[moving thread to mailman-developers, since I think I found a bug -- and sorry for the huge quote, but I think the change of audience requires it] On 21 November 2004, I said:

I'm trying to upgrade from Mailman 2.1.4 to 2.1.5 on a Debian "testing" system, using "apt-get install mailman". The upgrade seems to be falling down in two places at various times. First variation:

""" # apt-get install mailman Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done mailman is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used. Setting up mailman (2.1.5-3) ... Looking for enabled languages (this may take some time) ... done. Installing site language de ................................ done. Installing site language en ............................................ done. Upgrading from version 0x20103f0 to 0x20105f0 getting rid of old source files Updating mailing list: mailman Updating the held requests database. - updating old private mbox file Your installation seems up-to-date, great! - updating old public mbox file Fixing language templates: mailman

Updating mailing list: crew Resetting 2 BYBOUNCEs disabled addrs with no bounce info Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/mailman/bin/update", line 753, in ? errors = main() File "/usr/lib/mailman/bin/update", line 643, in main errors = errors + dolist(listname) File "/usr/lib/mailman/bin/update", line 218, in dolist mlist.setDeliveryStatus(addr, ENABLED) File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/OldStyleMemberships.py", line 338, in setDeliveryStatus self.__assertIsMember(member) File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/OldStyleMemberships.py", line 113, in __assertIsMember raise Errors.NotAMemberError, member Mailman.Errors.NotAMemberError: timehorse,timehorse@unforgettable.com dpkg: error processing mailman (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: mailman E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) """

When I saw this, I shrugged, figured I'd look in more detail later, and just tried again. This time it's getting bogged down in the middle of updating the pending.pck file:

""" # apt-get install mailman Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done mailman is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used. Setting up mailman (2.1.5-3) ... Looking for enabled languages (this may take some time) ... done. Installing site language de ................................ done. Installing site language en ............................................ done. Upgrading from version 0x20103f0 to 0x20105f0 getting rid of old source files Updating mailing list: mailman [...] Updating Usenet watermarks - nothing to update here Updating Mailman 2.1.4 pending.pck database """

The [...] went by quite quickly. After printing the last line, 'update' just sits there. Interrupting it gives a useful traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/mailman/bin/update", line 753, in ? errors = main() File "/usr/lib/mailman/bin/update", line 677, in main update_pending() File "/usr/lib/mailman/bin/update", line 572, in update_pending mlist = MailList.MailList(listname) File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 126, in __init__ self.Lock() File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 159, in Lock self.__lock.lock(timeout) File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 312, in lock self.__sleep() File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/LockFile.py", line 496, in __sleep time.sleep(interval) KeyboardInterrupt

Hmmmm... so it looks like it's trying to get the lock on a list. Not sure which one, but here's a clue:

OK, it looks like this is what happened: * the first failure (NotAMemberError) crashed update, and it did not clean up its locks * so when I ran update again, it hung trying to lock the list that it crashed on the last time through Looking at the loop of setDeliveryStatus() calls in dolist() (see around lines 215-220 in bin/update), it's pretty obvious how an exception from setDeliveryStatus() can cause havoc. One naive fix is to catch MemberError from setDeliveryStatus(): --- update 2004-11-01 11:22:53.000000000 +0100 +++ update.hacked 2004-11-21 20:08:21.000000000 +0100 @@ -51,6 +51,7 @@ from Mailman import MailList from Mailman import Message from Mailman import Pending +from Mailman import Errors from Mailman.LockFile import TimeOutError from Mailman.i18n import _ from Mailman.Queue.Switchboard import Switchboard @@ -215,7 +216,11 @@ print _( 'Resetting %(n)s BYBOUNCEs disabled addrs with no bounce info') for addr in noinfo.keys(): - mlist.setDeliveryStatus(addr, ENABLED) + try: + mlist.setDeliveryStatus(addr, ENABLED) + except Errors.MemberError, err: + print "ERROR setting delivery status" + print repr(err) # Update the held requests database print _("""Updating the held requests database.""") (patch relative to bin/update from a Debian mailman_2.1.5-3 installation). But I presume it would be cleaner to wrap a try/finally around most of dolist(). Anyways, with this patch in place, I am able to run update successfully -- ie. no hanging getting a lock. Greg -- Greg Ward <gward@python.net> http://www.gerg.ca/ Jesus Saves -- but Moses gets the rebound, he shoots, he SCORES!