[Mailman-Users] Missing confirmation requests and held messages

[Mark Sapiro]

Gregory Skelton wrote:
>
>I'm kinda new to the administrating mailman lists, and I've recently run 
>into a problem with our current setup. We have multiple list, all the data 
>is mounted over nfs, and we're seeing missing emails. For instance, we've 
>had some users try to subscribe to a list but don't get a confirmation 
>email, other times we're seeing "held" messages no show up in the qeue for 
>the administrator to authorize them. This is starting to become a real 
>problem for our scientific colaboration, and I need to get it fixed soon.


Is this a "new" problem, or just newly discovered? If it is a "new"
problem, what changed?


>We're running mailman 2.1.9, and sendmail sendmail-8.13.8-2 on a Centos 
>5.2 system.
>
>Does anyone have any idea what might be the problem?


It's almost impossible to even guess based on only the above.


>I've ran check_perms script, and it gave me this output:
>
>Warning: Private archive directory is other-executable (o+x).
>          This could allow other users on your system to read private
> 	archives.
>          If you're on a shared multiuser system, you should consult the
>          installation manual on how to fix this.
>No problems found


This is completely normal.


>And running check_db -a -v
>
>I noticed most of mailing list are ok, but found a few list that have this 
>problem.
>
>List: lalsuite-commits
>    /var/mailman/lists/lalsuite-commits/config.pck: okay
>    /var/mailman/lists/lalsuite-commits/config.pck.last: okay
>     [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 
>'/var/mailman/lists/lalsuite-commits/config.db'
>     [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 
>'/var/mailman/lists/lalsuite-commits/config.db.last'


This is normal too. The lists that don't have config.db and
config.db.last files were created under Mailman 2.1.x. Those that do
have them were migrated from 2.0.x. In fact it is a good idea to
remove the config.db and config.db.last files from the lists that have
them. Otherwise, if the config.pck and config.pck.last files ever get
corrupted, Mailman could fall back to the config.db or config.db.last
and then you'd wind up with a years-old configuration and membership
list.

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