Mailman: Archives not working “No messages have been posted to this list yet, so the archives are currently empty.”

by on August 24, 2010 in SOLUTIONS

Problem:

After installing mailman and posting a few messages to one of your lists, the messages do not show up in the list archives.

Solution:

  • First things first, make sure “Archive Messages” is set to “Yes”; This option is located in the Archiving Options page of the lists web based administration.
  • Check the error log while you post a new message:
    • sudo tail -f /var/lib/mailman/logs/error
    • post the new message to the list…
    • look for something like “IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: ‘/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/”
    • If you do see a Permissions error, read on to fix…
  • Determine what user owns mailmans archiving process:
    • sudo apt-get install htop (much better than top)
    • htop
    • press f5 for tree view
  • Look for the “ArchRunner” process and determine its owner. “list” was the owner for me, this is user is created and associated with mailman automatically if you installed using “apt-get install mailman” Click here for Screenshot
  • Recursively give ownership of the archive directory to the Archrunner process owner:
    • sudo chown -R list /var/lib/mailman/archives/private
  • Thats it! Post another message to your list and checkout your archives page!
  • NOTE: If you want to archive all messages sent prior to this fix, just run:
    • sudo /var/lib/mailman/bin/unshunt

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10 Responses to “Mailman: Archives not working “No messages have been posted to this list yet, so the archives are currently empty.””

  1. Vidul January 5, 2011 at 4:10 am #

    Thank you, useful post!

    Reply
  2. Torsten February 5, 2011 at 4:17 pm #

    Very nice! Fixed my problem fast! :)

    Thanks a lot!

    Reply
  3. neutronscott February 23, 2011 at 8:45 pm #

    Silly Debian. Why’d they do that? :)
    Thanks!

    Reply
  4. anders May 25, 2011 at 5:30 am #

    For the lazy ones:

    sudo chown -R list /var/lib/mailman/archives/private
    sudo /var/lib/mailman/bin/unshunt

    Reply
    • iainlbc May 25, 2011 at 10:03 am #

      fair enough :P

      Reply
  5. Richard December 19, 2011 at 5:30 pm #

    Thank you. Helped magnificently.

    Reply
  6. Ove February 28, 2012 at 3:33 pm #

    Thank you! Exactly what i needed :-)
    Ove

    Reply
  7. Stefano Canepa March 28, 2012 at 3:43 pm #

    Thanks very much

    Reply
  8. saul April 18, 2012 at 3:44 am #

    Thanks very much for this – worked a treat.

    Reply
  9. alex April 21, 2012 at 4:26 am #

    Thank you! I’ve searched for times and this was what I needed

    Reply

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