[ mailman-Bugs-1255548 ] Corrupt address -> message stuck in queue (endless loop)

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Wed Aug 10 14:04:04 CEST 2005


Bugs item #1255548, was opened at 2005-08-10 03:27
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by bwarsaw
You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=100103&aid=1255548&group_id=103

Please note that this message will contain a full copy of the comment thread,
including the initial issue submission, for this request,
not just the latest update.
Category: bounce detection
Group: 2.0.x
>Status: Closed
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: mpellissetti (mpellissetti)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: Corrupt address -> message stuck in queue (endless loop)

Initial Comment:
Version: mailman-2.0.8-1, on Red Hat Linux 7.2



We transferred email adresses from a Windows-based
program (Filemaker), by exporting them in an ASCII file
(Addresses.txt) and importing them to the mailman list
with:

/var/mailman/bin/remove_members -a Listname;
/var/mailman/bin/add_members -n Addresses.txt Listname

The file Addresses.txt contained one corrupt email
address of the form:
user1 at host.domain^Kpers: user2 at host.domain

Viewing the file content with od showed the following
exact character sequence (separate characters with one
blank for better viewing):
u s e r 1 @ h o s t . d o m a i n \v p e r s :    u s e
r 2 @ h o s t .  d  o  m a i n

Note: The corrupt address was not detected by mailman
when it was imported!

Sending an email to this mailing list caused the
message to be stuck in /var/mailman/qfiles. Since
qrunner is specified in /var/mailman/cron/crontab.in to
be executed every minute, the message was sent out
repeatedly (18 times mailman was killed manually)
basically to the addresses preceding the corrupt one.

The sender of the message received the following error
message per email:
...
  ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal
errors -----
pers:
   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
553 5.1.3 pers:... List:; syntax illegal for recipient
addresses
...


Note: This bug is reproducible.


This behavior denotes poor fault tolerance, I strongly
hope that newer versions behave differently in such a
case. It is always possible that a corrupt address is
being entered, but the consequences (in the described
case) are catastrophic!
(Fortunately one of the approx. 500 recipients replied
quite immediately, so "only" 18 copies of the message
were sent out!)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

>Comment By: Barry A. Warsaw (bwarsaw)
Date: 2005-08-10 08:04

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=12800

Mailman 2.0.8 is extremely old and no longer supported.  If
you upgrade to Mailman 2.1.6 (the current release of the 2.1
branch) and the problem persists, then feel free to open a
new bug report, but please try to include the content of the
offending message so that we can debug it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment By: mpellissetti (mpellissetti)
Date: 2005-08-10 03:35

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=1326612

Rectification:
After the message got stuck in /var/mailman/qfiles, the
message was sent out
repeatedly (18 times until mailman was killed manually),
basically to the addresses FOLLOWING the corrupt one.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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