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Mailman (2.2.0) is severely broken

Christian Buser

Mailman is broken since the last cPanel update a few days ago:

 

- List archives are broken

- encoding / decoding of non-ascii characters are broken

- daily digests are no longer working

 

It is just a nightmare...

Comments

75 comments

Date Votes
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator
    • Edited

    Hey there!  Yes, there have been some issues with Mailman since the recent updates and our team has multiple cases open regarding those fixes:

    CPANEL-46585 - Mailman cPanel webmail access autologin issues
    CPANEL-46556 - Unable to unshunt messages
    CPANEL-46545 - Non-English characters not working properly
    CPANEL-46537 - News Gateway sync
    CPANEL-46529 - Unicode digest issues
    CPANEL-46525 - Unable to view messages held for moderation
    CPANEL-46518 - Mailman restart issues

    so we're aware and working on this now.  I can say that we aren't moving 126 to Stable until these major issues are resolved.

    1
  • Anders Boholdt-Petersen

    Where can I be informed about when the issus is fixed?

     

    Regards,

    Anders

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    I'll post to this thread once those issues are resolved!

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Update - our team is working on version 126.0.13 which will have the following two major issues resolved:

    CPANEL-46530: Update Mailman to 2.2.0.16-2: adds some limits to the one time backup that happens for mailman when upgrading to the python3 version.
    HB-8228: Update Mailman to version 2.2.0-15 to fix module imports.

    I'm not 100% certain when this build will be released, but it will likely be within the next few days.

    1
  • kenrbnsn

    I'm waiting for these two issues to be resolved:
    CPANEL-46537 - News Gateway sync
    CPANEL-46529 - Unicode digest issues

    Ken

    1
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    I don't have anything for CPANEL-46537 yet.  CPANEL-46529 is fixed and will be merged into the next major public build, so I'd expect to see that within a week or so.

    -1
  • Christian Buser

    The main question remains:

    Why are you deploying untested / beta software?

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Well, that's obviously a loaded question :D

    I touched on a bit of this in the other Mailman thread here:

    https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/31265322468887

    but ultimately, moving to Mailman 3 would be too disruptive for end users (yes, significantly worse than the issues we're seeing here with Mailman 2, with the addition of potential data loss and and entirely new UI that all users have never seen before, but work in the cPanel backend to make it work) so we made the decision to stick with Mailman 2.  This choice came with the issue of supporting Mailman 2 on Python 3, which also isn't something Mailman intended to work, and that's where many of the conflicts arose.

    I promise that although it may not look like it, this was the least disruptive of the options to continue to offer Mailman service.

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  • National Federation

    That is all well and good, but it has been three and a half weeks since Mailman broke, and you are saying it is likely to be another week. My 15,000 users will be thrilled. And ... we need real search in Mailman.

    0
  • GBTim

    Any update?  It's been two more weeks on this thread.  Looks like 126 went stable without any of the major fixes?  Or most?  All our servers, set to stable, started having major mailman issues as soon as 126 was rolled out.  We have pretty heavy use of mailman across our small hosting company, with tens of thousands of memberships across those lists.  We have a lot of upset customers.  Is it possible to get code changes we can self-patch until these fixes can be rolled into a future release?  Anything?

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    GBTim - I haven't heard about anything else getting released, but they may be on hold due to the details here that were just released earlier today.

    https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2025/q2/69

    Here's the updates I have from the list of cases I mentioned above:

    CPANEL-46585 - Mailman cPanel webmail access autologin issues
    This isn't something the team plans to fix as this has been the behavior for some time.

    CPANEL-46556 - Unable to unshunt messages
    This is fixed and will be in the next release - it could be this week, or possibly the week after.

    CPANEL-46545 - Non-English characters not working properly
    This issue hasn't been addressed yet, and the team is just starting to work on it now.

    CPANEL-46537 - News Gateway sync
    This is a relatively low priority compared to the other cases.  The team is aware of this, but it's likley not getting fixed immediately.

    CPANEL-46529 - Unicode digest issues
    This is fixed and will be in the next release - it could be this week, or possibly the week after.

    CPANEL-46525 - Unable to view messages held for moderation
    There is a fix in place that we are currently testing. 

    CPANEL-46518 - Mailman restart issues
    This has been resolved and has been released for a few weeks.

    If you are seeing behavior that is *not* one of these cases, please let me know or submit a ticket so we can check it out.

