[Mailman-Users] mailman python-2.4 using 96% cpu [SOLVED]

[Mark Sapiro]

Mark Sapiro wrote:

>Goodman, William wrote:
>
>>This is the output of:
>>
>># ls -aR /opt/software/mailman/qfiles/
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/:
>>.  ..  archive  bounces  commands  in  news  out  retry  shunt  virgin
>>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/archive:
>>.  ..
>>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/bounces:
>>.
>>..
>>1234190987.539598+fd6c983022fae575bb19abe36c1eb9c9e4d7a896.pck
>>1234190987.546752+fe6f1ad1df8e2079ccb23fc3cfeeff4fd5441082.pck
>>1234190987.7204871+3a2c234edd8b221eaca05854a5dfd5162c58f6da.pck
>>1234190987.960499+c00b2d2522ee0d1246583d41a3323958520da746.pck
>>1234190988.063931+b4b96d43770f9f37a42f57ad50055c8837b21874.pck
>>1234190988.3409979+4f2d8e7a9fc7810110611d42fd82f57c167dbc1c.pck
>>1234190988.366761+dab73d1f6982797f201613fd4b60237b4e01bab3.pck
>>1234190988.669873+d4e730813b15eb5a7a3c427183808d07fb0b7ca4.pck
>>1234190988.7999749+9e225d8f549d8f35a9a4255c572ac88f6bd5c845.pck
>>1234190988.961921+417ad154e340bd2947ed5df80c530ab697d7a17a.pck.tmp
>
>
>You are in the process of queueing one bounce, and 9 other bounces have
>arrived in the last 1.4 seconds.
>
>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/commands:
>>.  ..
>>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/in:
>>.
>>..
>>1234190978.5258429+b87a7a844ad37ebb49d0724f57432f96a184db71.bak
>>1234190978.5667651+ed691242dad999eb51ccc8fab3343b6619856592.pck
>>1234190978.6760139+e4f48d142e1cb482489bebd1027e9b550915dc55.pck
>>1234190988.577697+6801e46df1e6c7432b7f9e458ef424bf28792659.pck
>
>
>You are processing one incoming message and 3 other messages have
>arrived within 1 second of that one.
>
>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/news:
>>.  ..
>>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/out:
>>.   1234190978.3703849+eed96b821c17c2186fc25541469e5ef0c0af6a47.pck
>>..  1234190978.738651+91bcf5af1bdaac8c799b378c3b1301b10a53252c.bak
>
>
>You are processing one outgoing message and another is waiting which
>from within a fraction of a second.
>
>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/retry:
>>.  ..
>>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/shunt:
>>.  ..
>>
>>/opt/software/mailman/qfiles/virgin:
>>.  .. 
>
>
>It looks to me like you are being hit with massive amounts of spam to
>the list's post and bounces address or you have some kind of mail loop
>going on which is generating all this mail.
>
>Your high CPU utilization is a result of Mailman doing real work to
>handle all this mail.


After further off-list analysis, it turned out there was a mail loop
involving the mailman-owner address. Here's the OP's description.

This was the case:

I moved the lists server from one hosts to another (which I wouldn't
recommend us less you have no choice)
The original host was using sendmail, the new host is using Postfix
(easy to deal with). When I tarred up
the lists I forgot that mailman is a lists, so the configuration for the
original server could find a valid
email address for the owner, it was looking at the original servers
mailman email address which was a different domain. This cause the
exchange server to send the mail back to the host, then the host would
send it back to
the exchange server and so on ...


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