[Mailman-Users] shunting after "decoding Unicode is notsupported"

[Mark Sapiro]

David Newman wrote:

>On 5/13/09 10:06 PM, David Newman wrote:
>> Mailman 2.1.12
>> 
>> Had a server crash. Built a new server, compiled MM 2.1.12 from source
>> and restored the lists, data, and archives from a backup.
>> 
>> Messages are going to the list but most aren't getting archived, with
>> errors like the one pasted below.
>> 
>> This has come up before:
>> 
>> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2007-May/057100.html
>> 
>> I'm wary about screwing up the digests, so two questions:


The above issue is the same exception, but it's a totally different
cause.


>> 1. Is there any way of clearing this error without renaming/moving the
>> digest?
>> 
>> 2. If I do move the digest, will the messages that didn't get archived
>> then make it into the archive? Or will archiving work only for those
>> messages from that point forward?


This one has to be fixed in a different way. It has nothing to do with
digests.


>Sorry for replying to my own email, but I've noticed it's only HTML
>email that produces this error, and doesn't go into the archives.
>
>How to remedy (without clobbering the digest, that is)?


This is a known incompatibility between Mailman 2.1.12 and the Python
email 3.0.2 package. email 3.0.2 is part of Python 2.4.4 through
2.4.6, and these are the only Python versions that have this problem
with Mailman 2.1.12.

There is a long thread about this in the bug report at
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/328353> which also contains a
patch to (in your case) /usr/local/lib/python2.4/email/Charset.py.

There is also an Update - March 2009: about this near the bottom of the
FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/pYA9> which contains a direct link to
the Charset.py patch.

You could upgrade Python to 2.5.x or 2.6.x to fix this, but the easiest
fix is to apply the patch to /usr/local/lib/python2.4/email/Charset.py
and restart Mailman. Then you can run bin/unshunt to process the
shunted messages to the archive.

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