Hi. Sorry for the newbie question.

FreeBSD 3.1-STABLE, qmail 1.03, python 1.5.2, delivering through a virtualhost using a "mailman" user in /var/qmail/control/virtualhosts.

When a user subscribes through the public interface, two lockfiles get created/touched in the locks directory:

laswell# ls -l /home/mailman/locks/ total 1 -rw-rw-rw- 1 nobody mailman 0 May 13 21:15 developer-announce.lock -rw-rw-r-- 1 nobody mailman 85 May 13 21:16 pending_subscriptions.lock

However, even after the script finishes running, those lockfiles remain. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the point of the lockfiles, but it seems like they should disappear after the process is completed. This may be a clue to the real problem:

The presence of these lockfiles causes mailcmd to hang. The subscriber can send the confirmation message, it confirms them, the confirmation "welcome to the list" message gets back to the subscriber, but then the process doesn't die:

mailman 64327 0.0 0.1 776 360 p1 I 10:01PM 0:00.00 bin/qmail-local -- mailman /home/mailman mailman-developer-announce-request - developer-announce-request lists.sourcexchange.com brian@hy mailman 64329 0.0 0.1 496 292 p1 I 10:01PM 0:00.00 /bin/sh -c /home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd developer-announce mailman 64330 0.0 0.5 2680 1320 p1 I 10:01PM 0:00.15 /usr/local/bin/python /home/mailman/scripts/mailcmd developer-announce mailman 64332 0.0 0.0 0 0 p1 Z - 0:00.00 (sh)

ktrace on 64330 shows nothing, so something weird is getting triggered.
When that process is killed, a message is sent to the subscriber:

This is an automated response.

There were problems with the email commands you sent to Mailman via the administrative address developer-announce-request@lists.sourcexchange.com. If you want to reach the human being that manages this mailing list, please send your message to developer-announce-admin@lists.sourcexchange.com. The following is a detailed description of the problems.

***** confirm 156719

...

...

...

...

Invalid confirmation number! Note that confirmation numbers e...

Heh, that "e..." sounds like it would have been interesting to hear! And note that it says "Invalid conf #", yet it succeeded, since the address got subscribed and everything. Nothing else is logged about that hung process explaining why.

While this process is hung, pages on the web site hang, and further mail processes hang too. In short, the situation is not good. =)

OK, so it sounds like one of the FAQ questions, right? But I've gone through the INSTALL notes as well as FAQ.* and it all looked kosher to me. All the web scripts are setgid mailman and the mail wrapper is setgid as well.

When I built the program I used

./configure --with-cgi-gid=65534 --with-mail-gid=500

I do not see those "WANTED gid blah, GOT gid blah" messages, so I think this is correct. I actually tried following the advice in README.QMAIL about setting the mail gid to be "nofiles", but then I started getting that "WANTED/GOT" message, so I went back to gid 500, i.e. "mailman".

I could sit here all day killing python like a video game, but I'd rather fix this. What did I do wrong?

Let me know if anyone needs more data.

Thanks!

Brian