TypeError: iso-8859-1

[Mark Edwards]

There is a bug in the mailman Makefile that has been fixed in Debian. Here is the fixed bug report from Debian:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=387737

This is a serious bug. The /usr/lib/mailman/cron/senddigests cron script is failing and throwing errors.

Can this be fixed asap in Ubuntu? Thanks.

[Kai Kasurinen (kai-kasurinen)]

mailman (1:2.1.8-3) unstable; urgency=medium
...
[ Lionel Elie Mamane ]
   * Use Mailman's fork of the Python email package instead of the one from
     Python; Mailman is incompatible with the one in Python 2.4
     (closes: #384016)
...

[Mark Edwards (mark-antsclimbtree)]

Sorry, what does this mean? Can the Debian fixes be quickly rolled in to Ubuntu? Right now Edgy has a non-functional Mailman package, which is not good.

[Christian Holtje (docwhat)]

I can confirm that this is indeed an issue in Edgy Eft. I was working around it in Dapper by using python2.2, but that doesn't exist.

This makes Edgy's version TOTALLY BROKEN for anyone who uses non-ascii characters!

The problem, for those that want to know, is that that Mailman uses an older version of the email package. Python2.4 uses version 3.x, and mailman needs 2.5.x.

The fix in debian is to re-enable the 2.5.x of email that comes with mailman.

Workaround:
  # apt-get source mailman
  # cd mailman-*/misc
  # tar xzf email-2.5.?.tar.gz
  # cd email-2.5.?
  # python setup.py install --install-lib /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman

Ciao!

[Christian Holtje (docwhat)]

Please ignore my workaround. It doesn't work. It complains about email._compat22 missing.
I can't get my workaround to work...

In the end I:
  * downloaded the .dsc, diff, and tarbal of 2.1.9 from http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/m/mailman/ (the fiesty version) and rebuilt the RPM.
  * Saved off the shunt directory (it had all kinds of messages with non-ascii content)
  * upgraded
  * copied all the shunt files back
  * ran /var/lib/mailman/bin/unshunt

It's working at the moment.

Can someone from Ubuntu just release the fixed package?

Ciao!

[Christian Holtje (docwhat)]

One last bit. This bug is pretty evil, because mailman 'shunts' messages that fail due to this. You get no email messages or anything like that. You'll notice the digest getting error messages because cron will mail you those. But if your digest gets them, you are probably having messages being shunted.

It looks like messages are being 'lost'. However, they are in /var/lib/mailman/qfiles/shunt

I asked one of the wonderful Ubuntu guys to escalate this, since it's such a quite failure.

Also, I'd recommend adding /var/log/mailman/error and smtp-failures to logcheck's list of logs it checks.

Ciao!

[Mark Edwards (mark-antsclimbtree)]

On Dec 11, 2006, at 6:47 AM, Christian Holtje wrote:

> Can someone from Ubuntu just release the fixed package?
>
> Ciao!

Incidentally, I worked around it by building the Feisty package as a
backport using prevu. Its currently slotted to be added to
backports, but hasn't gone through yet. Building it with prevu is
pretty easy though, and that can be used until the backport is
released. At that point it will be as easy as just having backports
in your sources.list

--
Mark Edwards

[Ian McCall (ian-eruvia)]

Another instance confirmed here. I've read the comment regarding prevu, something I've not come across before. Headed over to here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=268687 to read about it and decided this was not a path I'd like to take if I can possibly avoid it (the 'unsupported' warnings rather put me off, and I don't want to deviate from the standard packages if at all possible).

Could anyone let me know a rough timescale for a fixed package to go in to Edgy or an Edgy backport? A non-functional mailman package is a severe problem for me - I'm willing to help out if there's anything that needs testing etc..

Thanks,
Ian

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Feisty has 2.1.9, closing Feisty task.

[Will Hawes (wdhawes)]

Mailman 2.1.9 can be installed on an Edgy system using backports as follows.

1) Add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse

2) Run the following:

sudo apt-get update
apt-cache madison mailman

3) The above will give a list of available mailman versions. Install the most recent one from the edgy-backports repository, in this case 1:2.1.9-4ubuntu1~edgy1, as follows:

sudo apt-get install mailman=1:2.1.9-4ubuntu1~edgy1

Note that you may need to (re)move the contents of /var/lib/mailman/qfiles before the updated version will install.

[Hew (hew)]

Ubuntu Edgy Eft is no longer supported, so a SRU will not be issued for this release. Marking Edgy as Won't Fix.