Very curious problem. I've imported my data from another server. Mail is coming in fine, and the web interface is showing fine.
But when a mail arrives, the index listing shows blank - see screenshot below.
Mail processing is all working, as the message itself results in a created HTML file containing the message content, at e.g.
/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME/2026-May/075009.html
The index page also increments the count by one. But the bullet-point list of messages itself (whether date/thread/subject) is empty, and I notice it also has 'Starting: None':
The debug log shows correct processing (with LISTNAME representing the real list name):
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) ArchRunner: Starting archive processing for list LISTNAME
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) ArchRunner: Original date: Mon, 25 May 2026 03:34:01 +0100 (BST), Received time: Mon, 25 May 2026 02:36:19 -0000
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) ArchRunner: Attempting to lock list LISTNAME
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) ArchRunner: Successfully locked list LISTNAME
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) ArchRunner: Calling ArchiveMail for list LISTNAME
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) Archiver: Starting ArchiveMail for list LISTNAME
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) Archiver: ARCHIVE_TO_MBOX = 2
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) Archiver: Writing to mbox archive
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) Archiver: Writing to mbox file: /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) Archiver: Successfully wrote message to mbox file: /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) Archiver: archive_private = 1
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) Archiver: Using internal HyperArch archiver
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) Archiver: Completed internal archiving
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) ArchRunner: ArchiveMail completed, saving list LISTNAME
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) ArchRunner: Successfully completed archive processing for list LISTNAME
May 25 03:36:20 2026 (60157) ArchRunner: Unlocked list LISTNAME
No errors are appearing in the Mailman log.
Examining the pickle file, which seems to be the database for the loading of the firstdate field shows:
# python3 -c "import pickle, pprint; pprint.pprint(pickle.load(open('/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME/pipermail.pck', 'rb')))"
{'_dirty_archives': [],
'_volre': {'day': '^(?P<year>[0-9]{4,4})(?P<month>[01][0-9])(?P<day>[0123][0-9])$',
'month': '^(?P<year>[0-9]{4,4})-(?P<month>[a-zA-Z]+)$',
'quarter': '^(?P<year>[0-9]{4,4})q(?P<quarter>[1234])$',
'week': '^Week-of-Mon-(?P<year>[0-9]{4,4})(?P<month>[01][0-9])(?P<day>[0123][0-9])',
'year': '^(?P<year>[0-9]{4,4})$'},
'archive': '2026-May',
'archivedate': 'Mon May 25 03:36:20 2026',
'archives': ['2026-May',
'2026-April',
'2026-March',
// (All the other months here, in descending order, not listed for brevity)
'],
'basedir': '/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME',
'depth': 0,
'firstdate': 'None',
'lang': 'en',
'lastdate': 'Mon May 25 03:34:01 2026',
'sequence': 75010,
'size': 87,
'type': 'Thread',
'update_TOC': 0,
'version': '0.09 (Mailman edition)'}
I thought this could be a missing dependency on python3-bsddb3 as it does a try ... bsddb.btopen but even after installing that and restarting the Mailman daemon, the same problem remains.
It looks to me as if the problem is that the firstdate value is not being written into the .pck file correctly around this point in the code, and the web UI is picking that up. Presumably then the list of articles is dependent on knowing the start date so iteration fails perhaps.
Very curious problem. I've imported my data from another server. Mail is coming in fine, and the web interface is showing fine.
But when a mail arrives, the index listing shows blank - see screenshot below.
Mail processing is all working, as the message itself results in a created HTML file containing the message content, at e.g.
/var/lib/mailman/archives/private/LISTNAME/2026-May/075009.htmlThe index page also increments the count by one. But the bullet-point list of messages itself (whether date/thread/subject) is empty, and I notice it also has 'Starting: None':
The debug log shows correct processing (with LISTNAME representing the real list name):
No errors are appearing in the Mailman log.
Examining the pickle file, which seems to be the database for the loading of the firstdate field shows:
I thought this could be a missing dependency on
python3-bsddb3as it does atry ... bsddb.btopenbut even after installing that and restarting the Mailman daemon, the same problem remains.It looks to me as if the problem is that the
firstdatevalue is not being written into the .pck file correctly around this point in the code, and the web UI is picking that up. Presumably then the list of articles is dependent on knowing the start date so iteration fails perhaps.