list_lists crashed with ImportError in <module>() no module names email.messages

Confirmed after 8.10 -> 9.04 beta upgrade. 347738, 347743, 347975, 347976 are likely dupes. This a regression which renders the mailman package completely broken.

Barry mentions that he has a branch for this:
http://<email address hidden>/msg11151.html

I am working on the fix locally here.

chuck

Thanks guys, I tried to compile mailman v 2.1.2 w/ python 2.6. Compiled; yet no luck on email.message issue.

Sidenote
 - The 'email.message' and 'email.message.Message' is a good class module ( mailbox.py ) since python2.4, but I can figure out why its complaining.
- Got the md5/sha errs once or twice, but there non-fatal on my end.

~nolo

This bug was fixed in the package mailman - 1:2.1.11-11ubuntu1

---------------
mailman (1:2.1.11-11ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/100_fix-email_python2.6.patch: Python 2.6 transition. (LP: #343046)
  * Update debian/control as per spec.

 -- Chuck Short <email address hidden> Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:29:28 -0400

This bug is biting on an 8.04 LTS to 10.04 LTS server upgrade.

apt-cache policy mailman
mailman:
  Installed: 1:2.1.9-9ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1:2.1.13-1
  Version table:
     1:2.1.13-1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
 *** 1:2.1.9-9ubuntu1 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

=========
sudo apt-get install mailman
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libio-compress-zlib-perl ttf-dejavu-extra libbeecrypt6 libio-compress-base-perl libconvert-ber-perl bacula-sd-sqlite3 mtx bacula-client
  bacula-console ttf-dejavu bacula-fd libkadm55 bacula-sd bacula-director-common libmhash2 bacula-common
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
Suggested packages:
  listadmin
The following packages will be upgraded:
  mailman
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 193 not upgraded.
39 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/9,642kB of archives.
After this operation, 4,289kB of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages ...
/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/Utils.py:32: DeprecationWarning: the sha module is deprecated; use the hashlib module instead
  import sha
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/var/lib/mailman/bin/list_lists", line 47, in <module>
    from Mailman import MailList
  File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 51, in <module>
    from Mailman.Archiver import Archiver
  File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/__init__.py", line 17, in <module>
    from Archiver import *
  File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.py", line 32, in <module>
    from Mailman import Mailbox
  File "/var/lib/mailman/Mailman/Mailbox.py", line 21, in <module>
    import mailbox
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/mailbox.py", line 19, in <module>
    import email.message
ImportError: No module named message
tar: ./config: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: ./templates: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: ./postinst: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: ./preinst: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: ./prerm: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: ./postrm: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: ./conffiles: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: ./md5sums: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: ./control: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: .: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
dpkg-deb: subprocess tar returned error exit status 2
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/mailman_1%3a2.1.13-1_i386.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/mailman_1%3a2.1.13-1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
==========

We need a procedure to fix the locally installed package so it doesn't cause do-release-upgrade to fail in upgrading all packages.

Looking at the package changelog I don't see any sign of Chucks' 1:2.1.11-11ubuntu1 package version, so cannot pull a copy of the patch to try manually.

Reading a posting to the mailman list I found this:

http://<email address hidden>/msg51844.html

"Also, you may be able to work around the problem by just removing the
pythonlib/email/ directory from your Mailman installation. This won't
stop the deprecation warnings, but it may allow your current Mailman
to run."

I therefore deleted the directory and the removed the package:

sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/mailman/pythonlib/email
sudo apt-get remove mailman

The package was successfully removed. I guess I could have allowed the upgrade to go ahead but I was testing!

The tasks held back from the do-release-upgrade then continued automatically after the package had been removed.