My mailman3 installation is installed in Debian using the Mailman Suite's Virtualenv (venv) instructions (not the Debian mailman3 packages) and has been working great for several months until I recently executed a routine package upgrade with "apt update" and "apt upgrade" after which the mailman3 service quit working with the following error dialog in response to "systemctl start mailman3"

# systemctl start mailman3 Job for mailman3.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status mailman3.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details. root@slc:/opt/mailman/venv/bin# systemctl status mailman3 ● mailman3.service - GNU Mailing List Manager Loaded: loaded (/etc/mailman3/mailman3.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2022-07-05 10:31:55 EDT; 4s ago Process: 3011826 ExecStart=/opt/mailman/venv/bin/mailman start (code=exited, status=2) CPU: 822ms

Jul 05 10:31:54 slc.mailhub4u.com systemd[1]: Starting GNU Mailing List Manager... Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com mailman[3011826]: Usage: mailman start [OPTIONS] Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com mailman[3011826]: Try 'mailman start -h' for help. Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com mailman[3011826]: Error: A previous run of GNU Mailman did not exit cleanly (stale_lock). Try using --force Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'. Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com systemd[1]: Failed to start GNU Mailing List Manager.

Then, the command, "systemctl status mailman3" results in:

# systemctl status mailman3 ● mailman3.service - GNU Mailing List Manager Loaded: loaded (/etc/mailman3/mailman3.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2022-07-05 10:31:55 EDT; 19min ago Process: 3011826 ExecStart=/opt/mailman/venv/bin/mailman start (code=exited, status=2) CPU: 822ms

Jul 05 10:31:54 slc.mailhub4u.com systemd[1]: Starting GNU Mailing List Manager... Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com mailman[3011826]: Usage: mailman start [OPTIONS] Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com mailman[3011826]: Try 'mailman start -h' for help. Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com mailman[3011826]: Error: A previous run of GNU Mailman did not exit cleanly (stale_lock). Try using --force Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'. Jul 05 10:31:55 slc.mailhub4u.com systemd[1]: Failed to start GNU Mailing List Manager.

The only reason that I believe that the apt package upgrade caused the problem is because everything stopped working immediately after the package upgrade commands, "apt update" and "apt upgrade" were executed. Looking at the apt logs, the following packages were apparently upgraded:

Start-Date: 2022-07-01 13:18:17 Commandline: apt upgrade Requested-By: gordon (1000) Install: linux-image-5.10.0-15-amd64:amd64 (5.10.120-1, automatic) Upgrade: tzdata:amd64 (2021a-1+deb11u3, 2021a-1+deb11u4), linux-image-amd64:amd64 (5.10.113-1, 5.10.120-1), libssl-dev:amd64 (1.1.1n-0+deb11u2, 1.1.1n-0+deb11u3), libssl-doc:amd64 (1.1.1n-0+deb11u2, 1.1.1n-0+deb11u3), libssl1.1:amd64 (1.1.1n-0+deb11u2, 1.1.1n-0+deb11u3), openssl:amd64 (1.1.1n-0+deb11u2, 1.1.1n-0+deb11u3), linux-libc-dev:amd64 (5.10.113-1, 5.10.120-1) End-Date: 2022-07-01 13:19:04

Start-Date: 2022-07-01 13:21:18 Commandline: apt autoremove Requested-By: gordon (1000) Remove: linux-image-5.10.0-13-amd64:amd64 (5.10.106-1) End-Date: 2022-07-01 13:21:22

Otherwise, other than this package upgrade command, nothing changed on my system between the time that mailman3 was working properly and when it stopped working. Does anyone see any potential problems with any of the packages that were upgraded?

The logfile, /var/log/syslog, has the following lines immediately after the "systemctl start mailman3" command was executed:

Jul 5 11:07:41 slc mailman[3030034]: Usage: mailman start [OPTIONS] Jul 5 11:07:41 slc mailman[3030034]: Try 'mailman start -h' for help. Jul 5 11:07:41 slc mailman[3030034]: Error: A previous run of GNU Mailman did not exit cleanly (stale_lock). Try using --force Jul 5 11:07:41 slc mariadbd[859]: 2022-07-05 11:07:41 1744540 [Warning] Aborted connection 1744540 to db: 'mailman3' user: 'mailman' host: 'localhost' (Got an error reading communication packets) Jul 5 11:07:41 slc systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT Jul 5 11:07:41 slc systemd[1]: mailman3.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

As an FYI, I have attempted to start the service using --force, however, it made no difference.

BTW, I don't know if this is significant or not but the following error message (or similar message) is displayed often in the logs:

slc mariadbd[859]: 2022-07-05 11:07:41 1744540 [Warning] Aborted connection 1744540 to db: 'mailman3' user: 'mailman' host: 'localhost' (Got an error reading communication packets)

In any event, does anyone see any other potential causes for why the mailman3 service will not run?

Thanks very much!

Gordon