    0
  • mtindor

    I don't know if this falls into one of already referenced CPANEL-##### issues or not.  But I am disappointed that despite all promises that Mailman would be fixed before 126 was pushed to stable, it clearly wasn't.

     

    List: xxxxx_lists.yyyyy.org: problem processing /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/lists/xxxxxx_lists.yyyy.org/digest.mbox:

    'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x93 in position 246: invalid start byte
     
    I don't know if that really affects anyone's mailman setup.  I don't care to investigate.  I shouldn't have to investigate.   Hopefully it isn't affecting my users, but it probably is and they just haven't told me yet.
    0
  • GBTim

    Thanks for the update.  We were also hit by CPANEL-46945 as well.  We have found a temporary work-around at least for this issue... which is 1 of 2 things:

    1. You can comment out the SUBSCRIBE_FORM_SECRET in the config file (/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py)

    2. We tried #1, but immediately found several lists were spammed with signups.  The "do at your own risk" solution, which we've tried on one server so far, and it's working.  Edit the file /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/Cgi/listinfo.py and around line 244 you'll see the code is calling .encode('utf-8') on a hash object returned by Utils.sha_new(...) -- but that’s incorrect.  It should encode the string that’s passed into sha_new(...), not the result of the hash object.  The final fixed block of code should look like this:

    # fill form
    replacements['<mm-subscribe-form-start>'] += (
        '<input type="hidden" name="sub_form_token"'
        ' value="%s:%s:%s">\n'
        % (now, captcha_idx,
            Utils.sha_new((
                mm_cfg.SUBSCRIBE_FORM_SECRET + ":" +
                now + ":" +
                captcha_idx + ":" +
                mlist.internal_name() + ":" +
                remote
            ).encode('utf-8')).hexdigest()
          )
    )

    We have some mailman lists that continue to work fine.  But most seem to be having a unique issue (more below), or a combination of "CPANEL-46556 - Unable to unshunt messages" and "CPANEL-46529 - Unicode digest issues".  It's our understanding that incoming messages that are unable to be processed successfully are shunted.  Therefore, CPANEL-46556 shouldn't necessarily be our primary issue because the messages shouldn't be shunted to being with.  The other bug, CPANEL-46529, is for lists sending digests.  Many of our broken lists have digests disabled, yet a single simple message sent to the list is throwing errors in the mailman log with:

    Uncaught runner exception: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'

    It's similar to the digest issue, yet different.  Our error lines have no mention of digest at all.  Full block example of the error is:

    Apr 17 15:45:15 2025 (436591) SHUNTING: 1744922714.8930626+95c507c8d6400f46602101cf209a3b112fbde216
    Apr 17 20:16:00 2025 (436591) Uncaught runner exception: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
    Apr 17 20:16:00 2025 (436591) Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 113, in _oneloop
        self._onefile(msg, msgdata)
      File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 184, in _onefile
        keepqueued = self._dispose(mlist, msg, msgdata)
      File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/Queue/OutgoingRunner.py", line 67, in _dispose
        self._func(mlist, msg, msgdata)
      File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/SMTPDirect.py", line 186, in process
        deliveryfunc(mlist, msg, msgdata, envsender, refused, conn)
      File "/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/SMTPDirect.py", line 379, in verpdeliver
        msgcopy[mm_cfg.RCPT_BASE64_HEADER_NAME] = b64encode(recip)
      File "/usr/lib64/python3.6/base64.py", line 58, in b64encode
        encoded = binascii.b2a_base64(s, newline=False)
    TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'

    We do have a ticket open (95681977), but the support tech thinks it's a combination of the two bugs noted above (shunting and digests), even though they don't match up with the symptoms we're seeing.

    I really don't want to debug and fix all the Python 2 to 3 Unicode string bugs, but if we have to keep waiting, I'm not sure what other recourse we have?

    1
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    mtindor - your issue is CPANEL-46529 and that is fixed and just waiting to get merged into a public release.  I'm hoping that will happen this week, but if not it will be next week.

    1
  • Jim McLaughlin

    I'm curious to see all of the open issues with Mailman.  I'm seeing the following issue with archive listing display and don't want to overburden discussion if this issue is in process.

    Discussion:

    There are 4 ways to sort the archive, and the same messages ought to appear in each view.

