[Mailman-Users] problems with .pck files

[Mark Sapiro]

james edwards wrote:

>After my server panicked and rebooted itself, when  this cron runs:
> /usr/lib/mailman/cron/gate_new  I get this error message:
>
>Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "/usr/lib/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 284, in ?
>    main()
>  File "/usr/lib/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 264, in main
>    process_lists(lock)
>  File "/usr/lib/mailman/cron/gate_news", line 199, in process_lists
>    mlist = MailList.MailList(listname, lock=0)
>  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 128, in __init__
>    self.Load()
>  File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 608, in Load
>    raise Errors.MMCorruptListDatabaseError, e
>Mailman.Errors.MMCorruptListDatabaseError: [Errno 2] No such file or
>directory: '/var/lib/mailman/lists/jid/config.db.last'
>
>The config files exist for this list:
>
>[root at jidmail init.d]# cd /var/lib/mailman/lists/jid/
>[root at jidmail jid]# ls
>config.pck  config.pck.last  pending.pck  request.pck

First, the reference to No such file or directory:
'/var/lib/mailman/lists/jid/config.db.last' is misleading. When an
attempt is made to instantiate a list via MailList.MailList(),
MailList attempts to load the list data from a config file. It tries
the 2.1.x file config.pck, the 2.1.x backup config.pick.last, the
2.0.x file config.db and the 2.0.x backup config.db.last in that
order, and if it is unable to load the list from any of them, it
reports only the last error.

The real error is as you say, both the config.pck and the
config.pck.last are corrupt.


>>From what I read on the internet about this issue, this lists config files
>are now hosed and I should replace them from the last known good backup.
>
>Is this correct ?


Is it only gate_news that gets this error? Are there errors like this
in the error log from other processes. What happens if you go to the
web listinfo overview for example. Does it get the same error?

If everything that accesses the list gets this, then I hope you have a
recent backup. If you don't, try 'bin/dumpdb' on both the config.pck
and config.pck.last to see if you can at least get up to date info in
text form.

If it's only gate_news that has the problem (unlikely, but we can
hope), then I'm not sure what the issue is.

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