[Mailman-Users] Message received by mailman and archives, but won't deliver

[Mark Sapiro]

Kyle Banerjee wrote:
>
>I've sent a few messages to the lists over the past couple hours. Here
>is what I'm seeing:
>
>1) The files are appearing almost immediately in qfiles/out/ where
>they seem to stay. Nothing is in retry or the other qfiles
>directories.
>
>2) Even a couple hours later, nothing shows up in post, smtp, or
>smtp-failure. However, someone who belonged to one of the lists sent
>one through. I found the entry
>
>Aug 31 02:18:53 2007 (40546)
><01F67337-E566-4AA4-B684-01C9E2F3F9FB at mac.com> smtp to innopac for
>2014 recips, completed in 11231.212 seconds
>
>The amount of time for the transaction seems insane. Load is
>practically nonexistent.


Your SMTP delivery to sendmail is incredibly slow. This is your entire
problem. Your out queue is hoplessly backlogged due to the time it is
taking to process SMTP. You will never catch up.

You need to make changes in sendmail. See
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?query=performance&querytype=simple&casefold=yes&req=search>,
particularly 4.11 and 6.3, and make sure you are not doing DNS
verifies on mail from Mailman.


>3) When I send a message to the list, maillog makes it look like
>everything happened. For example, if I send it to the list with 4
>people in it
>
>Aug 31 02:47:54 innopacusers sm-mta[52010]: l7V2lmww052010:
>from=<namedeleted at gmail.com>, size=5888, class=0, nrcpts=1,
>msgid=<47eed6660708301947g661c9557ocaeb52af48e48260 at mail.gmail.com>,
>proto=ESMTP, daemon
>=MTA-v4, relay=wa-out-1112.google.com [209.85.146.180]


This doesn't look like a message from Mailman. A message from a mailman
list will normally be from listname-bounces at example.com
(webguru-bounces at innopacusers.org in this case). And, if this came
from Mailman, there would be entries in Mailman's post and smtp logs.


>Aug 31 02:48:01 innopacusers sm-mta[52012]: l7V2lmww052010:
>to=namedeleted2 at bus.umich.edu, delay=00:00:07, xdelay=00:00:02,
>mailer=esmtp, pri=156118, relay=bus-ex02.bus.umich.edu.
>[141.211.239.195], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (
><47eed6660708301947g661c9557ocaeb52af48e48260 at mail.gmail.com> Queued
>mail for delivery)
>Aug 31 02:48:02 innopacusers sm-mta[52012]: l7V2lmww052010:
>to=namedeleted3 at Colorado.edu , delay=00:00:08
>, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=esmtp, pri=156118, relay=mx10.colorado.edu.
>[128.138.128.110], dsn=2.0.0, stat=
>Sent (Ok: queued as 31AB7C4A4B0)
>Aug 31 02:48:03 innopacusers sm-mta[52012]: l7V2lmww052010:
>to=namedeleted4 at gmail.com, delay=00:00:09, x
>delay=00:00:01, mailer=esmtp, pri=156118,
>relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. [64.233.167.27], dsn=2.0.0,
>stat=Sent (OK 1188528483 a70si1963649pye)
>Aug 31 02:48:04 innopacusers sm-mta[52012]: l7V2lmww052010:
>to=fleckn at mail.lib.msu.edu, delay=00:00:10, x
>delay=00:00:01, mailer=esmtp, pri=156118,
>relay=mail1.mail.lib.msu.edu. [35.8.223.61], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (
><47eed6660708301947g661c9557ocaeb52af48e48260 at mail.gmail.com> Queued
>mail for delivery)
>Aug 31 02:48:22 innopacusers sm-mta[52012]:
>l7V2lmww052010:to=namedeleted5 at oregonstate.edu, delay=00:00:28,
>xdelay=00:00:18, mailer=esmtp, pri=156118,
>relay=relay.oregonstate.edu. [128.193.15.33], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent
>(Ok: queued as 5D01C410AE6)
>
>The handoff to mailman shows up and it appears in /qfiles/out
>Aug 31 02:40:58 innopacusers sm-mta[51781]: l7V2ep7j051777:
>to="|/usr/local/bin/stripmime.pl|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post
>webguru" , ctladdr=<webguru at innopacusers.org> (26/0), delay=00:00:01,
>xdelay=00:
>00:01, mailer=prog, pri=31857, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent


Mailman can do content filtering with I think more control than
stripmime.pl


>> In fact, in a well running Mailman installation qfiles/out/ is normally
>> empty except for the occasional entry you see for a second or so while
>> it's waiting to be picked up. (In 2.1.9, it will remain longer as a
>> *.bak file while it is being processed by
>> OutgoingRunner/SMTPDirect.py.)
>>
>> If *.pck files are hanging around in qfiles/out/, either there is a
>> backlog (probably due to a configuration issue if it persists), or
>> there is some problem with OutgoingRunner.
>
>This sounds like my problem. OutgoingRunner is running
>
>mailman 40546  0.0  1.7 19204 17236  ??  S    11:11PM   0:01.49
>/usr/local/bin/python2.4 /usr/local/mailman/bin/qrunner
>--runner=OutgoingRunner:0:1 -s
>
>I can easily buy that there's a config issue, but the strange thing is
>that we were functional for years and all of a sudden quit working


What Mailman version is this?


>(having said that, we have a hosted server, so it's conceivable
>something was done to our machine -- it's happened before).
>
>I don't understand how OutgoingRunner works -- any suggestions for
>directions for me to explore in seeing if my sendmail or mailman
>config is screwing things up? Thanks,


OutgoingRunner picks up the oldest qfiles/out/*.pck file, gets the
message and metadata from it and passes them to SMTPDirect.py for
processing. When SMTPDirect.py returns, it picks up the next entry and
repeats until there are no entries left. Then it sleeps for
QRUNNER_SLEEP_TIME (default 1 second) and looks for any new entries.

That's the basic flow assuming no errors or exceptions.

See the above FAQ articles.

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