[Mailman-Users] Mailman on Mac OS X Server 10.3: Outgoing messages stuck in qrunner/in folder

[Pierre Igot]

Hi,

I am running Mailman on an Xserve running Mac OS X Server 10.3.9. The  
version of Mailman is the one included with Mac OS X Server 10.3.9.  
(It's 2.1.2.)

I've just started experimenting with mailing lists on this server  
using Mailman. Things worked fine until I actually got to the stage  
of mass-subscribing a series of nearly 500 email addresses.

I used the web-based Mailman interface to submit the list of 500  
email addresses for new subscribers, through the "Mass Subscription"  
web form. I just copied the list of email addresses (separated by  
return chars) from a text editor and pasted it in the field and  
submitted. My mistake (I think) was that I submitted the entire list  
of 500 email addresses at once. Initially it SEEMED to work, i.e. I  
got a confirmation page listing all the subscribers that had been  
added to the list.

But then I became unable to access the admin page for the list  
altogether. The server would simply not respond. I could still access  
other parts of the web-based Mailman interface, but not the pages for  
this particular list.

After a bit of on-line research, I discovered that the problem was  
probably due to "locks" in the

/var/mailman/locks/

folder. Indeed, when I looked inside that folder, I found a whole  
series of files named:

enseignants.lock
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.421.1
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7150.0
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7166.0
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7216.0
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7228.0
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7286.0
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7470.0
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7696.0
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7819.0
enseignants.lock.www.cprp.ca.7918.0

("www.cprp.ca" is my server and "enseignants" is the name of the list)

The instructions for dealing with this were not exactly clear, so I  
just removed all these files so that the "locks" folder was empty.  
After that, I was able to access the list's admin pages again. So I  
thought everything was good.

Then I tried to send a message to my subscribers. (It's a receive- 
only list, so I'll be the only one sending messages.) However, the  
message that I sent never got sent to the mailing list's subscribers.

After more online research, I found out that my message was actually  
stuck inside the

/var/mailman/qfiles/in/

folder. I also found that I could force Mailman to send the message  
by using the command:

/usr/share/mailman/bin/qrunner -r All

That worked and the message got sent out to the list (although I then  
had to control-C the process to return to the prompt).

But I find that this now happens every time I want to send a message.  
The message never gets sent automatically as expected. Instead, it  
gets stuck in that /qfiles/in/ folder and I have to run the qrunner - 
r All command to get it sent.

This never happened with this list before I added the 500 subscribers  
and had to fiddle with the /locks/ folder. Prior to that, when I was  
still in the stage of testing the mailing list with only a handful of  
test subscribers, everything worked fine and the messages would get  
sent automatically.

My suspicion is that the problem is due to what I did in the /locks/  
folder, that maybe I wasn't supposed to remove all the files. (I have  
kept them on a local disk in case I need to move them back to that  
folder.)

But unfortunately further on-line research and a search through the  
mailman-users archives didn't return anything that would help me. I  
found people describing various similar problems, but the  
troubleshooting steps seem suggested totally foreign to my actual  
problem.

Hence this message. I would REALLY appreciate it if someone could  
help me with this. I simply do not have the required Mailman  
expertise. I just want to use Mailman for a single announcement list.  
I suppose I could erase everything and start from scratch again, but  
maybe someone here has an easier solution.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Pierre Igot
--
Pierre Igot, administrateur des systèmes / Systems Administrator
www.cprp.ca
902-837-7391