[Computerbank] Lists are back up again...

[Kylie Davies]

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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