[Mailman-Users] Corrupted archives ...

[Mark Sapiro]

Glenn Sieb wrote:
>
>I'm running mailman-2.1.12, with the htdig patches on FreeBSD 7.0
>
>I have a list with archives that are about 10 years old. The archive
>mbox size is 175M.
>
>I was alerted by a subscriber that the August 2009 archives list 128 "No
>subject" emails that "look funny."
>
>So I looked.. sure enough they're there. And they look something like
>this when I click on a single email listed in the archives:
>
>No subject
>
>Mon Aug 10 18:53:40 EDT 2009
>
>    * Previous message: [Redacted] Blah...
>    * Next message: No subject
>    * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
>
>Tue, 14 Dec 1999 23:27:19 PST
>X-Originating-IP: [63.11.227.157]
>From: "redacted" <redacted_at...>
>To: redacted
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 23:27:19 PST
>Mailing-List: contact redacted
>X-Mailing-List: redacted
>Precedence: bulk
>List-Help: <http://www.example.com/redacted/info.html>,
>  <mailto:redacted at example.com>
>List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:redacted-unsubscribe at example.com>
>List-Archive: <http://www.example.com/redacted/>
>Reply-To: redacted
>Subject: [Redacted] Redacted
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>Status: RO
>Content-Length: 7352
>Lines: 174
>
>(body of email starts here)
>
>>From Redacted <redacted at u...> Wed Dec 15 00:40:19 1999
>Delivered-To: redacted
>Received: (listserv 1.291); by f7; 15 Dec 1999 08:43:59 -0000
>Delivered-To: redacted
>Date: 15 Dec 99 03:44:15 EST
>From: Redacted <redacted at u...>
>To: redacted
>X-Mailing-List: redacted
>Precedence: bulk
>List-Help: <http://www.example.com/redacted/info.html>,
>  <mailto:redacted at example.com>
>List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:redacted-unsubscribe at example.com>
>List-Archive: <http://www.example.com/redacted/>
>Reply-To: redacted
>Subject: [Redacted] RedactedMIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>(body of email starts here...)
>
>(another email starts here, as above...)
>
>(end of example)
>
>Everything looks fine if I use mutt -f listname.mbox in the private
>archives directory for the list.
>
>Has anyone had problems like this? My GoogleFu is failing me, or at
>least isn't showing me anything like this.


Do you see these Dec. 1999 messages when you look with Mutt?

There is a problem with a Debian patch, but the symptom is somewhat
different, and you're on FreeBSD anyway, so I don't think this is it.

It looks like someone or some script ran bin/arch on Mon Aug 10
18:53:40 EDT 2009 (and possibly at other times) with some spurious
input, but I'm not sure what that input would be. The puzzling part is
the "Previous/Next/Sorted" header which only appears in the periodic
index files.

As Terry suggests, you could run bin/cleanarch as an additional
test/correction on the listname.mbox. There may be unescaped "From "
in message bodies that didn't confuse Mutt or that you didn't notice
with Mutt, and then run bin/arch --wipe to rebuild the archive. But
also be aware as Terry says that this may renumber messages and break
saved links to archived messages.

An alternative alternative is to just remove 2009-August/,
2009-August.txt and 2009-August.txt.gz (if any) from
archives/private/listname/ and then run bin/arch (without --wipe) with
input just consisting of the Aug, 1999 portion of listname.mbox.

But the real questions are how did this happen; do the 128 "messages"
all have Mon Aug 10 18:53:40 EDT 2009 timestamps or do they have
different timestamps, and what may have been done at that/those times?

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