[Mailman-Users] Editing values in a lists's config.pck file?

[Daniel Clark]

On 2/5/07, Daniel Clark <dclark at pobox.com> wrote:
> I need to change the gate_news watermark on one of my mailing lists,
> as it got incremented without a message actually being gatewayed from
> the usenet newsgroup to the mailing list (because of something to do
> with the "list" user's password having expired and cron).
>
> I am using mailman 2.1.5-8sarge5.
>
> I found that this information is contained in the list "config.pck" file:
>
> # /var/lib/mailman/bin/dumpdb /var/lib/mailman/lists/<listname>/config.pck \
> | grep -i watermark
>     'usenet_watermark': 10,
>
> What I want to do here is change usenet_watermark to 9; however I
> haven't been able to find any information on how to modify the
> config.pck file - anyone know how that would be done?

I did some more searching and found this technique:

1. Get the name of the variable out of the config.pck file:

# /var/lib/mailman/bin/dumpdb /var/lib/mailman/lists/<listname>/config.pck \
  | grep -i watermark
    'usenet_watermark': 10,

2. Write the new value you want into a temporary file in the format
config_list expects mlist. before the variable), and check to make
sure that the file is correct:

# cat > tmp
mlist.usenet_watermark = 9
# cat tmp
mlist.usenet_watermark = 9

3. Run config_list with the tmp file as the input file against the list:

# config_list -i tmp <listname>

4. Check to make sure the change was successful:

# /var/lib/mailman/bin/dumpdb /var/lib/mailman/lists/<listname>/config.pck \
  | grep -i watermark
    'usenet_watermark': 9,

This worked, and got my message 10 gatewayed to the mailing list.