[Mailman-Users] Mailman repetitively trying to drop addresses

[Ralph Prichard]

We imported about 1000 addresses from an old mailing list into a new
Mailman list, and we were hoping Mailman's bounce processing would start
removing any addresses that are clearly no longer valid.  This is old
info; if we've got a bad address, we just want it dropped without any
further resuscitation efforts.  Here are our bounce processing settings:

bounce_processing = Yes
bounce_score_threshold = 3.0
bounce_info_stale_after = 21
bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings = 0
bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings_interval = 7
bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner = Yes
bounce_notify_owner_on_disable = Yes
bounce_notify_owner_on_removal = Yes

These settings have been adjusted a few times, but not by any radical
amount.  I'm sure I also inadvertantly dropped the
"bounce_score_threshold" from 3.5 to 3.0 while the latest message was
still being distributed.  However, the previous message exhibited the
same problematic behavior I'm seeing today, and the values were all left
alone during that period.


After messages went out that resulted in bounce scores over the
threshold, there were a couple of issues...


1) Mailman tried to send a notification to the bad addresses indicating
that they've been dropped from the mailing list.  It does so despite the
fact that "send_goodbye_msg" is set to "no".  So my first question is
almost identical to this one:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2006-August/052688.html

Does anyone know how to get the bounce processing system to respect the
"send_goodbye_msg" value, while still sending the moderators/list owners
notification that an address has been dropped?


2) Mailman tried to drop 2 addresses (out of an apparent list of 55 bad
addresses) over and over again, until after 10 attempts, when the
BounceRunner stopped.  (Nothing at all seemed to happen to the other 53
addresses.)  The first notification that the list owners received
regarding the drop attempts referenced the actual message that a list
member sent.  But the next 10 notifications referred to the fact that
the "You have been unsubscribed from the 'somelist' mailing list"
messages were _also_ bouncing.  (Which is another reason I'd like to
suppress those messages from ever being sent in the first place.)

But back to the failure to drop the address...

There are the 11 restarts shown in the qrunner log file:

Excerpt from /var/log/mailman/qrunner:
======================================
Jun 22 14:58:16 2009 (2047) Master qrunner detected subprocess exit
(pid: 2073, sig: None, sts: 1, class: BounceRunner, slice: 1/1)
[restarting]
Jun 22 14:58:16 2009 (4880) BounceRunner qrunner started.
Jun 22 15:13:16 2009 (2047) Master qrunner detected subprocess exit
(pid: 4880, sig: None, sts: 1, class: BounceRunner, slice: 1/1)
[restarting]
Jun 22 15:13:16 2009 (5102) BounceRunner qrunner started.

...7 more occurrences removed (each BounceRunner startup has a different
PID, if that's what the number in the bracket represents)...

Jun 22 17:13:18 2009 (2047) Master qrunner detected subprocess exit
(pid: 5522, sig: None, sts: 1, class: BounceRunner, slice: 1/1)
[restarting]
Jun 22 17:13:18 2009 (5574) BounceRunner qrunner started.
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 (2047) Master qrunner detected subprocess exit
(pid: 5574, sig: None, sts: 1, class: BounceRunner, slice: 1/1)
[restarting]
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 (2047) Qrunner BounceRunner reached maximum restart
limit of 10, not restarting.


There appears to be more interesting information in other files in
/var/log/mailman.  I'll include one excerpt from the "errors" file
below.  If anyone thinks the other information would be handy, please
let me know and I'll try to trim it down a bit before sending a copy
along.


Excerpt from /var/log/mailman/error:
====================================
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574): Traceback (most recent call last):
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner", line 278, in <module>
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      main()
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner", line 238, in main
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      qrunner.run()
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 88, in run
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      self._cleanup()
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/BounceRunner.py", line 263, in _cleanup
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      BounceMixin._cleanup(self)
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/BounceRunner.py", line 137, in _cleanup
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      self._register_bounces()
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Queue/BounceRunner.py", line 125, in
_register_bounces
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      mlist.registerBounce(addr, msg,
day=day)
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Bouncer.py", line 167, in registerBounce
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      self.setBounceInfo(member,
info)
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/OldStyleMemberships.py", line 362, in
setBounceInfo
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      self.__assertIsMember(member)
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):   File
"/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/OldStyleMemberships.py", line 114, in
__assertIsMember
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574):      raise Errors.NotAMemberError,
member
Jun 22 17:28:18 2009 qrunner(5574): Mailman.Errors . NotAMemberError :
userA at hotmail.example.com


Checking via the web interface for the list, "userA at hotmail.example.com"
definitely is still a list member.  Why can't Mailman drop the address?
Every 15 minutes -- according to the bounce log and the messages to the
list owners and moderators -- it thinks it's trying.

Has anyone seen this before?

Ralph