[Mailman-Users] digests/Python/2.1.12 upgrade

[Mark Sapiro]

Christopher Adams wrote:

>I just upgraded to Mailman 2.1.12. I noticed that the digests are not
>going out. When I run the /bin/senddigests script manually, it goes
>through all list digest mailboxes and I get this message:
>
>List: mylistnamer: problem processing
>/usr/local/mailman/lists/mylistname/digest.mbox:
>decoding Unicode is not supported
>
>If I try to generate a specific list digest from the admin interface,
>it results in the "You've Hit a Bug" message.
>
>I have read some about possible reasons for this error and it seems to
>point to Python.
>
>I am running RedHat ES 3 and Python 2.5. There is a plan to move to a
>new server with a newer OS, but for the short-term I am wondering if
>this is a Python issue and if Python should be upgraded. The Mailman
>wiki says:
>
> It is highly recommended that you upgrade to the latest patch release
>of one of the following:
>
>    * Python 2.4
>    * Python 2.5
>
>For now, we recommend using Python 2.5.2.
>
>Can someone verify whether this is a Python issue and will an upgrade
>to 2.5.2 make a difference. Of course, I'm not sure Python 2.5 is
>really designed to run on RH ES 3, but it has been doing fine up til
>now.


There is an issue with Mailman 2.1.12 and some versions of the Python
email package. This is mentioned in the FAQ at
<http://wiki.list.org/x/pYA9> in the "Update - March 2009:" paragraph
including a link to a patch to Python's email/Charset.py module that
will fix it.

However, I think this problem only occurs with email version 3.0.2
which only shipped with Python 2.4.4 through 2.4.6. Python 2.5 shipped
with email 4.0.1 which I don't think has this specific issue.

Are you sure your Mailman is using Python 2.5? Do you also have python
2.4 libraries on your system?

In any case, there should be a traceback from the "we hit a bug" error
in Mailman's error log. What is that?


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