[Mailman-Users] mailman cron gets uppity

[Dan Mick]

There was a very-recent change to the CVS to destroy file handles when
the SMTP mailer gets into problems (an error condiction was also consuming
file handles).  So there are probably two problems: ungraceful MTA exits,
and this Mailman error-processing bug.

It's been discussed very recently on either -users or -developers.

Upgrading to CVS may be beneficial.

James Aylett wrote:
> 
> I'm having problems with Mailman 1.1, on Debian. Looking at the upgrade
> notes for 2.0b I see that the cron jobs have changed significantly,
> especially stuff to do with running the queue, so this problem /may/ have
> been fixed. Given that it usually only shows up at month ends, it's
> difficult to provoke, and I'd rather /know/ what's going on than upgrade and
> hope :)
> 
> Basically, the monthly stuff for subscription reminders causes mailman to
> bomb out with a 'too many open files' error. It isn't exceeding the OS limit
> (at least, nothing else is having trouble, and the machine is floating at
> around 1300 open file handles at the moment), so I can only assume it's
> exceeding the ulimit. Which should be 1024, unless I'm either very confused
> or something's changing it.
> 
> Worse, this leaves lots of run_queue processes lying around (this month, it
> was about 70).
> 
> I've tried fiddling with some of the options set out in Defaults.py, that I
> think ought to restrict the number of concurrent mailman processes, but it
> isn't documented very clearly so I'm probably wrong (MAX_SPAWNS,
> DEFAULT_NUM_SPAWNS).
> 
> Anyone have any ideas on this?
> 
> James
> 
> --
> /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
>   james aylett                                   chief technical architect
>   http://www.tangozebra.com/                                    tangozebra
> 
> _____________________________________________________________________
> This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet delivered
> through the MessageLabs Virus Control Centre. For further information visit
> http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Mailman-Users maillist  -  Mailman-Users at python.org
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users