[Mailman-Users] digest-mode not functioning properly

[Lluis Montoliu]

Dear Mark, dear listers,

I responded much too quickly that the issues with digest-mode were  
fixed. In reality they are not fixed, they reproduced and it is being  
a pain. In collaboration with our host, we have cleared, several  
times, the buffer, discarding repeteadly volumes (to get rid of  
potentially offending messages), reinitiate the mailman several times  
(in case it would be frozen somehow) and, still, is not sending any  
volume daily or when it reaches 250 kb, as it should, according to  
current settings. We have set new lists in the server and they seem to  
work normally, distributing volumes daily, as they should. The  
problems seems to be associated with these two lists, one with 600  
other with 1700 registered members. Most of the 600 email addresses  
are also represented in the 1700 ones.

The only way we found it can work is by triggering, daily, manually,  
from administrative panel, the distribution of a new volume digest, if  
it is not empty. This works, nicely, and the digests are distributed  
normally and do not appear to have any problem. Of course, as you can  
imagine, this is suboptimal and it is not an acceptable solution.

Even though we use a dedicated web server this is administered by host  
and, thus, we have no root privileges and our administrator, at the  
hosting, is not able to provide any additional help beyond clearing  
volumes or reinitiating mailman nor it would allow us to access the  
mailman folder to explore for any additional problems. The found an  
email address they thought was causing some problems, although it is a  
standard email address used normally by his owner outside mailman  
context. Nonetheless we removed this address, but problems continued.  
Could it be that we have still, somewhere, an email address, someone  
that is registered in both lists for digest mode, triggering these  
troubles and limiting the distribution of volumes?

At hosting level they keep indicating that mailman is outdated, no  
longer maintained and that we should consider moving to other  
programs, like phplists, which I checked and doesn't do, at all, the  
same function as mailman. Phplist is for newsletter distributions not  
for email-based discussions, as mailman does nicely.

I'm happy with mailman, and I'd like to keep using it but when I come  
across these troubles, like now, where it seems nothing can be done to  
fix this no-digest-volume-dispatching it is really disappointing.

What else could I do? Thanks again for ideas or suggestions.

best regards

Lluis



Quoting Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>:

> Lluis Montoliu wrote:
>
>> the two large list are not sending any digest-mode, with the exact
>> same settings, even if I decrease the value to 256 or if I trigger
>> sending a new digest dispatch right now, which does not happen. I'm
>> totally amazed. I've seen the archives of mailman and, unfortunately,
>> the problems with digest-mode appear to be rather common, many reports
>> found, but not really solutions, at least, I could not find the one
>> that will fix my bug.
>
>
> There is almost certainly a message or messages in the
> lists/LISTNAME/digest.mbox files for these lists that is causing an
> exception to be thrown in the scrubber in it's attempt to process the
> digest.
>
> Ask the hosting provider to look for relevant error messages and
> tracebacks in Mailman's error log.
>
> You may have to have the hosting provider just move the
> lists/LISTNAME/digest.mbox files aside and abandon the current
> accumulated digests if the hosting provider can't do anything more
> selective to find and fix the offending messages.
>
> --
> Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
> San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan
>
>