[Mailman-Users] Best way to clean old messages

[Mark Sapiro]

alexander at nautae.eti.br wrote:

>>> What would be the best way to completely clean/remove old messages?
>> I don't understand your question.
>
>Ok, trying again:
>
>A person have sent a message, for example, "message x" to the mailing  
>list "list x".
>
>And I don`t know why (it could be a system error or I don`t know what)  
>the same message was sent again 2 months after to the same list.
>
>Explaining better: some time ago I`ve post a message here saying that  
>after forcing qrunner to run ignoring the lock file (using the  `-s`  
>flag if I remember well) Mailman resent all the messages that was  
>already sent.
>
>It was an awful sittuation for me because people received very old  
>messages about current subjects.


I have searched the archives on the mailman-*@python.org lists and
while I find several posts from you, I do not see the one you are
referring to, so I am unable to comment on this except to say that
simply starting another set of qrunners when they are already running
would not cause old messages to be resent. If these old messages were
messages that hadn't been previously delivered, then starting a
qrunner that wasn't running or possibly running bin/unshunt after
fixing the problem that caused the shunting could cause old messages
to be delivered, but only if they hadn't been delivered in the first
place.


>I`ve learned the lesson and never did that again.
>
>But some weeks ago one message (an old message) was resent. It was  
>only one and I`m not sure what the reason.
>
>In fact now I don`t want to know the reason, since the server isn`t  
>administrated by me or anybody else in my company, I only want a  
>script to completely avoid that kind of sittuation.


Without seeing the full headers from both copies of the message, which
might be available in the archives/private/LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox
file for the list, I again can't say how this happened.

I can say, that once Mailman has successfully handled a post, the only
trace of it left in Mailman is in the archives of the list and
possibly in the messages collected for the next digest, and Mailman
doesn't resend posts from the archives, and doesn't save the digest
messages once the digest is sent.

Possibly in this case, the original poster or the poster's MUA or MTA
just sent another copy of the post to the list. Possibly there was
some other failure somewhere that ultimately caused the message to be
resent, but without seeing both messages including all Received:
headers and possibly other headers, I can't say what the cause was,
and without determining the cause, all I can tell you is there is no
script that can avoid this situation in Mailman because I don't think
Mailman is responsible, and even if I am wrong, any such script would
probably need to be run on the Mailman server over which you say you
have no control.

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