Mailing lists and domain name problems

[nareau]

I'm trying to run a couple of mailing lists from my site, but it doesn't seem that the domain is translating correctly to the IP address.

The domain is www.the5thcircle.com, the IP is 66.227.57.49. When I try to sign up for one of the mailing lists, it takes me to the "enter your information" page first:
http://66.227.57.49/mailman/listinfo...e5thcircle.com
When I hit submit, it takes me to:
http://the5thcircle.com/mailman/subs...e5thcircle.com
This page only shows a server error.

When I try to administer the mailing list normally, it gives me Internal Server Errors for just about every page. However, when I replace "the5thcircle.com" part of the URL with "66.227.57.49" I'm able to access each page correctly.

I'm thinking I need to somehow set the mailing list's base URL to the IP address. But since I have the minimum service package, there's no guarantee that my IP won't change. Anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks,
Nareau

[jason]

I had this problem in the past, but last time I had to administer one of my lists, it had gone away, so I thought it was finally fixed. My lists don't get a lot of activity in the summer, so I suppose it could be broken again and I haven't noticed (gotta love CPanel)...

If your problem is the same as mine was, it comes from the fact that suExec is running on your server. suExec allows your CGI scripts to run from your username, which is generally a good idea. However, mailman accesses files that you don't have permission to access, so when it runs from your username, it can't access those files and crashes--hense the script error.

The solution is to use the server's name (whatever.nocdirect.com), or, as you are doing, the IP address. At the bottom of the first config page there is an option to set the default address of the list, but I was never able to get what I put in there to stick. I also tried to set up a redirect so that any request for /mailman on my site would be sent to the same address with the server's domain, but since /mailman is defined before any of my .htaccess files are opened, that didn't work either. It wasn't too big a deal for me--I don't archive my lists and I am the only admin, so I just learned to live with the links in the approval messages that I got not working. Then, one day, I clicked one and it worked again...

If you need to give people access to your lists, just put links on your site using the server name or IP. You'll of course still have the problem I had with the links in messages being wrong, but I'm not sure there's much you'll be able to do about that.

Of course, if you are still having problems (or you aren't satisfied with this answer), you should open a support ticket and explain your problem in there.

--Jason