[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#391700: More information and possible related upstream bug report

[EspeonEefi]

Package: mailman
Version: 1:2.1.9-5
Followup-For: Bug #391700

As a followup to my previous message, on closer inspection, it turns out 
that my error is subtly different from the error in the initial bug 
report. It may be that this stuff should get split off into its own 
report.

We recently moved our mailing lists from an old server running sarge to 
a new server running etch. We migrated the lists by simply copying all 
the data in /var/lib/mailman/ over.

Most of our lists are internal, but we noticed that a few of our lists 
stopped getting their pipermail archives updated at various times after 
the migration. These lists were specifically those which often receive 
foreign-language spam.

Some extra searching about the problem turned up what seems to be a very 
relevant bug filed upstream [1]. In the discussion are pointers to a 
couple discussions on the mailman mailing lists about this bug. This 
message [2] is particularly interesting, because it speculates that "if 
you upgrade in the middle of a month, you get this problem in the 
database."

[1] http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1246004&group_id=103&atid=100103
[2] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-developers/2006-February/018588.html

These things pose a very interesting problem for sarge -> etch upgrades, 
and it should be addressed somehow.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-3-amd64
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  adduser                     3.102        Add and remove users and groups
ii  apache2                     2.2.3-3.2    Next generation, scalable, extenda
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork [httpd] 2.2.3-3.2    Traditional model for Apache HTTPD
ii  cron                        3.0pl1-100   management of regular background p
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]       1.5.11       Debian configuration management sy
ii  exim4                       4.63-17      metapackage to ease exim MTA (v4) 
ii  exim4-daemon-light [mail-tr 4.63-17      lightweight exim MTA (v4) daemon
ii  libc6                       2.3.6.ds1-10 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  logrotate                   3.7.1-3      Log rotation utility
ii  lsb-base                    3.1-22       Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  pwgen                       2.05-1       Automatic Password generation
ii  python                      2.4.4-2      An interactive high-level object-o
ii  python-support              0.5.6        automated rebuilding support for p
ii  ucf                         2.0018.1     Update Configuration File: preserv

mailman recommends no packages.

-- debconf information:
* mailman/queue_files_present:
* mailman/default_server_language: en (English)
* mailman/gate_news: false
* mailman/site_languages: en (English)
* mailman/used_languages: en
* mailman/create_site_list: