[Mailman-Developers] Log file rollovers

[Nadim Shaikli]

--- Richard Barrett wrote:
> 
> On Monday, October 13, 2003, at 08:20  pm, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> > --- Brad Knowles wrote:
> >> At 5:34 PM -0700 2003/10/09, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> >>
> >>> Nothing looked out of place to me.  The file is being created
> >>> correctly, I'm just surprised that mailman would even touch a
> >>> non-existent as far asits concerned (mailman know not about
> >>> post.1 and logrotate) unless the file-handler is kept in a
> >>> constant open state by mailman or something.
> >>
> >> When the file is renamed, the inode number and internal file handle
> >> do not change.  Mailman opens the file on start, and doesn't close it.
> >> The file gets renamed, but this change is not relevant to mailman -- 
> >> it just keeps using the filehandle it's already got.  This is why you 
> >> have to use mailmanctl to stop and restart mailman.
> >
> > Well, if the statement "[MM] opens the file on start, and
> > doesn't close it" is true, then it sounds very worrying.
> 
> Why?

Because it causes the problem stated earlier in this thread.

> > Shouldn't Mailman open/close upon prompting instead
> > (ie. upon arrival of mail and/or when prompted for action) ?
> 
> Why?

See answer to above question - logrotate would have no affect on
mailman and because I don't want to kill and restart mailman
every start of month (or so) to initiate a new group of log files.

> > Is this a big deal to change/fix ?
> >
> 
> Why change it?

I can see all your questions are leading to the same point.  I
highly recommend you read the problem statement on this thread.
It seems to me that logrotate (or any other tool) should simply
be able to move files for archiving reasons, mailman currently
doesn't allow that due to the perceived statement noted above.

 1. It the "[MM] opens the file on start, and doesn't close it"
    statement true ?
 2. If so, was it done like that on purpose ? and why ?

Regards,

 - Nadim


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