[Mailman-Users] Deleting pending.pck.tmp files

[Mark Sapiro]

On 01/17/2018 03:19 AM, João Sá Marta wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> 
> I’ve noticed that I have in my mailman installation (version 2.1.9.) a lot of pending.pck.tmp.XXXXXXX files in several mailing lists directories /home/mailman/lists/LISTNAME:
> 
> -rw-rw----   1 apache  mailman  6353027 Jan 17 11:02 pending.pck

This is the real Pending database. It's size is way too big. It contains
the tokens for things like Subscruptions, Unsubscriptions, Held
messages, etc waiting some kind of confirmation. Requests older than
PENDING_REQUEST_LIFE (default 3 days) are expunged so it's hard to
imagine why it is that big.


> -rw-rw----   1 apache  mailman   711556 Oct 26 17:23 pending.pck.tmp.1000.1509035033
> -rw-rw----   1 apache  mailman 14136390 Oct 26 17:24 pending.pck.tmp.1017.1509035052
> -rw-rw----   1 apache  mailman  1260000 Jan  6  2017 pending.pck.tmp.10183.1483700222
> -rw-rw-—   1 apache  mailman 16083210 Aug 24 17:26 pending.pck.tmp.10631.1503592014


These are orphaned files and can be removed. When the Pending module
saves the file, it saves it to pending.pck.tmp.ppp.tttt (ppp is the PID
of the process and tttt is a timestamp) and after successful saving
renames the pending.pck.tmp.ppp.tttt as pending.pck, so there should
never be any of these files left around.

You need to look at Mailman's 'error' log for entries with time stamps
like those files for clues as to what's going wrong.

Also, see the script at <https://www.msapiro.net/scripts/list_pending>
(mirrored at <https://fog.ccsf.edu/~msapiro/scripts/list_pending>) for a
slightly more human friendly listing of the pending db.

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