Mail Admin just hangs there?

[Bug Importer]

All the sudden mail admin just started hanging there, and then I do a ps
aux and see python parsing the file and it just hangs - why is it doing
this?

[http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=212338&group_id=103&atid=100103]

[Thomas Wouters (thomas)]

It might be waiting for a lockfile. We'd need some more information to say
for sure, though. What version of Mailman ? What version of Python ? What
exactly are you trying to do ? What file is python parsing ? Is this
incoming mail ? mail to a specific address ?

[Swillden (swillden)]

I'm seeing this behavior. I just installed Mailman on a Mandrake-Linux 7.1
box, using Python 1.5.2-7, with the latest mailman (2.0 beta 5) and I just
created a "test" list, as described in the INSTALL. When I point
my browser at the admin page, I get no response, and I see the python
process running (/usr/bin/python -S /home/mailman/scripts/driver admin). I
can point my browser at the listinfo page and it works fine.

[Swillden (swillden)]

Okay, it's a lock problem cause by another problem. Apparently I *did* get
to the admin page once, and got error messages. That error left some lock
files. Clearing the locks fixes the problem enough that I can get the
error again.

[Swillden (swillden)]

Continuing to refine this. Here's what's going on: If the file
lists/test/config.db is owned by mailman, I get this error and then the
administrative interface hangs. If the file is owned by nobody (the web
server) I can use the administrative interface, but qrunner hangs.

[Barry Warsaw (barry)]

Thomas is probably right; it's almost definitely waiting for a lockfile.
Please look at logs/errors and see if you can find any tracebacks that
might be related to the lockfile not getting cleaned out.

[Bug Importer (bug-importer)]

The same (admin page hangs) happened to me today (Mailman 2.0 final, Debian
unstable) after creating a list called "wohnpark-tv-vorstand". I
assume this was too long or had too many "-"s in it.
Everything worked when I created a list called wpmedia-vorstand.

[Bug Importer (bug-importer)]

It happens also on Red Hat Linux 7.1beta (Wolverine). Same
as all the rest. The admin portion hangs. Apache's error
log says script terminated prematurely. I recompiled my
apache and reinstalled mailman to be sure it was nothing
about jumping from Red Hat 7.0 (Kernel 2.2) to 7.1 (Kernel
2.4) and it's so late that I haven't looked in to it more
but I wanted to report that it happens in Wolverine.

[Bug Importer (bug-importer)]

Correction on that last post about Wolverine causing this.
Now that I'm more awake I tried using Lynx and was able to
get to the admin pages. Then I tried Netscape 6.0 and was
able to just fine. I still could not with IE 5.x though. I
deleted all my cookies and then it worked. It must have
been a cookie problem. That's not so good though because I
was getting Error 500 script errors because of a bad cookie
in my browser. If I can screw it up again I'll see why my
cookie was messed up and post it. I use a couple of things
on my domain that could have been setting cookies. Still
there should be a check where this is dying to see if the
cookie makes sense and if it doesn't then toss the cookie
and make the person login.

-Josh (<email address hidden>)

[Thomas Wouters (thomas)]

Adding comments to a closed bugreport is not a good thing to
do; it will easily be overlooked. Furthermore, the problem
you describe has nothing at all to do with the old
bugreport, which is 'mailman hangs'.

I suggest you open up a new bug for this issue... Stating
which Mailman you were working with might help, of course,
as would being able to reproduce the bug :)