[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#391000: mailman: upgrade process takes hours even if the upgrade is supposed to be a simple security upgrade

[Mathieu Roy]

Package: mailman
Version: 2.1.5-8sarge5
Severity: normal

This year, there were several security upgrades of the mailman package. No big deal, thanks to you for keeping up and providing upgrades whenever required.

But unfortunately, upgrading mailman on a production server is current a real pain in the ass. It takes hour.  

What happen at each security upgrade?

First, it ask /var/lib/mailman/qfiles to be empty. I find this to puzzling
for the a security upgrade. It is just like if each security upgrade version was not compatible with the version is it based-on. This is frankly annoying to be force to move qfiles out each time. Just like if had to move by ourselves qfiles each time we restart mailman.

Then, it tries to reinstall languages, god only knows why. Why during a security upgrade does it assumes that you want your serveur to unavailable to provide more language while the purpose of an upgrade is definitely not to reconfigure the installation?

And this damn slow.

You  get

"Setting up mailman (2.1.5-8sarge5) ...
Installing site language tr ........................................... done.
Installing site language sv ..................................... done.
Installing site language sr ........................................... done.
Installing site language sl .......................................... done.
Installing site language ro .......................................... done.
Installing site language pt_BR .................................. done.
Installing site language pt .......................................... done.
Installing site language no ......................................... done.
Installing site language nl .................................. done.
Installing site language lt .......................................... done.
Installing site language hu ............................................ done.
Installing site language hr .......................................... done.
Installing site language fi ................................. done.
Installing site language eu .......................................... done.
Installing site language et .................................. done.
Installing site language de ................................ done.
Installing site language da ........................................ done.
Installing site language cs ................................. done.
Installing site language ca .......................................... done.
Installing site language pl .......................................... done.
Installing site language uk .......................................... done.
Installing site language ru .......................................... done.
Installing site language it ........................................... done.
Installing site language fr ........................................... done.
Installing site language es .................................... done.
Installing site language en ............................................ done.
No updates are necessary."

and at this point you wait for hours.

You wonder why you are waiting for this:

"root       709  0.0  0.1  2744 1260 pts/0    S+   10:40   0:00 /usr/bin/dpkg --configure mailman
root       710  0.0  0.6  8680 6904 pts/0    S+   10:40   0:00 /usr/bin/perl -w /usr/share/debconf/frontend /var/lib/dpkg/info/mailman.postinst
root       742  0.1  0.1  2356 1180 pts/0    S+   10:40   0:01 /bin/sh -e /var/lib/dpkg/info/mailman.postinst configure 2.1.5-8sarge3
root     26904  0.8  0.0  1520  484 pts/0    D+   10:42   0:04 find /var/lib/mailman/ -type d -print0
root     26905  0.0  0.0  1480  404 pts/0    S+   10:42   0:00 xargs -r -0 chmod g+s"

Why the hell did I asked an upgrade to reset files mode in /var/lib/mailman? Why the hell at each upgrade does it have to do this, does it have to waste users time?

Frankly, this whole thing is a real pain, each upgrade is a nightmare. It is now 10:54, it is still doing this damn "chmod g+s" that I assume to be completely useless, since 10:42. Do the math, tell me it is acceptable to waste a server for more than 10 minutes for absolutely no reason.

It would be really wonderful if mailman package upgrade was simply an upgrade, not a reconfiguration of everything.
        

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-3-686-smp
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  apache [httpd]        1.3.33-6sarge3     versatile, high-performance HTTP s
ii  cron                  3.0pl1-86          management of regular background p
ii  debconf               1.4.30.13          Debian configuration management sy
ii  exim4-daemon-light [m 4.50-8sarge2       lightweight exim MTA (v4) daemon
ii  libc6                 2.3.2.ds1-22sarge4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  logrotate             3.7-5              Log rotation utility
ii  python                2.3.5-2            An interactive high-level object-o