAME
   
    if ! grep -q "^${UNAME}:.*${HOMEDIR}" /etc/passwd
    then
      echo Failed to create user $UNAME
      exit 1
    fi
   
    if ! grep -q \^${UNAME}: /etc/group
    then
      echo Failed to create group $UNAME
      exit 1
    fi

 unconditionally.  That's bad.  Isn't it?  (It doesn't even bother to
 check if it's being configured, aborted, replaced, whatever)

 About this user's group, in netgod's package, everything (almost) is
 owned by daemon.daemon.  Is that ok?  Should I create an `archive'
 group, too? (i.e., just pass --group to adduser)

 Procmail will try to log to /var/log/lists-archives.log, which I have
 to chown archive.something on postinst (so procmail can write to it
 running as `archive').

 /etc/cron.daily/lists-archives has something like this:

 su daemon -c "/usr/lib/lists-archives/updatemail"

 which I'll change to

 su archive -c "/usr/lib/lists-archives/updatemail"

 because updatemail needs to write to
 /var/lib/lists-archives/timestamp, and I don't want to make the
 directory group writeable.

 Up to this point I have almost succeded in making a `plug and play'
 package, I mean, I have modified the configuration files in such a
 way that you can install the package, subscribe the address to a
 mailing list, and have a working archive.

 Thanks in advance, and sorry about the messy message, I have too many
 ideas and questions on my head right now...


           Marcelo