Unable to remove certain lists

[Peter Mueller]

Hello,

when I try to remove a mailing list by command line or API I get the following error:

Removed list: <email address hidden>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/mailman/bin/mailman", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('mailman==3.2.0a1', 'console_scripts', 'mailman')()
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/bin/mailman.py", line 97, in main
    args.func(args)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/database/transaction.py", line 50, in wrapper
    rtn = function(*args, **kws)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/commands/cli_lists.py", line 278, in process
    remove_list(mlist)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/app/lifecycle.py", line 120, in remove_list
    getUtility(IListManager).delete(mlist)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/database/transaction.py", line 85, in wrapper
    return function(args[0], config.db.store, *args[1:], **kws)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/model/listmanager.py", line 84, in delete
    notify(ListDeletingEvent(mlist))
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/zope/event/__init__.py", line 31, in notify
    subscriber(event)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/app/moderator.py", line 283, in handle_ListDeletingEvent
    requestsdb.delete_request(request.id)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/database/transaction.py", line 85, in wrapper
    return function(args[0], config.db.store, *args[1:], **kws)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/model/requests.py", line 140, in delete_request
    getUtility(IPendings).confirm(request.data_hash)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/database/transaction.py", line 85, in wrapper
    return function(args[0], config.db.store, *args[1:], **kws)
  File "/usr/local/mailman/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mailman/model/pending.py", line 138, in confirm
    value = json.loads(keyvalue.value)
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/json/__init__.py", line 319, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/json/decoder.py", line 339, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/json/decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
    obj, end = self.scan_once(s, idx)
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Invalid \uXXXX escape: line 1 column 506 (char 505)

[Peter Mueller (pmuellermueller)]

We are using Mailman 3.1

[Mark Sapiro (msapiro)]

This tracker is for Mailman 2.1 issues. As it says at https://launchpad.net/mailman

Please continue to use Launchpad for all bugs, code, and merge proposals for Mailman 2.1.

Please head over to Gitlab at https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman for all bugs, code, and merge requests for Mailman 3.

[Mark Sapiro (msapiro)]

I suspect the issue is that you are using MySQL as the database manager and because of https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/issues/385 you have a truncated entry in the 'pending' data. Deleting the list is trying to remove the pending requests for the list and the truncated data is broken in the middle of a '\u' sequence. This throws the exception.

You will probably have to manually remove the offending entry from the pendedkeyvalue table.