Mailman fails to start on Plesk server: No such file or directory: ‘/var/lock/mailman/master-qrunner.hostname’

Symptoms

• Mailman fails to start on a Plesk for Linux server:

  # service mailman status
  ● mailman.service - GNU Mailing List Manager
  ...
  plesk mailmanctl[488]: IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/lock/mailman/master-qrunner.plesk.323.1'

  ---

  # service mailman status
  ● mailman.service - GNU Mailing List Manager
  ...
  plesk mailmanctl[14938]: IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/lock/mailman/master-qrunner.plesk

• The maillisting password can not be changes with:

  Error: Failed to change password: listmng failed: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/mailman//bin/change_pw", line 211, in <module>
  main()
  File "/usr/lib/mailman//bin/change_pw", line 165, in main
  mlist.Lock()
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 161, in Lock
  self.__lock.lock(timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 243, in lock
  self.__write()
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 422, in __write
  fp = open(self.__tmpfname, 'w')
  IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/lock/mailman/master-qrunner.plesk.323.1'
  listmng: Error: failed to change password for 'master-qrunner'

Cause

Mailman directories are missing or were created with the incorrect permissions on server boot.

Resolution

1. Connect to the server via SSH.

2. Create the directory /var/lock/mailman/:

   # [ ! -d "/var/lock/mailman" ] && mkdir /var/lock/mailman/

3. Set the correct permissions and ownership for the directory /var/lock/mailman/:

   • For RHEL/CentOS-based OSes:

     # chown root:mailman /var/lock/mailman && chmod 2775 /var/lock/mailman

   • For Debian-like OSes:

     # chown root:list /var/lock/mailman && chmod 2775 /var/lock/mailman