[Computerbank] Lists are back up again...

Kylie Davies kylied at projectx.com.au
Tue Aug 6 12:41:06 UTC 2002


Hi all,

Finally our lists are all back up and running after some serious 
technical issues with the list server machine. See the text below if you 
are interested. :)

Cheers,

Kylie

-- 
Kylie Davies
Victorian Branch Co-ordinator
Computerbank Australia Inc
Victorian State Branch
Tel: (03) 9600 9161
Email: kylied at projectx.com.au

> I've just spent some time correcting an error with lists.linux.org.au
> and thought you may be interested in the background -- if you aren't
> feel free to delete this email.
> 
> On Jul 26th, ftoomsh -- which hosts lists.linux.org.au -- ran out of
> disk space. This is a bad thing for Mailman as when it crashes due to
> lack of disk space it leaves many lock files around.
> 
> I was alerted on the 27th that there was a problem - I removed the lock
> files and thought all was well. This seemed to resolve some of the list
> problems that were being experienced.
> 
> While there lock file preventing outgoing email from being sent Mailman
> was happily accepting email for delivery. On the 1st I was again alerted
> to a problem with the lists.
> 
> Once again I removed lock files and things seemed to be processing. On
> the 3rd I was alerted once more -- but it being a weekend I didn't get
> the email until early this morning.
> 
> It appears that one particular message was triggering a bug in Mailman
> which was causing it to backtrace (I've sent it to Barry Warsaw --
> Mailman developer -- to see if he can shed some light on why). 
> 
> In the interim over 2500 messages had queued up. Mailman spawns a
> process one a minute to process queued messages but ftoomsh is not fast
> enough to process all of them at once. Another queue runner (qrunner)
> would be spawned and would cause deadlock.
> 
> I've moved all messages to another queue and processed them in batches
> of 50 for the last few hours. I've throttled Mailman's queue processing
> done to every 5 minutes and will be looking to move lists.linux.org.au
> to a speedier machine in the future (about 6 weeks).
> 
> My apologies to you all, and to all your list subscribers, for the
> recent problems.
> 
> Regards,
> Anand
> 



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