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

[Mark Sapiro]

On 7/4/18 11:52 AM, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> 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:


There was probably a stale lock due to Mailman not being cleanly
terminated upon reboot. The Operation not permitted is an attempt to
determine the status of the PID that created the lock by sending it a
signal 0. The error may be a Gentoo thing or 'mailmanctl start' may need
to run as root if it wasn't.


> 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


This is all normal and expected. The time stamp on locks is set to that
future time when the lock expires.

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