[Mailman-Users] Wiping all mailman data

[Mark Sapiro]

Brian T wrote:
>
>I made some modifications to the Switchboard.py class. I think I probably
>broke something that caused some nonsense data to be saved, because now
>when I restart mailman (with /etc/init.d/mailman restart), I get the
>following in my error log file:
>
>Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325): Traceback (most recent call last):
>  2 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):   File
>"/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner", line 278, in <module>
>  3 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):      main()
>  4 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):   File
>"/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner", line 238, in main
>  5 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):      qrunner.run()
>  6 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):   File
>"/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 71, in run
>  7 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):      filecnt = self._oneloop()
>  8 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):   File
>"/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 95, in _oneloop
>  9 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):      files =
>self._switchboard.files()
> 10 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):   File
>"/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Switchboard.py", line 205, in file    s
> 11 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325):      key = float(when)
> 12 Jun 13 22:15:29 2012 qrunner(3325): ValueError :  invalid literal for
>float(): rcvtime


I can't tell from the traceback which runner this is so I don't know
which queue or queues has/have the bad file(s), but there is at least
one bad queue entry file name. Names should be of the form
tttttttt+hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.pck where tttttttt is a
timestamp in floating point seconds and
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh is a hex hash digest. You have at
least one filename in at least one queue where tttttttt is the literal
string rcvtime. These queues are directories with names like archive,
in, out, virgin, and so on. Depending on how you installed mailman,
these could be in /var/lib/mailman/qfiles/, or if this is a
RedHat/CentOS package, /var/spool/mailman/.


>I've since restored the original version of Switchboard.py, but I still get
>this error, making me suspect that some bad data has been saved, which is
>being reloaded on mailman restart and (eventually) causing this error.
>
>So, I was wondering: what do I need to do to wipe all data that mailman
>saves such that mailman is restored to a completely "fresh" state, as if I
>had just installed it? I realize this will destroy all mailing lists etc.,
>but that's fine.


Just remove the offending files. It won't destroy any lists, It will
just lose the queue entries. Or you could rename the entries properly
and you won't even lose them. To see what they contain, use Mailman's
bin/show_qfiles or bin/dumpdb.

If you really want to initialize everything, remove the contents of
/var/lib/mailman/lists/, /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/,
/var/lib/mailman/archives/public/, /var/lib/mailman/locks/ and
/var/lib/mailman/qfiles/ or whatever they're called in the package you
installed.

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