[Mailman-Users] Re: no mail out to lists

[peter schoch]

>What do the logs and the times of the entries in your MTA show. Is it 
              >passing the mail into the mailman alias properly? Check the time. 
              >Now check the Mailman logs and when it shows the message accepted for 
              >posting. The time should be very close to the MTA's time. 
              >Now back to the MTA, does it show the message going out to the folks on 
              >the list? 

              >What are you using as your MTA? 

I'm using Sendmail - possibly a bad choice, but it's what I have always used.

I check the maillog files.  The messages come in and within 1 - 10 seconds are being sent to mailman.  I then check the mailman logs and I have no errors (the error log is empty)  I have only a few bounces, and they are from spammers.  


              >Hmmm, that sounds suspiciously like a Digest Trigger (How big in Kb 
              >should a digest be before it gets sent out?) 

              >In the web admin, is the first option marked as "Yes" (Can subscribers 
              >choose to receive mail immediately, rather than in batched digests?) 

Yes, I have the option for users to be able to receive mail as it comes in or digest.  I also have it set that even if the mail does not reach the minimum to automatically send out the digest, it should send it out once a day.  But it's doing neither.
--
Now, being a physicist by trade I've started to experiment.  I can "spam" my test list with a minimum of 53 messages and it will trigger something and send out all messages for all the lists.  I tried it yesterday and it sent all accumulated messages since the last time I tried this.  The amazing thing is that the time and date stamp on all of the messages was the exact time and day they were sent into the list!  So, rather than saying No. 13 at 3 PM, they said Nov. 11 at 2 PM and Nov. 10 at 10 AM, etc.

I also got digests to come out (don't ask me how) yesterday, and they too were time and date stamped when they should've emerged - Sunday at 11AM and Monday at 11AM, but I didn't get one for Tuesday! Even if no messages were sent, I should get an empty digest.

So, now I'm really confused.  I checked the que in mailman and it is empty.  I hunted around in sendmail, and there is no apparent delay set.  There are no locks set in mailman.  I have no errors in the logs.  

What could be causing the delay?  And, why is it (sort of) removed when I "spam" a list?

(I asked the UNIX/Linux guru on our campus, and he also had no idea.  He and I spent several hours checking the log files.)

Peter Schoch