Onyeibo Oku writes:
I already started out on the above route. Its an adaptation because I am running Fedora. I had no problem with system-wide installations via dnf package management. However, some parts of the documentation does not add up.
As Mark already wrote, "adapting" to Fedora is a bad idea. It makes it harder to read our documentation, which as you note is imperfect. Also, it interferes with Fedora's own package management. You should not be installing anything but Fedora packages into /usr and /var (among others).
Now I observe that "su - mailman" gives me the proper prompt but .bashrc doesn't kick in. I still have to manually change to the virtual environment despite setting the automatic change in .bashrc. However, "su mailman" runs .bashrc but the prompt says "bash X.XX $". Is this normal?
Yes. Exec summary: Different startup files are read depending on whether the "login" and "interactive" flags are set, and the bin/activate script is not a normal script, invoking it is very finicky. I don't know exactly what's going on with the automatic invocation of the venv, but I suspect it's related to that.
A quick workaround for the difference between "su mailman" and "su - mailman" would be to link .bash_profile -> .bashrc, or source one from the other. See bash docs for details.
Subsequent parts of the doc show the path "/opt/mailman/mm/var/*" which should correspond to "/usr/lib/mailman/mm/var/*" on my instance. However, I don't see any instructions on how to get the "/mm" folder and the associated sub-folders. I just have "/usr/lib/mailman"
That's undoubtedly related to "adapting" to Fedora practice. Where pip packaged files ended up depends on where you put your venv.
My recommendation is to delete everything you've done to this point and start over from the beginning, following our instructions to the letter. This has two benefits: (1) you don't need to continuously translate from Mailman instructions to Fedora practice, and (2) in case our instructions are inaccurate or poorly adapted to the Fedora environment, it's *much* easier for us to advise you on what to do.
Steve