On 10/19/2025 2:42 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Dennis Putnam via Mailman-users writes:
Thanks for the info. I thought I had followed everything but I an unable to start mailman3 because all the expected directories in /var are missing. What steps did I miss?
If you are setting up according to the virtual environment instructions, Mailman shouldn't be looking for anything in /var that you didn't explicitly configure to be there.
With the venv active, try running just "mailman info". If that succeeds and reports something other than /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg, then check the file it reports for "layout" and "var_dir" settings, and remove the var_dir hierachy because it's just confusing. Then run
mailman -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg infoIf that succeeds, try starting Mailman with
mailman -f -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg startThe "-f" is short for "--force" and it just cleans up any stale lock files that might prevent Mailman from starting. (We now recommend using it in the init script or systemd unit file ExecStart command.)
If either of those fails, or Mailman starts but "doesn't work", look in the logs (systemctl status, journalctl -eu, and $var_dir/logs/mailman.log for error messages, and send those along with /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg to us. In the case of "doesn't work", tell us what you mean by "doesn't work": Mailman doesn't accept mail, Mailman crashes, Mailman doesn't send mail, etc.
Hi Steve,
I found the docs for MySQL and I THINK I have it working. However this line from the status is concerning:
*Oct 19 15:41:29 dap002 systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Can't open PID file /opt/mailman/mm/var/master.pid (yet?) after start: No such file or directory*
This is the full status output:
*● mailman3.service - GNU Mailing List Manager Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/mailman3.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Sun 2025-10-19 15:41:31 UTC; 3min 28s ago Process: 17256 ExecStart=/opt/mailman/venv/bin/mailman start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 17369 (python3) Tasks: 16 (limit: 8814) Memory: 814.1M (peak: 814.6M) CPU: 27.707s CGroup: /system.slice/mailman3.service ├─17369 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/master -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg ├─17374 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=archive:0:1 ├─17375 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=bounces:0:1 ├─17376 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=command:0:1 ├─17377 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=in:0:1 ├─17378 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=lmtp:0:1 ├─17379 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=out:0:1 ├─17380 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=pipeline:0:1 ├─17381 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=rest:0:1 ├─17382 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=retry:0:1 ├─17383 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=task:0:1 ├─17384 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=virgin:0:1 ├─17385 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=digest:0:1 ├─17391 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=rest:0:1 └─17392 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python3 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/runner -C /etc/mailman3/mailman.cfg --runner=rest:0:1
Oct 19 15:40:50 dap002 systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 3757. Oct 19 15:40:50 dap002 systemd[1]: Starting mailman3.service - GNU Mailing List Manager... Oct 19 15:41:29 dap002 mailman[17256]: Starting Mailman's master runner Oct 19 15:41:29 dap002 mailman[17256]: Generating MTA alias maps Oct 19 15:41:29 dap002 systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Can't open PID file /opt/mailman/mm/var/master.pid (yet?) after start: No such file or directory Oct 19 15:41:31 dap002 systemd[1]: Started mailman3.service - GNU Mailing List Manager. Oct 19 15:41:41 dap002 mailman[17381]: /opt/mailman/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/falcon/request.py:2486: DeprecatedWarning: The RequestOptions.auto_parse> Oct 19 15:41:41 dap002 mailman[17381]: warnings.warn(*
My next step is to migrate the mailman2 data into this mailman3. However, I want to make sure I have it working correctly before I attempt that step.
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