[Mailman-Users] mailman cron gets uppity

[Jim Fannin]

I am fairly new to Mailman and the mailman list.  I have found the
discussion both useful and interesting at times.  However, I must confess I
need help with some of the abbreviations used here.  I think I know what
some of them are, but others are not familiar.

Please explain:  What is CVS, MTA?

Also, I inherited the administration of our Mailman lists, and thus am not
intimately familiar with the installation and inner workings.  As a result,
I am not sure what version we are running nor exactly how to find out.  We
are running 11 lists ranging in size from about 12 to 350 users.  Everything
seems to be running fine.  Some guidance on how to find out what version we
are running would also be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jim Fannin
fanninj at aottsd.uscourts.gov

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Mick" <Dan.Mick at west.sun.com>
To: "James Aylett" <dj-mailman at insigma.com>; <mailman-users at python.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] mailman cron gets uppity


> 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
> >
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