[Mailman-Users] Mail 2.1.12: We're sorry, we hit a bug!

[Mark Sapiro]

On 02/18/2014 06:56 PM, Srinivas B. wrote:
> 
> Environment: Mailman 2.1.12 on Amazon Linux 2012 with Python 2.6.9 and
> Virtualmin 4.0.5 GPL
> 
> All our lists are under Emergency moderation.
> When a moderator goes to process held-messages and select "Preserve
> messages for the site administrator", then we see the following error:
...
> And then we see the following in /var/log/mailman/error file:
> 
> Feb 18 21:42:26 2014 admin(10273):
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
> admin(10273): [----- Mailman Version: 2.1.12 -----]
> admin(10273): [----- Traceback ------]
> admin(10273): Traceback (most recent call last):
> admin(10273):   File "/usr/lib/mailman/scripts/driver", line 112, in
> run_main
> admin(10273):     main()
> admin(10273):   File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py", line 165,
> in main
> admin(10273):     process_form(mlist, doc, cgidata)
> admin(10273):   File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/admindb.py", line 716,
> in process_form
> admin(10273):     forward, forwardaddr)
> admin(10273):   File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/ListAdmin.py", line 167, in
> HandleRequest
> admin(10273):     forward, addr)
> admin(10273):   File "/usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/ListAdmin.py", line 244, in
> __handlepost
> admin(10273):     msg = cPickle.load(fp)
> admin(10273): ValueError: could not convert string to float
> 
> 
> Not selecting the checkbox titled: Preserve messages for
> site-administrator, is processing the emails just fine and there are no
> issues.
> 
> Any insights on how to fix this error?


It looks like this might be an actual bug. There is an incompatibility
between Mailman 2.1.12 and Python 2.6.x in this area, but not right
there. At lines 205 and 254 in your version of ListAdmin.py, g(msg, 1)
needs to be changed to g.flatten(msg, 1). However, that doesn't cause
what you're seeing.

Do you have

HOLD_MESSAGES_AS_PICKLES = No

in mm_cfg.py. If so, I think there is a bug with this. Unfortunately,
I'm traveling this week and it will take be a while to investigate/fix this.

In the mean time, if that is the issue, you can remove that from
mm_cfg.py if you don't need it for other reasons.


> PS: Trying to search for the text "We're sorry, we hit a bug!" on
> http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/, results in a
> ModPython/Lucene exception... Looks like "single-quote" is throwing off the
> search interface...


That is a mail-archive.com issue. You could search Google for

inurl:mailman-users site:mail.python.org "We're sorry, we hit a bug!"

but that returns over 5000 hits, most if not all of which are not
relevant. It's much better to search with something like

inurl:mailman-users site:mail.python.org "ValueError: could not convert
string to float"

which returns only 8 hits, including a couple from 2003 and 2004 which
indicate this is an old bug.

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