[Mailman-Users] Why is a Mail stuck in qfiles/bad

[Markus Bobe]

Hi!

All messages have been stuck. With the knowledge that the .bak are generated due to a server crash I found that python had a segfault every time. I blame an update because after I rebooted the server the problem disappeared.

Thanks for your help!

Best regards,
Markus


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Mailman-Users [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+mb=bw-networx.net at python.org] Im Auftrag von Mark Sapiro
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. März 2017 20:40
An: mailman-users at python.org
Betreff: Re: [Mailman-Users] Why is a Mail stuck in qfiles/bad

On 03/24/2017 03:53 AM, Markus Bobe wrote:
> 
> The error log says:
> 
> Mar 24 11:11:18 2017 (18258) .bak file max count, preserving file: 
> 1490350277.837968+0696655d510e3bad34fee55513eec06ed9b3413c


In order to not lose messages in the event of a hard server crash, power outage, etc., when a Mailman runner dequeues a message for processing, the .pck queue entry is renamed to .bak. Then if Mailman (or the runner) dies for some reason, the .bak is left behind and when the runner restarts, it looks for and processes the .bak file.

There is a safety valve built in that keeps track of the number of times the .bak file is processed and quits after a limit to prevent endlessly reprocessing a message which kills the runner. This is hard coded in Mailman/Queue/Switchboard.py as

MAX_BAK_COUNT = 3

If a .bak has been processed that many times, it is just saved as a .psv in qfiles/bad

> and when I do a dumpdb -p:
> 
> [----- start pickle file -----]
> <----- start object 1 ----->
> 
> [MAIL CONTENT]
> 
> <----- start object 2 ----->
> {   '_bak_count': 3,
>     '_parsemsg': True,
>     'listname': 'newsletter1',
>     'received_time': 1490350277.837968,
>     'tolist': 1,
>     'version': 3}
> [----- end pickle file -----]
> 
> Can someone tell me the meaning of  ".bak file max count"? I had no success reading the FAQ or searching the mailinglist archive.


So, what keeps getting stuck? If it is a new message each time, look in Mailman's error and qrunner logs for info as to why.

If as I suspect, this is the same file and you are just moving it from qfiles/bad/xxx.psv to some qfiles/*/xxx.pck, that won't work becayse the metadata already has '_bak_count': 3, so it will just be preserved again without being processed.

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