Unable to search mailman archive

I moderate (but not administer) a mailing list. Recently attempts to search its archive return:

Quote:

ht://Dig error htsearch detected an error. Please report this to the webmaster of this site by sending an e-mail to: mailman@listserver-dab.dreamhost.com The error message is: Unable to read word database file '/usr/local/dh/mailman/dab/archives/private/adomain.dom/htdig/db.words.db' Did you run htdig?

I assume that either the relevant file doesn't exist or has had its permissions changed to make it unreadable to the browser. I want to make the best request to the administrator. What likely is happening?