[Mailman-Users] Mailman on Mac OS X Server 10.3: Outgoing messagesstuck in qrunner/in folder

[Mark Sapiro]

Pierre Igot wrote:
>
>I am running Mailman on an Xserve running Mac OS X Server 10.3.9. The  
>version of Mailman is the one included with Mac OS X Server 10.3.9.  
>(It's 2.1.2.)


See
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.021.htp>


>I've just started experimenting with mailing lists on this server  
>using Mailman. Things worked fine until I actually got to the stage  
>of mass-subscribing a series of nearly 500 email addresses.
>
>I used the web-based Mailman interface to submit the list of 500  
>email addresses for new subscribers, through the "Mass Subscription"  
>web form. I just copied the list of email addresses (separated by  
>return chars) from a text editor and pasted it in the field and  
>submitted. My mistake (I think) was that I submitted the entire list  
>of 500 email addresses at once. Initially it SEEMED to work, i.e. I  
>got a confirmation page listing all the subscribers that had been  
>added to the list.


Yes, it worked. The hangup was probably because of trying to send
notifications.


>But then I became unable to access the admin page for the list  
>altogether. The server would simply not respond. I could still access  
>other parts of the web-based Mailman interface, but not the pages for  
>this particular list.
>
>After a bit of on-line research, I discovered that the problem was  
>probably due to "locks" in the
>
>/var/mailman/locks/
>
>folder. Indeed, when I looked inside that folder, I found a whole  
>series of files named:
>
>enseignants.lock
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.421.1
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7150.0
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7166.0
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7216.0
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7228.0
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7286.0
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7470.0
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7696.0
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7819.0
>enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7918.0
>
>("www.cprp.ca" is my server and "enseignants" is the name of the list)


Yes, the problem was these locks.


>The instructions for dealing with this were not exactly clear, so I  
>just removed all these files so that the "locks" folder was empty.  
>After that, I was able to access the list's admin pages again. So I  
>thought everything was good.
>
>Then I tried to send a message to my subscribers. (It's a receive- 
>only list, so I'll be the only one sending messages.) However, the  
>message that I sent never got sent to the mailing list's subscribers.
>
>After more online research, I found out that my message was actually  
>stuck inside the
>
>/var/mailman/qfiles/in/
>
>folder. I also found that I could force Mailman to send the message  
>by using the command:
>
>/usr/share/mailman/bin/qrunner -r All


So the mailmanctl daemon and the qrunners aren't running unless you
start the qrunners manually as above, but this isn't the way to do it.

If you had done

/usr/share/mailman/bin/mailmanctl start

you wouldn't have had to kill the qrunners.

 
>That worked and the message got sent out to the list (although I then  
>had to control-C the process to return to the prompt).
>
>But I find that this now happens every time I want to send a message.  
>The message never gets sent automatically as expected. Instead, it  
>gets stuck in that /qfiles/in/ folder and I have to run the qrunner - 
>r All command to get it sent.
>
>This never happened with this list before I added the 500 subscribers  
>and had to fiddle with the /locks/ folder. Prior to that, when I was  
>still in the stage of testing the mailing list with only a handful of  
>test subscribers, everything worked fine and the messages would get  
>sent automatically.


I think in Mac OSX server, Mailman is installed as a service and the
service runs mailmanctl. Somehow you have stopped the service and you
need to restart it.


>My suspicion is that the problem is due to what I did in the /locks/  
>folder, that maybe I wasn't supposed to remove all the files. (I have  
>kept them on a local disk in case I need to move them back to that  
>folder.)


I doubt that removing the locks had anything to do with it, but you
might check ALL of Mailman's log files to see what kinds of errors and
other conditions occurred.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan