[Mailman-Users] UnicodeDecodeError with Mailman 2.1 and Python 2.6

[David Magda]

> On Sep 1, 2015, at 21:14, Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net> wrote:
> 
> On 09/01/2015 12:09 PM, David Magda wrote:
>> 
>> Could the new version of Python been chocking on a binary file whose
>> format has changed from the old version? Is it prudent to do an "arch
>> --wipe" when changing versions of Python?
> 
> 
> The exception is thrown in Python's sort() method. There are no
> documented changes in this method's calling sequence between Python 2.5
> and 2.6, but it's quite possible there were changes in the details of
> the key comparison code that are responsible.
> 
> No it is not prudent to do an "arch --wipe" when changing versions of
> Python?. It is not a good idea to ever do "arch --wipe" unless it's
> really necessary. See the section "NOTE ON MBOX ANOMALIES:" at
> <http://wiki.list.org/x/4030681>.

The message in question seems to be from October 2005, and it has the "Subject: Você […]” header. Running under Debian 5 (Python 2.5), archive processing wasn’t an issue: messages were coming into the mbox and the HTML page was being generated until August 25. I then did the upgrade on that day.

The mbox then no longer has messages until September 1, the day when I did “arch —wipe”, even though the mail.log shows messages coming in (and going out AFAICT).

So would there be anything besides a “—wipe” that could otherwise be done to prevent this archive breakage? Attempt a “cleanarch" first? Seems strange that a message from 2005 could stop archive processing for current years/months.