[Mailman-Users] Approving large messages results in MemoryError

Mark Sapiro msapiro at value.net
Mon Mar 20 17:45:21 CET 2006


Peter Veerman wrote:

>>How big are these attachments?
>
>Ranging from 1 to 5 MB
>
>><snip>

>>How big is this file? 
>
>This file is 1.4 MB
>
>> can you successfully dump it with bin/dumpdb? 
>
>Yes...Just 1.4 MB of data flashed ran across my terminal :)
>
>> Does your OS or web server somehow limit the size of cgi programs?
>
>Well I run apache2 and to be onest, i have not got a clue about this. I
>searched my configuration files for any indications for this and also
>googled around without any result :(


This seems to be an issue beyond either Mailman or Python. Clearly
Mailman's IncomingRunner process can receive the incoming post, parse
it into a message instance and ultimately pickle it to the heldmsg
file.

The stand alone bin/dumpdb can unpickle it and display it, but when the
admindb interface running as a cgi attempts to unpickle it, it gets a
MemoryError exception. I think it has to be due to some limit on the
cgi from apache2, but I don't know what that would be.

As a workaround, you could try approving the message by email. I didn't
ask whether you have admin_immed_notify on so you receive individual
notices of these posts, but if you do, the notice (in addition to
being additional evidence that Mailman's IncomingRunner has no problem
with this size message) has an attached message/rfc822 part at the end
following the attached original post.

This final attached message is From: the listname-request address and
has a subject like 'confirm 72bd7cc3e10add5cd7577039f77be82112f237d1'
(with different hex digits). It has instructions in the body, but
simply, if you send a message back to the listname-request address
with the same subject and the first line of the body being

Approved: list_password

where list_password is the actual list admin or moderator password, the
original message will be approved. Without the Approved: line, the
original message will be discarded.

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




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