[Mailman-Users] duplicate messages from shunt queue

[Mark Sapiro]

Charles Sprickman wrote:
>
>Then I ran bin/unshunt.
>
>Then people started complaining that they were getting a few hundred old 
>messages. :)


There are several possibilities here.

1) users are complaining that they received messages posted long ago in
threads long since dead, not necessarily that they previously received
the same message (message-id).

2) when the original didn't reach the list, the OP 'fixed' the problem
and reposted, thus the current message only appears to be a dupe.

3) if a message is shunted because SMTPDirect.py can't write the 'post'
log, it has already been sent, but OutgoingRunner.py doesn't know this
when it catches the exception and shunts the message. So those
messages which were shunted because of ownership/permission issues on
the 'post' log probably were duplicated when you ran unshunt



>What am I missing here?  From what I've been able to dig up on the list 
>archives the qfiles/shunt directory should only contain messages that never 
>made it out to any lists due to some error in config, perms or some bug in 
>mailman itself.


This is not always true, as in case 3) above. Thus, you have to use
judgement in unshunting.


>But it's looking like these all did somehow make it through 
>mailman previously and were sent a second time.  A few other tidbits:
>
>-looking at some samples, msgids are the same, so it wasn't a user getting a 
>rejection and then posting again


OK, so that rules out 2).


>-the dupes DO NOT show up in the web archive


Archiving is a separate process. Depending on where in processing the
error occurred, lots of possibilities ensue.

If the error occurs early in IncomingRunner, the post will be neither
archived nor delivered until the problem is fixed and the message is
unshunted.

In the case where the error occurs in delivery under OutgoingRunner,
the message will have been archived, and when unshunted will be
processed only by OutgoingRunner and not by ArchRunner, so no
duplicate archive entry results. But, in this case, it is possible
that some or all receipients received the original delivery and will
receive duplicates when the message is unshunted.

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