Site list for mailman missing, despite it being created and configured

Question

I am migrating a mailman installation from an Ubuntu 8.0.4 server to an Ubuntu 12.04 server.

I have succesfully installed mailman on the target server and copied the data, archives and lists directories there as per this article.

Then I tried sudo service mailman start and was greeted with

KeyError: 'ee'
 * Site list for mailman missing (looking for list named 'mailman').
 * Please create it; until then, mailman will refuse to start.

When I tried to create the mailman list with bin\newlist mailman (as per the official documentation) it tells me that the list mailman already exists. Trying to start or restart fails.

So I changed the mm_cfg.py file, as per the documentation again, and set

real_name = 'Mailman2'

Giving the command

/var/lib/mailman$ sudo bin/config_list -i data/sitelist.cfg mailman2

yields:

Non-standard property restored: personalize

which sounds like things worked. However when I try sudo service mailman start, I get the same warning for the list mailman2:

KeyError: 'ee'
 * Site list for mailman missing (looking for list named 'mailman2').
 * Please create it; until then, mailman will refuse to start.

How can I create a "site list" for mailman and start the mailman service?

Answer 1

Create the list it’s asking for:

/var/lib/mailman/bin/newlist mailman2