[ mailman-Bugs-1610511 ] Cannot access old lists after delete/recreate of site list

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Bugs item #1610511, was opened at 2006-12-06 17:00
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by mikelempriere
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Category: configuring/installing
Group: 2.1 (stable)
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: MikeLempriere (mikelempriere)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: Cannot access old lists after delete/recreate of site list

Initial Comment:
I'm running Mailman 2.1.7 on FreeBSD 5.4, using sendmail.   I've had the system configured and it's been running multiple lists for years.
Then, in the name of security ("don't use it, turn it off"), I clobbered the "mailman" list which I didn't realize I needed...
Ok, so, I'm an idiot -- I should have gone with the other maxim "don't fix it if it ain't broke"...

I clobbered the list using 'rmlist'.

Upon my next restart of mailman, I got a "site list is missing" error.  A quick web search found my answer, namely that the "mailman" list is required.

I used "newlist" to create a new one.  Yay, I was now able to restart mailman with no error!

I then created some new lists, and was able to web manage them just fine.

However, here's where it goes bad -- I can no longer get in to the web manager for any of the lists that were created before I blew away the "mailman" list.  The web browser simply hangs awaiting server reply upon my hitting the login button.

I can get into the new "mailman" list, and have subscribed myself to it.

I have checked the mm_cfg.py and it is unchanged from mm_cfg.py.dist (only the import of default settings).

Help!

(And Thanks in advance) 

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>Comment By: MikeLempriere (mikelempriere)
Date: 2006-12-09 04:16

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=1662619
Originator: YES

With some help from msapiro (thank you again) I've gotten past the
rpoblem.  There were a dozen or so old locks in the locks directory for the
two lists that were affected.  Upon stopping mailman daemons, they all
remained -- a bad sign.  I deleted them, restarted mailman, all seems well
now, yay!

The two lists that had lockfiles hanging about are the lists that I am
most likely to have had left open in my browser over an extended period of
time (not logged out, just closed the tab thus still logged in). 
Additionally, there are other lists that existed before my having clobbered
the site list that did not have bad locks left around, so I believe my
conclusion that clobbering the site list caused this was wrong.

As it's not definate that this problem arose from my having clobbered the
site list, I'd have no objections to simply closing this bug report.

As a matter of fact, mailman is coring every night (I believe when some
spam hits it), so it's more likely this is the problem leaving behind the
lockfiles.  I'll try to upgrade to the latest version before reporting this
latter problem.

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Comment By: Mark Sapiro (msapiro)
Date: 2006-12-06 18:37

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=1123998
Originator: NO

First, please to subscribe to mailman-users at python.org -
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users - and repost this
there if follow up is necessary. The bug tracker is not the best place for
questions of this nature.

Have you checked Mailman's locks/ directory for stale list locks? It seems
like that could be the problem although I don't understand how all the
lists could have gotten locked but maybe something to do with cron or some
other processing while the site list was missing.

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