[Mailman-Users] mailman gets stuck, stops sending messages

[Mark Sapiro]

Steven J. Owens wrote:
>
>In any event, both /var/lib/mailman/bin/version and "dpkg -l mailman"
>says I'm running 2.1.5 (dpkg says 2.1.5.3), and this section of the
>FAQ says:
>
>   If you are running Mailman 2.1.x then the qrunners are daemons that
>   are started by $prefix/bin/mailmanctl, which itself may be being 
>   run via a 'mailman' startup script. This is described in the 
>   INSTALL document for the version of MM you are running.
>
>I can't find any INSTALL document with:
>     dpkg -L mailman | fgrep INSTALL
>
>(Warning, don't do "dpkg -L mailman<enter>", there are over 3000 files
>in the mailman package :-).

It's part of the source distribution. Apparently, Debian doesn't
include it in their package.

>I can't see a mailmanctl daemon with:
>     ps -aux| grep mailmanctl |grep -v grep

Note that on Red Hat 7.3, with an 80 column screen, I have to do 
     ps -auxw| grep mailmanctl |grep -v grep
in order to see anything.

>I'm not sure what's going on.  At first I was excited, because I
>figured the absence of a mailmanctl process meant that was the
>problem.  When I did "mailmanctl start", messages waiting in the 
>queue were delivered, and they appear to still be getting through
>now, a couple hours later.
>
>However, on a closer re-reading, of the above paragraph, it doesn't
>really say that there's supposed to be a mailmanctl process running.
>It doens't say much of anything, really.

There should be a "mailmanctl -s -q start" running that was started by
/etc/init.d/mailman. It in turn should have started all the qrunner
processes which should also be running (a total of eight qrunners
assuming no slicing). If a qrunner stops, mailmanctl should notice and
restart it, but if mailmanctl stops too then so does everything except
receipt and queueing of messages.

<snip>
>
>The only thing I can find in the logs that looks suspicious is:
>
>qrunner:
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Nov 11 16:19:27 2004 (1060) OutgoingRunner qrunner started.
>Nov 11 16:19:27 2004 (1061) IncomingRunner qrunner started.
>Nov 11 18:30:26 2004 (1060) OutgoingRunner qrunner caught SIGTERM.  Stopping.
>Nov 11 18:30:26 2004 (1060) OutgoingRunner qrunner exiting.
>Nov 11 18:30:26 2004 (1061) IncomingRunner qrunner caught SIGTERM.  Stopping.
>Nov 11 18:30:33 2004 (1061) IncomingRunner qrunner exiting.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------

We don't know why the incoming and outgoing runners are  receiving
SIGTERM, but this will cause the problem because they will quit and
the master won't restart them. See

   bin/mailmanctl --help

--
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan