[Mailman-Users] Unable to start mailman due to time travel

[Phil Stracchino]

I have mailman-2.1.26 installed on my Gentoo 17.0 application server,
which I just rebooted to update from kernel 4.15.15 to 4.16.13.  After
rebooting, mailman would not start, logging the following errors:


Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743): Traceback (most recent call last):
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):   File "bin/mailmanctl", line
556, in <module>
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):      main()
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):   File "bin/mailmanctl", line
391, in main
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):      lock = acquire_lock(force)
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):   File "bin/mailmanctl", line
215, in acquire_lock
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):      lock = acquire_lock_1(force)
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):   File "bin/mailmanctl", line
203, in acquire_lock_1
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):      if not force or
qrunner_state():
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):   File "bin/mailmanctl", line
187, in qrunner_state
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743):      os.kill(pid, 0)
Jul 04 14:43:58 2018 mailmanctl(15743): OSError :  [Errno 1] Operation
not permitted


This looks like it's failing to acquire a lock file.  Investigating, I
discovered this:

minbar:root:/var/lib/mailman/logs:18 # ls -l /var/lib/mailman/locks
total 8
-rw-rw-r-- 2 mailman mailman 49 Jul  5  2018 master-qrunner
-rw-rw-r-- 2 mailman mailman 49 Jul  5  2018 master-qrunner.minbar.4623

The server itself is pretty clear that today is July 4:

minbar:root:/var/lib/mailman/logs:23 # date
Wed Jul  4 14:50:09 EDT 2018

After I deleted the errant lock files, mailman started up without
hesitation ...  and AGAIN created lock files timestamped in the future:


minbar:root:/var/lib/mailman/logs:22 # ls -l /var/lib/mailman/locks
total 8
-rw-rw-r-- 2 mailman mailman 50 Jul  5  2018 master-qrunner
-rw-rw-r-- 2 mailman mailman 50 Jul  5  2018 master-qrunner.minbar.15895



Does anyone have any idea what's going on here?


-- 
  Phil Stracchino
  Babylon Communications
  phils at caerllewys.net
  phil at co.ordinate.org
  Landline: +1.603.293.8485
  Mobile:   +1.603.998.6958