Some members get duplicate 'memberships reminder'

[Ron Fial]

Each month when the membership reminders go out, some members get two (duplicate) membership reminders. They are identical but for the email id field, and seem to originate maybe 4 seconds apart. I am including the two headers below, with the destination address changed to protect privacy.

Its been happening for years, any ideas about how I can fix this? (Mailman runs on SuSe Linux server)
Member below is regular (no digest), membership has 'no-dupes' and 'plain' checkmarked.
Link at bottom is reminder8.eml for 1st and reminder9.eml for 2nd message, could this mean he has
two membership records?

Thanks, and my regards for a neat mailing list program!

**************** MEMBERSHIP REMINDER #1 ***********************

X-Account-Key: account1
X-Mozilla-Keys:
Return-path: <email address hidden>
Envelope-to: <email address hidden>
Delivery-date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:01:05 -0800
Received: from vpn.fial.com ([50.196.1.210]:8803 helo=klickitat.78online.com)
 by andromeda.lunarpages.com with esmtp (Exim 4.77)
 (envelope-from <email address hidden>)
 id 1Temgq-0008Dx-33
 for <email address hidden>; Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:01:05 -0800
Received: from klickitat.78online.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
 by klickitat.78online.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0973470EE0
 for <email address hidden>; Sat, 1 Dec 2012 05:01:10 -0800 (PST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: klickitat.78online.com mailing list memberships reminder
From: <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
X-No-Archive: yes
Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:00:11 -0800
Precedence: bulk
X-BeenThere: <email address hidden>
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9
List-Id: <mailman.klickitat.78online.com>
X-List-Administrivia: yes
Sender: <email address hidden>
Errors-To: <email address hidden>
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9
X-Spam-Score: -18
X-Spam-Bar: -
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Antivirus: AVG for E-mail 2012.0.2221 [2634/5429]
X-AVG-ID: ID35139CC7-67C36991

 klickitat_78online_com mailing list memberships reminder8.eml

**************** MEMBERSHIP REMINDER #1 - duplicate- *********************

 klickitat_78online_com mailing list memberships reminder8.eml
X-Account-Key: account1
X-Mozilla-Keys:
Return-path: <email address hidden>
Envelope-to: <email address hidden>
Delivery-date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:01:06 -0800
Received: from vpn.fial.com ([50.196.1.210]:8840 helo=klickitat.78online.com)
 by andromeda.lunarpages.com with esmtp (Exim 4.77)
 (envelope-from <email address hidden>)
 id 1Temgq-0008EH-PM
 for <email address hidden>; Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:01:06 -0800
Received: from klickitat.78online.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
 by klickitat.78online.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8514970EF4
 for <email address hidden>; Sat, 1 Dec 2012 05:01:12 -0800 (PST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: klickitat.78online.com mailing list memberships reminder
From: <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
X-No-Archive: yes
Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:00:11 -0800
Precedence: bulk
X-BeenThere: <email address hidden>
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9
List-Id: <mailman.klickitat.78online.com>
X-List-Administrivia: yes
Sender: <email address hidden>
Errors-To: <email address hidden>
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9
X-Spam-Score: -18
X-Spam-Bar: -
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Antivirus: AVG for E-mail 2012.0.2221 [2634/5429]
X-AVG-ID: ID69FBF12A-14E490AD

 klickitat_78online_com mailing list memberships reminder9.eml

[Mark Sapiro (msapiro)]

First of all, I am guessing at what the "klickitat_78online_com mailing list memberships reminderx.eml" things mean. They are not put anywhere by standard GNU Mailman. When one saves a message to a file from Thunderbird, it is given a file name of the message subject with a .eml extension. the '8' and '9' may have been added by the user to distinguish the files.

More importantly, the actual body of the reminder will contain lines like

Passwords for <email address hidden>:

List Password // URL
---- --------
<email address hidden> xxxxxx
http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/options/listname/user%40example.com

where <email address hidden> is the actual subscribed address. Are these addresses identical in the two reminder email bodies? If not, the user has two subscribed addresses, thus two reminders.

If the addresses are identical, but the reminders are for different lists in different domains, this is normal. If they are for different lists in the identical domain, this may be some SuSeism.

[Ron Fial (ron-2)]

Mark, thanks for the comment, of course you are correct. Please ignore the lines ending in reminder9.eml. When the two reminders were forwarded to me, the sender put the message body in an attachment, the .eml llinks at the bottom were just links to the attachments. I have shown the two message bodies below. The two passwords are identical, the mail list names are identical. I only run a single Mailman non-profit list for vintage record collectors: <email address hidden>.
This user gets regular messages, no digest. All the members get duplicate reminders, even I (list administrator) get duplicate reminders. So it is a puzzle!

***---FIRST Reminder message body exerpt ---***

You can visit the URLs to change your membership status or
configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery
or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

In addition to the URL interfaces, you can also use email to make such
changes. For more info, send a message to the '-request' address of
the list (for example, <email address hidden>)
containing just the word 'help' in the message body, and an email
message will be sent to you with instructions.

If you have questions, problems, comments, etc, send them to
<email address hidden>. Thanks!

Passwords for <email address hidden>:

List Password // URL
---- --------
<email address hidden> 3G6V/t8r
http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/options/78-l/kdonald%40abc-restoration.com

***---SECOND Reminder message ---***

You can visit the URLs to change your membership status or
configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery
or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

In addition to the URL interfaces, you can also use email to make such
changes. For more info, send a message to the '-request' address of
the list (for example, <email address hidden>)
containing just the word 'help' in the message body, and an email
message will be sent to you with instructions.

If you have questions, problems, comments, etc, send them to
<email address hidden>. Thanks!

Passwords for <email address hidden>:

List Password // URL
---- --------
<email address hidden> 3G6V/t8r
http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/options/78-l/kdonald%40abc-restoration.com

[Mark Sapiro (msapiro)]

I think the answer must be that there are two separate cron/mailpasswds jobs being run. Perhaps there are two Mailman crontabs, one user crontab in /var/spool/cron/mailman and a system crontab in /etc/cron.d/mailman or wherever these files might be found in SuSe.

[Ron Fial (ron-2)]

Yep, exactly right, and I found that about the time you were writing your answer. When I installed Mailman in 2009, I was familiar with Majordomo (Ran it for 10 years) and after the install, when i did crontab -u mailman -l there was no
crontab file. So I copied the info from the ..../mailman/cron directory and made a crontab for user mailman. Thus there were two crontabs, the mailman user's and the one in /etc/cron.d/mailman.

What tipped me off were the dual crontab entries in /var/log/messages, you could see every line was running twice.
But the line I added to the mailman-user's crontab I created only ran once. Funny no users are reporting duplicate digests, it must be because the first program that makes the digests moves the files, and the second time it runs there is nothing to send.

Anyway, on April 1st (not a joke) I will have proof that the problem is solved. You can mark this bug report as completed.

Thanks much Mark, Best Regards,
   Ron Fial