[Mailman-Users] Duplicate messages

[Richard Barrett]

On 11 Jun 2004, at 14:07, Lloyd Tennison wrote:

> Since it only does it one one list I have to assume it is Mailman.
>

Or the data that Mailman has been fed such as the list subscriber  
addresses or the incoming messages are crap.

> The SMTP log?  What useful information about an email that has gone  
> out is there?

The purpose of looking at the Mailman and MTA logs is that they should  
give you a blow by blow account of the events in the life of a message  
from its receipt by the Mailman server to the output of the messages to  
the list subscribers. The key is the message ID which should allow you  
to track the message's history. For instance these are the entries for  
a particular message in the Mailman post, smtp and Sendmail logs  
(modified for privacy in this posting)  and you can see the entire  
history of the message in the Mailman system:

mailman at mailman:/mailman/run/logs> tail -1 post
Jun 11 14:25:23 2004 (4695) post to cwu from p.bradley at xxx.yyy.tld,  
size=2578, message-id=<40C9B392.A89F4049 at xxx.yyy.tld>, success
mailman at mailman:/mailman/run/logs> tail -1 smtp
Jun 11 14:25:23 2004 (4695) <40C9B392.A89F4049 at xxx.yyy.tld> smtp for 13  
recips, completed in 0.384 seconds
mailman at mailman:/mailman/run/logs> less /var/log/mail
Jun 11 14:25:20 mailman2 sendmail[29025]: i5BDPKY29025:  
from=<P.Bradley at xxx.yyy.tld>, size=1522, class=0, nrcpts=1,  
msgid=<40C9B392.A89F4049 at xxx.yyy.tld>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA,  
relay=ext-proxy-2.xxx.yyy.tld [192.65.220.98]
Jun 11 14:25:22 mailman2 sendmail[29027]: i5BDPKY29025:  
to=<cwu at mailman.xxx.yyy.tld>, delay=00:00:02, xdelay=00:00:01,  
mailer=mailman, pri=121522, relay=mailman.xxx.yyy.tld, dsn=2.0.0,  
stat=Sent
Jun 11 14:25:23 mailman2 sendmail[29032]: i5BDPNY29032:  
from=<cwu-bounces at mailman.xxx.yyy.tld>, size=2578, class=-30,  
nrcpts=13, msgid=<40C9B392.A89F4049 at xxx.yyy.tld>, proto=ESMTP,  
daemon=MTA, relay=mailman at mailman.xxx.yyy.tld [172.16.2.135]
Jun 11 14:25:26 mailman2 sendmail[29034]: i5BDPNY29032:  
to=<m.llewellyn at xxx.yyy.tld>,<r.lolley at xxx.yyy.tld>,<p.bradley at xxx.yyy.t 
ld>,<p.blake at xxx.yyy.tld>,<m.price at xxx.yyy.tld>,<m.cooke at xxx.yyy.tld>,<r 
.cleaver at xxx.yyy.tld>,<s.wiley at xxx.yyy.tld>,<b.hammond at xxx.yyy.tld>,<j.p 
artlett at xxx.yyy.tld>,<s.douglas at xxx.yyy.tld>,<m.giffney at xxx.yyy.tld>,<a. 
guffar at xxx.yyy.tld>, delay=00:00:03, xdelay=00:00:03, mailer=relay,  
pri=536578, relay=the-pool.xxx.yyy.tld. [192.168.250.53], dsn=2.0.0,  
stat=Sent (i5BDPPNk017324 Message accepted for delivery)

If you cannot track a message through your Mailman server in this way  
then something is misconfigured or setup suboptimally.

> All I ever get is weird errors that mailman creates by itself in  
> there, i,e.
>

Or maybe something is misconfigured on your system in order to help  
Mailman have the problem!

> Jun 11 05:14:30 2004 (32685) All recipients refused: please run  
> connect() first
>
> Like how did it get "unconnected?"
>
> or Jun 09 16:02:15 2004 (7536) All recipients refused: (501, 'NULL  
> characters are not allowed in SMTP commands',  
> 'xx-bounces+7=hotmail.com\x00\x
> 00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 at domain.us')
>
> Why is it adding null characters.
>

Maybe there is a defective mail address subscribed to the list or the  
subscriber list in the  list's config.pck has gotten zapped?   
7 at hotmail.com\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 looks like a bad subscriber  
address to me which is maybe why the outbound MTA refused to accept it.

> But this mailing was not the one that dups.  The all recps ???
>
> I did stop mailman and deleted all the queue and lockfiles (actually  
> purged all by a reinstall. Maybe that created that weird error of all  
> recps.)
>
>

Did you take all the usual steps like re-running  
$prefix/bin/check_perms after doing the reinstall.

What MTA are you using and how configured; hopefully local and via  
SMTP? Can you communicate with the MTA OK through a telnet session to  
port 25? For example:

mailman at mailman:/mailman/run> telnet mailman.xxx.yyy.tld 25
Trying 172.16.2.135...
Connected to mailman.xxx.yyy.tld.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mailman.xxx.yyy.tld ESMTP Sendmail  
8.12.9+Sun/8.12.9/Revision:1.90/db; Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:54:11 +0100  
(BST)
quit
221 2.0.0 mailman.xxx.yyy.tld closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
mailman at mailman:/mailman/run>

> Still confused.
>
>
>
>
>
> -
>>
>> On 11 Jun 2004, at 13:35, Lloyd F. Tennison wrote:
>>
>>> I know this was asked but I do not see an answer - I have one list  
>>> that
>>> decides to send a lot more than one email to the same person - and it
>>> just started.
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>>
>> Have you checked the Mailman post and smtp logs, correlated with the
>> outbound MTA's logs, to see if it is multiple messages being sent from
>> Mailman or could it be multiple deliveries of the same message by an
>> MTA?
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> Lloyd F. Tennison
>>> lloyd_tennison at whoever.com
>>>
>>> No trees were harmed in the transmission of this message.
>>> However, a rather large number of electrons were temporarily
>>> inconvenienced.
>>
>>
>