[Mailman-Users] qrunner lockup / mass moderation (solved)

[Stephan Uhlmann]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


Just as a followup to my post explaining how I solved the problem.

The lockup didn't have something to do with the overfull moderation queue.

There was a 8 MB big file in the qfiles/ directory. The size was not that 
unusual and Mailman normally has no problems dealing with that, but it had 
the following strange content:

>>>> This is an automated response.
**** Command 'this' not recognized.
>>>>
>>>> There were problems with the email commands you sent to Mailman via
**** Command 'there' not recognized.
>>>> the administrative address
**** Command 'the' not recognized.
>>>> <list-request at someserver.tld>.
**** Command '<list-request at someserver.tld>.' not recognized.
>>>>
>>>> To obtain instructions on valid Mailman email commands, send email to
**** Command 'to' not recognized.
>>>> <list-request at someserver.tld> with the word
**** Command '<list-request at someserver.tld>' not recognized.
>>>> "help" in the subject line or in the body of the message.
**** Command '"help"' not recognized.

... and so on and so on.
(email address of the list removed to protect the innocent and avoiding spam).
This was a reply from a wronggoing majordomo to a mailman request address. I 
guess Mailman had problems with all these special characters and commands and 
locked up while parsing everything.

I removed the qfile and everything was running smooth again.
If somebody wants the file for debugging purposes, just email me in private 
and I can send it to you.


Anyway. While searching through the web I also found a solution to the mass 
moderation problem via "withlist".
Stephen J. Turnbull suggested to just delete the files in the data/ directory, 
then start the mailman web interface again and mailman will reinitialize 
everything. This will probably work too, but the follwing  seems to be a more 
elegant way:

As user mailman execute:

python -i bin/withlist listname

Then type:

m.Lock()
from Mailman import mm_cfg
h = m.GetHeldMessageIds()
for i in h: m.HandleRequest(i,mm_cfg.DISCARD)
<return>
m.Save()
<ctrl-d>

I found it here: 
http://mm.tkikuchi.net/pipermail/mmjp-users/2001-November/000154.html
It's in japanese but even without understanding the mail, the script a good 
hint.
There is even a python script which deletes all mails older than x days from 
the queue (or that's what I think what it does). I didn't try it yet, but it 
seems to be a nice way to get rid of all the spam in moderation queues via an 
automatic cronjob.

Cheers,
Stephan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAl7Mx0TAeRPnvmyERAnjuAJ9oCuwkCSZ03zRHLeQxRkzldhJnUgCggLBE
YiJJyabdyBwDcISziDFjm3Y=
=Ihql
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----