[Mailman-Users] Mailman stopped working entirely -- "NameError: y"

[Chris Campbell]

I installed Mailman 2.0 in November of last year and it has been working
reliably since then -- until this morning.  The error log complains of
"insecure string pickle", "NameError: y" and corrupt archives.  I can't
send mail to any of our lists or view any of the archives.  Mailman has
been rendered completely useless!

When I try to send mail to a list on our site, it bounces with this:

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
"|/home/mailman/mail/wrapper post esp-dev"
    (expanded from: <esp-dev at mercdev.mercurial.st>)

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "/home/mailman/scripts/post", line 33, in ?
    from Mailman import MailList
  File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 47, in ?
    from Mailman.SecurityManager import SecurityManager
  File "/home/mailman/Mailman/SecurityManager.py", line 1, in ?
    # Copyright (C) 1998,1999,2000 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
NameError: y
554 "|/home/mailman/mail/wrapper post esp-dev"... unknown mailer error 1
...


And when I try to view the archives, admin pages, etc., I get this:

-----
Bug in Mailman version 2.0

We're sorry, we hit a bug!

Please inform the webmaster for this site of this problem. Printing of
traceback and other system information has been explicitly inhibited,
but the webmaster can find this information in the Mailman error logs.
-----


I've put a copy of the error log online here:

  http://mercdev.mercurial.st/mailman-error.txt

I'm hoping I can rectify this soon, because our office kind of depends
on these lists to be working.

I've tried doing web searches for "insecure string pickle" and
"NameError: y", but it doesn't come up with anything very helpful.

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated.  I can provide further
information if that's required...

Thanks,
--Chris