[Mailman-Users] Urgent newbie help - "Hit a bug" page

[Mark Sapiro]

John Fleming wrote:
>
>BINGO!  The results listed several lists without error, and then there was 
>the attribute error for real_name.  The preceeding list was the mailman 
>list!  So with appropriate backups, I renamed the mailman list's 
>config.pck.last file to config.pck and ran mylist_lists again, and it ran 
>without error, listing all of my lists!  And guess what, the list overview 
>web page works as expected now!


That's great!  I'm glad it's now working again.


>Do you agree that there was something VERY subtle about what was wrong with 
>it?  Here's a snippet from the original config.pck:
>
>    'preferred_language': 'en',
>    'private_roster': 1,
>    'real_name': 'Mailman',
>    'reject_these_nonmembers': [],
>    'reply_goes_to_list': 0,
>
>The real_name -looks- OK to a text editor, no?


Yes, it looks fine.


>Here's how it looks now:
>
>    'preferred_language': 'en',
>    'private_roster': 1,
>    'real_name': 'Mailman',
>    'reject_these_nonmembers': [],
>    'reply_goes_to_list': 0,


And yes, this looks the same. One thing I thought of - are both of
these excerpts from something identified by bin/dumpdb as 'object 1'
in the file. i.e. directly below the lines

[----- start pickle file -----]
<----- start object 1 ----->

with no intervening

<----- start object 2 ----->


>Running diff adds to the confusion, and it's getting difficult to explain.
>
>If I diff the present (working) config.pck (the renamed config.pck.last 
>file) and config-orig.pck (the problem file), there is NO DIFFERENCE. 



Very strange indeed. Of course, every time Mailman saves a list, it
goes through a complex dance, the result of which is rotating the
existing config.pck to config.pck.last and saving the new config.pck,
but with more safety than just doing that directly.


>However, if I diff config-orig.pck (problem file) and config.pck.last.orig 
>(the original pck.last file), there IS a difference!!


Have the timestamps changed? maybe Mailman Saved the list in the mean
time. However, that would not explain why diff says that
config-orig.pck, and the current config.pck are the same, yet one
works and the other didn't. That is the real mystery, and I have no
answer for that.


>So it seems that 
>simply renaming the "same" (according to diff) file fixed the problem?! 
>Some very subtle binary difference not detectable in the text output from 
>dumpdb??


Still, diff 'should' detect a difference. Are the files the same
length? What does

cmp config.pck config-orig.pck

say?

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