[Mailman-Users] ascii error

[Mark Sapiro]

Doc Schneider wrote:
>
>Here's the Traceback:
>
>Oct 23 22:55:22 2005 (20244) Uncaught runner exception: 'ascii' codec 
>can't decode byte 0xa0 in position 35: ordinal not in range(128)
>Oct 23 22:55:22 2005 (20244) Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 111, in _oneloop
>     self._onefile(msg, msgdata)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 167, in _onefile
>     keepqueued = self._dispose(mlist, msg, msgdata)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Queue/ArchRunner.py", line 89, in _dispose
>     mlist.ArchiveMail(msg)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.py", line 218, in 
>ArchiveMail
>     h.processUnixMailbox(f)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/pipermail.py", line 612, in 
>processUnixMailbox
>     self.add_article(a)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/pipermail.py", line 777, in 
>add_article
>     article.parentID = parentID = self.get_parent_info(arch, article)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/pipermail.py", line 809, in 
>get_parent_info
>     article.subject)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/HyperDatabase.py", line 311, in 
>getOldestArticle
>     self.__openIndices(archive)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/HyperDatabase.py", line 251, in 
>__openIndices
>     t = DumbBTree(os.path.join(arcdir, archive + '-' + i))
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/HyperDatabase.py", line 65, in 
>__init__
>     self.load()
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/HyperDatabase.py", line 179, in load
>     self.__sort(dirty=1)
>   File "/var/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/HyperDatabase.py", line 73, in __sort
>     self.sorted.sort()
>UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xa0 in position 35: 
>ordinal not in range(128)
>
>Oct 23 22:55:22 2005 (20244) SHUNTING: 
>1130126119.8497291+94c2ef28968b039ea63b6d6fca17c7e22e0d3c13

and:

>I looked through the error log and this has been happening to just one 
>list I have and been going on since the 19 Oct.
>
>I also looked at the digest.mbox and there is only two in there.
>
>Peeking at the shunt files there is some unprocessed spam in it from a 
>while back, like a couple months ago. And about 200 files in there from 
>this particular list.


The "unprocessed spam" files in qfiles/shunt should be deleted.

The traceback indicates it's not a digest.mbox problem. It is rather a
problem with the archive database for this list. The database is used
by pipermail to build the archive index files and appears to have
gotten something nasty in it (from the Subject: of a message?) on Oct
19.

I would look at the archives/private/listname.mbox/listname.mbox file
and see if I could find a problem, e.g. a Subject: header with an
acute a (or something encoded as hex a0). If I could find it, I'd fix
it. The next step is to rebuild the archive and figure out what to do
with the shunted messages. Since the archiver runs outside of normal
message delivery, and since the pipermail archiving comes after
archiving to the listname.mbox file, my guess is all the shunted
messages have been delivered to the list and are in the listname.mbox
file. If this is true, stop Mailman, fix the listname.mbox file and
rebuild the archive from listname.mbox with 'bin/arch --wipe
listname'. Then you can start Mailman and just delete all the files
from the shunt queue.

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