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

[Carl Zwanzig]

[not speaking for Mark, Barry, or really anyone but me]

This is really the classic IT problem of unsupported configurations.

In a flurry of recycled electrons, Pierre Igot wrote:

> But the reality was that, in all likelihood, this was a pretty basic  
> problem that had to do with Mailman itself, that it probably had  
> nothing to do with Apple's customizations, and that the most  
> efficient way to get help was probably to submit a request to this list.

>From my dim memories, this probably isn't the case as often as it is
(the recent thread on pipermail and debian?). Also, if it's a common
problem, it's likely to have been addresed in the FAQ or sometime
earlier on this list. The number of people that don't check either
resource is astounding (esp as evidenced by the responses that simple
say "check faq x.yy").

> The question is whether it really costs Mailman experts such as  
> yourself so much effort to just provide such basic help from time to  
> time to "newbies" like me using a possibly somewhat non-standard  
> version of Mailman. 

The problem that comes up far too often is that someone, such as Mark,
says "what's in the vette log?" or "delete /usr/local/mailman/lists/fred.lock"
and the questioner says "where is it?" or "But I don't -have- a 
/usr/local/mailman" directory". We then start playing 20 questions-
do you have root access?
which version is installed?
which pakcaged version is installed?
etc.  (iirc, all if which is in faq 3.14)

Given that mailman and the support are free, I think it's a bit
much to expect that the maintainers know exactly how each distributor
builds their package (directories, options, etc). They can only say
"on a stock system, it works like this", and sometimes "there's a vette
log somewhere, please find it".

z!
former IT manager