[Mailman-Users] Server Error When Using admindb Web Page

[Mark Sapiro]

Catherine Rey wrote:

>I have a list set to hold all incoming messages. I am getting 100+ spam 
>messages per day.  When using the web page to update the database to 
>remove them from the queue, I get back (after a long delay) an Internal 
>Server Error 500 from Apache instead of the web page telling me the 
>database has been updated.  After getting the Server Error and 
>requesting the admindb page again, it shows that all messages have been 
>deleted, so they are being removed from the queue.  This doesn't happen 
>when the queue contains only 40 - 45 messages or less -- only when the 
>queue is larger than that.
>
>Any comments on the cause or the fix will be appreciated.


You need to check the Apache error_log to see more detail about what's
happening. I'm just guessing, but there is likely some Apache limit on
how long a CGI can run before Apache either kills it or gives up.

You also need to check Mailman's data/ directory to make sure that the
actual heldmsg-<listname>-*.pck message files were deleted along with
the entries in lists/<listname>/request.pck.

Again, my guess is that there is nothing wrong with Mailman per se. It
is just that apache is not giving the admindb CGI enough time to
finish when the number of held messages to be deleted is large.

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