[Mailman-Users] Mailman on Mac OS X Server 10.3: Outgoingmessagesstuck in qrunner/in folder

[Pierre Igot]

On 06-12-14, at 03:51, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> WRT to mailmanctl, apparently the Mailman qrunners were running at  
> some
> time and then stopped. I don't know how they were started in the first
> place or why they stopped. Perhaps a reboot of the server would have
> started them again, perhaps not, but IMO, the fact that all this is
> not documented for you is Apple's failure, not ours.
>
> I think I can understand your frustration, and I am not trying to be
> unsympathetic. If you had installed our package, and found our
> installation manual lacking, we would do our best to supplement it or
> improve it. However, we really can't create documentation for packages
> whose details we have even less information about than you do.
> </rant>

Right, I understand your point of view perfectly.

On the other hand, the reality is that I, as a user, have to deal  
with "Apple's failure," as you call it, and that the best avenue for  
dealing with it, as far as I could tell, was to ask for help on this  
list. The fact that you were able to help me so quickly and with a  
single instruction proves my point :).

I *could* have submitted a bug report to Apple and waited for weeks  
or months until I got a reply.

I *could* have spent hours searching through Apple's "Discussions"  
forum on Mac OS X Server's Mail service, trying to find posts with  
the exact same issue, knowing full well that I barely had enough  
expertise to figure out the best keywords to use to describe the  
problem. ("messages," "stuck," "in folder" are not exactly very  
effective keywords, in that they are very generic)

I *could* have posted a request for help on the forum and waited for  
days to see if, by chance, anyone might be able to figure out what  
was going on on my machine.

I *could* have spent hours reading the Mailman documentation myself  
until I had figured out the fundamentals of Mailman myself.

But the reality was that, in all likelihood, this was a pretty basic  
problem that had to do with Mailman itself, that it probably had  
nothing to do with Apple's customizations, and that the most  
efficient way to get help was probably to submit a request to this list.

And, as I said, the quick (if reluctant) response you gave me proved  
my point.

The question is whether it really costs Mailman experts such as  
yourself so much effort to just provide such basic help from time to  
time to "newbies" like me using a possibly somewhat non-standard  
version of Mailman. (Based on what I have read, I don't think there  
is much difference between the Mailman 2.1.2 installed with Mac OS X  
Server 10.3 and your packages. It's just that everything is already  
included and installed, and can be turned on through the Server Admin  
GUI. And some file/folder locations are somewhat different from the  
standard Unix locations. But all the rest is probably the exact same.)

For what it's worth, if you ever need any basic help with some Mac- 
specific Mac OS X stuff, which is my expertise, I will be more than  
glad to help, even if you are not using the exact version of Mac OS X  
that I am currently working with :).

Thanks again.

Pierre


--
Pierre Igot, administrateur des systèmes / Systems Administrator
www.cprp.ca
902-837-7391