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

[Phil Stracchino]

On 07/04/18 15:10, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> On 7/4/18 11:52 AM, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>> 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.


Yup, actually I'm pretty sure I know how the stale lock file happened
... I had to interrupt boot a couple of times because this is a Dell
R610 server, and it has an annoying habit of disbelieving in my KVM
switch during boot.  It can be a bit of a headache getting it to
acknowledge that it actually has a keyboard connected in time to select
the kernel I want i  grub.

>> 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.


AH!  I did not know that.  Mystery resolved.  Thank you.  :)



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