[Mailman-Users] hit a bug problem solved

[Mark Sapiro]

Sally K Scheer wrote:

>The problem has been solved. Tech support discovered the solution on a 
>cpanel discussion list. Here's the solution that worked:


Which is probably a better place to be in the first place. See
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq06.011.htp>.


>"I found that the issue was an empty request.pck file in the list's 
>directory:
>
>/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/lists/<listname>
>
>I found that if you remove the request.pck file it is recreated when you log 
>back in.


This is normal.


>I am not exactly sure if this is a good solution or not, I'm not real sure 
>what the request.pck file does, but it is never very big (usually around 24 
>bytes).


request.pck contains information about the outstanding moderator
requests for the list. 24 bytes is 'empty' - it contains one 'version'
record.


>I only had this issue on a couple of lists, and removing the 0 byte 
>request.pck file for those lists seemed to fix the issue and I am not aware 
>of any further issues that came about because the file was deleted and 
>recreated. However, somebody else who is more aware of Mailman's inner 
>workings may know whether or not removing this file is a good or bad idea."


If it is 0 bytes, removing it is probably a good idea.


>While this solved the problem, it doesn't explain why it happened really. I 
>wouldn't mind hearing something about that from the real experts.


I'm afraid this is a cPanel question. I've never heard of the standard
Mailman distribution creating a 0 length request.pck. Prior to Mailman
2.1.5, the file was a Python marshal named request.db, and there was
an issue when migrating from pre-2.1.5 to 2.1.5 in that there was no
request.pck and cron/checkdbs would mail the list admin/moderator a
daily reminder about "-1 moderator requests" but simply going to the
admindb page would create the request.pck and fix it. See
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq03.038.htp>.

The '-1 requests' issue was fixed in our distribution in 2.1.6.

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