Mails shunned due to a mailman 3 bug
Hi! A few weeks back, when the MicroOS mailing list was created, the owner of that mailing list notified us that no mails were being delivered or archived by mailman. Through that we have discovered that there's a bug in mailman 3 that allows for a subscription to be registered without an attached email in the database, which leads to an entire mailing list to have all the received mails shunned and never sent out to the mailing list or archived. Over the past few days, the same thing happened to the Factory mailing list. While it's a simple fix for us to clean out the records with null association [1], what it means for the subscribers of this list is that all the mails sent out since the bug occurred are gone from our point of view, and will have to be resent if they haven't reached the mailing list. Sorry for the inconvenience. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/ [1] `delete from member where address_id IS NULL;`
Hello, I noticed some days ago that I haven't received new mails from the factory list since July 29th. When I checked lists.opensuse.org, the last mail here was also dated 7/29/22, so I thought this was a general issue, which, in fact, it was after reading your post today here. However, on lists.opensuse.org I now see several mails since August 4th. But in my Thunderbird the last mail is still dated July 29th. Do I have to subscribe again? Are new mails sent to subscribers again?
Problem solved. My reply automatically subscribed me again. Looks like my subscription was also cancelled by the bug.
Well, replying subscribed me again, but Delivery Status was still set to "Disabled" and Delivery Mode to "none". Had to update all subscription options for the factory list and hope to receive mails now again.
My experience over the past 2 weeks (1 of which on vacation, but made no change here to stop receiving mails) seems to be related, but I had ALL my subscriptions silently dropped at some point. Had no idea that happened and it's a shame it seems there's no better way to auto-correct it than: 1. think 'its eems I haven't received lists.opensuse.org mails in a while, hmm' 2. open https://lists.opensuse.org/archives and see if things are indeed being posted 3. check https://lists.opensuse.org/manage/lists/ and see if I'm still subscribed as I'd expected Missed a few interesting things since I'd assumed it was a larger issue, not my subscriptions being dropped.
Scott Bradnick wrote:
My experience over the past 2 weeks (1 of which on vacation, but made no change here to stop receiving mails) seems to be related, but I had ALL my subscriptions silently dropped at some point.
Subscribers are always notified when they are unsubscribed, but if mails are bouncing, obviously that won't go through either. When mailman sees an address bouncing, after a number of bounces, delivery is first disabled, then probes are sent. I think it takes more than one bouncing probe to be unsubscribed.
Had no idea that happened and it's a shame it seems there's no better way to auto-correct it than:
1. think 'its eems I haven't received lists.opensuse.org mails in a while, hmm' 2. open https://lists.opensuse.org/archives and see if things are indeed being posted 3. check https://lists.opensuse.org/manage/lists/ and see if I'm still subscribed as I'd expected
Except for (3), it is much as it has always been, going back twenty+ years. We are always open to suggestions, but if there is room for improvement, it's most probably an upstream mailman3 topic. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (23.1°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
On 2022-08-13 12:35, Per Jessen wrote:
Scott Bradnick wrote:
My experience over the past 2 weeks (1 of which on vacation, but made no change here to stop receiving mails) seems to be related, but I had ALL my subscriptions silently dropped at some point.
Subscribers are always notified when they are unsubscribed, but if mails are bouncing, obviously that won't go through either.
When mailman sees an address bouncing, after a number of bounces, delivery is first disabled, then probes are sent. I think it takes more than one bouncing probe to be unsubscribed.
I have no idea if this has been the case, but one typical issue for years has been people having an automatic reply set to say "I'm on vacation, not available" and bouncing back to the list. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.3 x86_64 at Telcontar)
On 13.08.22 12:45, Carlos E. R. wrote:
I have no idea if this has been the case, but one typical issue for years has been people having an automatic reply set to say "I'm on vacation, not available" and bouncing back to the list.
This is not what is described by "mail bouncing" and nothing that a mailing list software will care about. "mail bouncing" == can not be delivered to the recipients mail server, for whatever reason. So the last MTA on the way to the recipient will bounce the mail back to the sender. Who might take appropriate action. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2022-08-13 12:35, Per Jessen wrote:
Scott Bradnick wrote:
My experience over the past 2 weeks (1 of which on vacation, but made no change here to stop receiving mails) seems to be related, but I had ALL my subscriptions silently dropped at some point.
Subscribers are always notified when they are unsubscribed, but if mails are bouncing, obviously that won't go through either.
When mailman sees an address bouncing, after a number of bounces, delivery is first disabled, then probes are sent. I think it takes more than one bouncing probe to be unsubscribed.
I have no idea if this has been the case, but one typical issue for years has been people having an automatic reply set to say "I'm on vacation, not available" and bouncing back to the list.
