[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#268117: mailman upgrade problems... error message is not clear

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

On Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 09:58:30PM +0100, Mourad De Clerck wrote:

> I get the same message on upgrade from 2.1.5-10 to 2.1.6-1:

>> Old queue files present

>> The directory /var/lib/mailman/qfiles contains files.  It needs to
>> be empty for the upgrade work properly.  Please either flush the
>> queue (by way of mailmanctl start, then stopping it and redoing the
>> upgrade when it is finished) or remove those files.  Note that
>> removing the files will lose some emails sent to lists.

> These instructions plain don't work... combinations of
> /etc/init.d/mailman start|stop or
> /usr/lib/mailman/bin/mailmanctl start|stop
> do not seem to make the upgrade proceed normally afterwards.

Starting mailmanctl (whether through /etc/init.d/mailman or directly)
will try to handle messages in the queue, but if handling fails / gets
deferred, well, the queue will not be emptied. In particular, messages
in "shunt" are messages on which mailman has abandoned all hope. They
have to be manually removed or "unshunted".

Arguably, the message displayed should explain all that.

> It would be good if the postinst scripts would take account of this
> eventuality, or at least provide the right set of instructions to be
> able to continue without losing mail.

In short, get the queue to an empty state. Useful steps:

 - Stop messages coming (at the MTA level)
 - Start a Mailman queue runner. If it doesn't handle some messages,
   read the logs and figure out why. Solve the reason the messages
   are not handled and rerun the queue runner.

   The reason the message is not handled might be that it is shunted,
   meaning Mailman has abandoned trying. It must then be manually
   unshunted or deleted.

I'll try to have the message displayed explain that kind of things.

-- 
Lionel