    When we sort one of our lists with 29 messages, a) By Date: 0 appear. b) By Thread: 0 appear. c) By Author: only a single message appears. d) By Subject: 10 messages appear

    Of the 10 messages that appear By Subject: 7 went straight to the list w/o moderation. 3 were approved (of 15 that have gone to moderation).

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Jim McLaughlin - are you experiencing an error or is the sorting just not working as expected?

    0
  • Christian Buser
    • Edited

    I do not know what your way of thinking is, but when I have a certain quantity of items I would expect that the same quantity is shown whether it is  sorted against criteria "A", criteria "B", criteria "C", etc. 

    If you have 9 unsorted potatoes which you sort "smallest first, biggest last", you have still 9. If you sort them "biggest firsst, smallest last" you still should have 9 (unless you have eaten one in the mean time).

    And it is your decision whether you call this an error or just an "unexpected result". It is just wrong.

     

     

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    It would probably be best to create a ticket on this so we can see it in action.

    0
  • Jim McLaughlin

    The same number of items should show up on the list, regardless of how it is sorted, yes.  It's not working that way, as noted.

    Submitting a ticket.

    Thanks, @cPRex!

    0
  • Jim McLaughlin

    So researching more, the problem noted is only on one mailing list.  I'm going to assume it's corrupted.  I'm not sure how to uncorrupt it, but user says they can recreate the list and move on.  BTW, I reinstalled mailman with no change.  I welcome thoughts on corrupted archives, but will stop bothering anyone about this.  Appreciate the help!

    1
  • GBTim

    With cPanel 126.0.16 coming out, it addresses "Fixed CPANEL-46607: Fix multiple bugs in Mailman.".  I can't find CPANEL-46607 in forums or cPanel support anywhere.  Do we know what specific issues this fixes?  Are there still outstanding issues being worked on?  I have 16 support tickets open with customers with varying issues like can't send at all, can't add new members, digest is broken, can't see the admin interface, archive counts show messages but none are output, etc.

    0
  • Jim Henderson

    I have 126.0.16 installed but continue to get the below error when accessing the listinfo pages for individual lists.  I'm not sure which bug this falls under, but I have filed a case (CPANEL-46945). So far I have no updates or fixes, but I have been able to train users to subscribe/unsubscribe/update via email.

    An update from cPanel would be greatly appreciated.

    Bug in Mailman version 2.2.0
    We're sorry, we hit a bug!
    Please inform the webmaster for this site of this problem. Printing of traceback and other system information has been explicitly inhibited, but the webmaster can find this information in the Mailman error logs or the web server logs.

     

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    GBTim - "multiple" might have been a stretch there in that description - I'm seeing two things linked to that case:

    CPANEL-46556 - unable to unshunt messages
    CPANEL-46529 - Unicode digest issues

    Jim Henderson - CPANEL-46945 is in testing right now and will hopefully be resolved soon.

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    I spoke with the release team and they are going to update the changelog later today so it is more clear what all is included.

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Update - the changelog has been updated with 4 Mailman cases:

    https://docs.cpanel.net/changelogs/126-change-log/

    • Fixed CPANEL-46530: Mailman upgrade backup from python2 -> python3 can create extraordinarily large backups
    • Fixed CPANEL-46551: Mailman ( python3 ) : AttributeError: ‘bytes’ object has no attribute ’encode’
    • Fixed CPANEL-46556: Unable to unshunt messages
    • Fixed CPANEL-46529: Unicode digest issues
    0
  • MinervaH

    Two questions about:
    CPANEL-46545 - Non-English characters not working properly

    1.-Estimated resolution time?
    2.-Is the issue serious?

    All my clients use non-English characters, and I have several servers with cPanel 124.0.34. Should I risk upgrading to 126.0.16 or wait?

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    I see the team is working on it but I don't know when that fix will be released.  For right now, I would not update to v126.

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Update - the team has a fix for CPANEL-46545 that is being tested right now.  It's like it sensed you asking about it, MinervaH

    0
  • kenrbnsn

    About this problem:

    CPANEL-46537 - News Gateway sync
    This is a relatively low priority compared to the other cases.  The team is aware of this, but it's likely not getting fixed immediately.

    It might be a relatively low priority, but it is something that broke in the new release and should be fixed. I know the old USEnet Newsgroups are not used very much now, but as long as this feature is included in the Mailman configuration, it should work. If the team wants me to help test new code, I'm willing to do that on my server.


    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    kenrbnsn - it'll still get fixed, just not as quickly as some of the other issues mentioned.

    0

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