Yes, but as seife said, those are not bounces, they are legitimate responses (no matter how annoying they are). What has sometimes happened is perhaps a poorly configured auto-reply that has been sent to the envelope-from which mailman _will_ consider to be a bounce. Any decent vacation setup should just ignore mails with List-* headers, it is easily done with sieve. Anyway, it's all really off-topic here :-) -- Per Jessen, Zürich (23.9°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
On 2022-08-13 13:16, Per Jessen wrote:
Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2022-08-13 12:35, Per Jessen wrote:
Scott Bradnick wrote:
...
Any decent vacation setup should just ignore mails with List-* headers, it is easily done with sieve.
Trust Microsoft ;-p
Anyway, it's all really off-topic here :-)
SCNR :-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.3 x86_64 at Telcontar)
Am 13.08.22 um 12:35 schrieb Per Jessen:
Scott Bradnick wrote:
My experience over the past 2 weeks (1 of which on vacation, but made no change here to stop receiving mails) seems to be related, but I had ALL my subscriptions silently dropped at some point.
Subscribers are always notified when they are unsubscribed, but if mails are bouncing, obviously that won't go through either.
Well, thanks to Scott I noticed I was unsubscribed from 2 mailing lists last week. This seems to have happened for several people, having different mail servers. I don't think you can neglect this as a case of "stupid mail servers of the subscribers". I think this was really some openSUSE issue. Just trying to put responsibility to the customers is not appropriate in this case, I think.
When mailman sees an address bouncing, after a number of bounces, delivery is first disabled, then probes are sent. I think it takes more than one bouncing probe to be unsubscribed.
Had no idea that happened and it's a shame it seems there's no better way to auto-correct it than:
1. think 'its eems I haven't received lists.opensuse.org mails in a while, hmm' 2. open https://lists.opensuse.org/archives and see if things are indeed being posted 3. check https://lists.opensuse.org/manage/lists/ and see if I'm still subscribed as I'd expected
Except for (3), it is much as it has always been, going back twenty+ years.
We are always open to suggestions, but if there is room for improvement, it's most probably an upstream mailman3 topic.
Manfred Schwarb wrote:
Am 13.08.22 um 12:35 schrieb Per Jessen:
Scott Bradnick wrote:
My experience over the past 2 weeks (1 of which on vacation, but made no change here to stop receiving mails) seems to be related, but I had ALL my subscriptions silently dropped at some point.
Subscribers are always notified when they are unsubscribed, but if mails are bouncing, obviously that won't go through either.
Well, thanks to Scott I noticed I was unsubscribed from 2 mailing lists last week. This seems to have happened for several people, having different mail servers.
I don't think you can neglect this as a case of "stupid mail servers of the subscribers". I think this was really some openSUSE issue. Just trying to put responsibility to the customers is not appropriate in this case, I think.
Our "customers" are more than welcome to report such issues, but they also have to appreciate that such issues take up a lot of time to investigate. The last such issue I investigated turned out to be a <european email provider> being blocked by Russia, but we have also had issues with e.g. Google and gmx and others. For your own address, since 1 July I see only one bounce, on packaging.lists. No unsubscribes and no probes. We can pursue it further if you open a ticket. (admin@o.o) -- Per Jessen, Zürich (27.9°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
Per, the problem is/was not limited to the several people posting about it here. I wasn't going to add redundant noise to the list, but I also was dropped from all openSUSE lists, with no notification. So after reading the discussion in the archives, I re-subscribed from the webpage. Only one person said they *did* receive one of the "missing" posts, but that was via multi-posting through another list, not 'factory'. -- Robert Webb On Saturday, August 13, 2022, 07:22:07 AM PDT, Per Jessen <per@opensuse.org> wrote: Manfred Schwarb wrote:
Am 13.08.22 um 12:35 schrieb Per Jessen:
Scott Bradnick wrote:
My experience over the past 2 weeks (1 of which on vacation, but made no change here to stop receiving mails) seems to be related, but I had ALL my subscriptions silently dropped at some point.
Robert Webb wrote:
Per, the problem is/was not limited to the several people posting about it here. I wasn't going to add redundant noise to the list, but I also was dropped from all openSUSE lists, with no notification. So after reading the discussion in the archives, I re-subscribed from the webpage.
Hi Robert I've just checked the logs, there is no mention of you being unsubscribed, nor any probes being sent. On 14 July, yahoo did bounce a number of mails for you, but bounces have to be consistent over a number of days to cause delivery to be disabled, for instance. I'll PM you with the numbers of mails we did send to you. /Per -- Per Jessen, Zürich (23.7°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
participants (8)
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Carlos E. R. -
Jacob Michalskie -
Manfred Schwarb -
Oliver Schwabedissen -
Per Jessen -
Robert Webb -
Scott Bradnick -
Stefan Seyfried