[Mailman-Users] Mailman stop delivering ... problemwithApproval.py?

[Mark Sapiro]

SML wrote:
>
>There was no update to either Mailman or Python ... but one of the
>lists was hit with a *massive* amount of spam that caused "too many
>files open" error, this same spam attack eventually caused the
>server to run out of memory :(


And the reboot of the server could have caused things which were
previously downloaded and waiting for a reboot to install to finally
be installed.


>> The above import has been in Approve.py since 2.1.0. Something else
>> in your system changed.
>
>When creating a temp list for a testing sandbox the Import errors were
>replaced by "AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute
>'get_sender' errors," and then all errors stopped and the lists on
>the server started working again.


I've seen reports of this error before and it appears to me to be a
symptom of an underlying Python problem that causes incoming queue
entries to be missing critical metadata.


>My assumption is that Mailman was using up server resources to deal
>with spam and a (few) files got corrupted, which files
>were then recompiled on the creation of a new list.


Creating a new list shouldn't cause anything to be recompiled or
reloaded.


>One interesting thing, the qfiles/shunt/*.pck files were owned:group
>by mailman:mailman, but the most recent "AttributeError" .pck files
>are owned:group root:mailman. How is it that Mailman started writing
>files with root as the owner? 


Because it was root that ran the 'bin/mailmanctl start' so root owns
the qrunner processes.

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