[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#395493: mailman: failes to send email out to recipients, smtp-failure

[Dr. Scott S. Jones]

Package: mailman
Version: 2.1.5-8sarge5
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable


After several days, nay weeks, of hacking, testing, etc., it appears
that a recent apt-get upgrade of mailman, python, exim4, or other
related packages to the debian-mailman package releases, has caused
mailman to NOT be able to send messages OUT to recipient list members. 

On my system and that of another gentleman who is hacking through the
same trouble, it appears that failure lies most likely in the way
mailman is interacting with exim4 or with smtplib. All failures revolve
around smtp not getting the message out, timing out before delivery can
occur or simply failing to interact with mailman in a way that allows
the mail items to send correctly. 

Exim4 handles all other email, both In and Out on my system just fine,
whether using mutt, mozilla-thunderbird or other mail clients. When
mailing to a mailman list, the sent item shows up in the Archives for
that list; as well, if items are posted from a non-member to that list,
they are correctly handled, and require approval or discarding to
continue processing. 

Here's a link to the ongoing debate:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2006-October/054029.html

My business depends upon mailman to broadcast information to my
patients. Thanks for any efforts in resolving this!

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8.1-03-NeTraverse-i686-UP-4GB
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  apache-perl [httpd]   1.3.33-6sarge3     versatile, high-performance HTTP s
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork [ 2.0.54-5sarge1     traditional model for Apache2
ii  cron                  3.0pl1-86          management of regular background p
ii  debconf               1.4.30.13          Debian configuration management sy
ii  exim4                 4.63-2bpo1         metapackage to ease exim MTA (v4) 
ii  exim4-daemon-light [m 4.63-2bpo1         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  pwgen                 2.03-1             Automatic Password generation
ii  python                2.3.5-2            An interactive high-level object-o
ii  ucf                   1.17               Update Configuration File: preserv

-- debconf information:
* mailman/site_languages: sr, pt_BR, pt, zh_CN, hr, cs, pl, fr, es, de, en
* mailman/used_languages: cs de en es fr hr pl pt pt_BR sr zh_CN
  mailman/create_site_list:
  mailman/queue_files_present:
* mailman/default_server_language: en
  mailman/gate_news: true