Re: Recent issues with the mailing lists or debbugs

[Bob Proulx]

Leo Famulari wrote:
> For the past few days we at Guix have been noticing problems with the
> mailing lists and debbugs:
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-debbugs/2020-03/msg00004.html
> 
> ... and there is another message on that list about similar problems.

For the mailman list folks here...  The problem was completely within
the debbugs envelope.  When senders would send messages to
non-existent addresses such as address@hidden that is a
bogus address and would generate a bounce.  But all of them are
configured to be sent through the debbugs-submit mailing list as a
front end for anti-spam use.  The mailman for debbugs-submit then
would do bounce processing.  Which has probably been in place
forever.  Amazing it hasn't been snagged on and tripped before now.

Just this weekend the mail tripped over the bounce limit due to recent
mail to 123-reopen and the Mailman bounce processing kicked in and
unsubscribed the real submit address from the mailing list cutting off
all of the mail from the BTS.  Oops.

Fortunately all of the mail was in the archive.  We were able to
extract the messages that had not been processed and send them through
for processing.  So we don't think any messages were permanently
lost.  There were about a hundred messages that were delayed.

At this moment there are four messages left that Glenn is reviewing to
determine if they do or do not need processing.  So almost done!

And so the crisis has been abated.  Yay! :-)

Bob