[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#702002: mailman: Init script produces "Error in sys.excepthook" in list_lists

[Cedric Knight]

Package: mailman
Version: 1:2.1.13-5
Severity: normal


On running
   /etc/init.d/mailman start
on a system with about 300 lists, the following message appears on stderr:

---
close failed in file object destructor:
Error in sys.excepthook:

Original exception was:
---

The reason is given at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mailman/+bug/1015369

To summarise, the error is from list_lists when it can't write to stdout, 
but the daemon does start correctly.  list_lists probably shouldn't do this,
but the suggested workaround is replacement of "grep -q" in the init script
with a redirect to /dev/null.

Another example is at http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2012-May/073425.html

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.6
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'oldstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  apache2-mpm-itk [http 2.2.16-6+squeeze10 multiuser MPM for Apache 2.2
ii  cron                  3.0pl1-116         process scheduling daemon
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.36.1           Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                 2.11.3-4           Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  logrotate             3.7.8-6            Log rotation utility
ii  lsb-base              3.2-23.2squeeze1   Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  postfix [mail-transpo 2.7.1-1+squeeze1   High-performance mail transport ag
ii  pwgen                 2.06-1+b1          Automatic Password generation
ii  python                2.6.6-3+squeeze7   interactive high-level object-orie
ii  python-support        1.0.10             automated rebuilding support for P
ii  ucf                   3.0025+nmu1        Update Configuration File: preserv