[Mailman-Users] Relocating Mailman 1.1 lists

[Dave Sherohman]

I've recently had a drive go flaky on me and when the machine died,
several files were corrupted.  I'm now trying to bring everything back
up on a new machine, copying over only what I must.  This is turning
out well, except that I haven't been able to get my mailing lists working.

I've cpio'd over /var/lib/mailman/* and cp -a'd /etc/mailman/*, which
seems like it should be sufficient.  (The references I found to this
sort of thing in the archives generally mention copying /home/mailman,
which doesn't exist in the debianized version.)  However, sending mail
to one of my existing lists from the old system dies with

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "/var/lib/mailman/scripts/post", line 73, in ?
    mlist.Post(msg, approved=fromusenet)             
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 1362, in Post
    footer = self.msg_footer % d)                                
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Deliverer.py", line 162, in DeliverToList
    cmdproc.write("%d\n" % self.num_spawns)                               
AttributeError: num_spawns

and attempting to access any of their admin pages produces

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "/var/lib/mailman/scripts/driver", line 112, in run_main
    main()
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admin.py", line 168, in main
    FormatConfiguration(doc, lst, category, category_suffix)
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admin.py", line 306, in FormatConfiguration
    form.AddItem(FormatOptionsSection(category, lst))
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admin.py", line 361, in FormatOptionsSection
    AddOptionsTableItem(big_table, item, category, lst)
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admin.py", line 376, in AddOptionsTableItem
    val = GetItemGuiValue(lst, kind, varname, params)
  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admin.py", line 463, in GetItemGuiValue
    return TextBox(varname, getattr(lst, varname), params)
AttributeError: num_spawns

The listinfo pages and archives remain intact and newly-created lists
are functional in all respects.  check_perms and check_db claim that
the old lists are fine and list_members goes off without a hitch also,
so I'm fairly confident that I've just failed to copy some part of the
configuration of my existing lists.  But what is this missing piece?