[Mailman-Users] RECALL is creating infinite loop?

[Mark Sapiro]

Tim Tyler wrote:
>
> We are running Mailman version 2.1.10 on a Centos 5.2 system.  Recently a
>user sent a RECALL command to one of our lists to retract a message.  This
>seems to have created an infinite loop relating to bounces.
>
> 
>
>  For some reason something got corrupted, probably related to the Message
>ID as shown from one of the log entries below:  
>
> 
>
>Feb 23 11:00:00 2009 (12635) forwarding unrecognized, message-id:
><!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACALoAAAAAAAAAOKG7EAXlEBqhuwgAKypWwgAAbXNwc3QuZGxsAAAAAABO
>SVRB+b+4AQCqADfZbgAAAABDADoAXABEAG8AYwB1AG0AZQBuAHQAcwAgAGEAbgBkACAAUwBlAHQA
>dABpAG4AZwBzAFwAZABvAG0AawBlAGsAXABEAGUAcwBrAHQAbwBwAFwAMgAwADAANgAtADAANwBc
>AE0AYQBpAGwAXABPAHUAdABsAG8AbwBrAC4AcABzAHQAAAAYAAAAAAAAADxQoBwV+EpCpSL/ibME
>zfjCgAAAGAAAAAAAAAA8UKAcFfhKQqUi/4mzBM34RFBLAAAAAAAQAAAAmKK2hHaUmk2V0Gy86is0
>y0IAAABbQU5OT1VOQ0VdIEJ1Y2NhbmVlciBXb21lbidzIFNvY2NlciBhbmQgU29mdGJhbGwgIktp
>ZHMgTmlnaHQgT3V0IgA=@beloit.edu>
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
>
>I get one of these bounce messages about every 10 minutes or so.    This is
>not a pending message.  So what might be going wrong and how do I clean up
>the list so that the request stops bouncing?  Is there some file I can empty
>out?


Each one of these is a new message sent to the LISTNAM-bounces address
and forwarded to the list owner as an unrecognized bounce. I'm only
guessing, and this doesn't make much sense, but RECALL is an nntp
command so somehow some news server is repeatedly sending this command
to the list until it gets a response. Maybe it will eventually give up?

If this is really a loop involving Mailman, you could turn off
bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner, and that should stop it, but I
doubt this is the issue.

Check your MTA log and see where these messages are coming from.

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