I sent a message to my list but got the following response back from LISTSERV:

The distribution of your message dated Thu, 02 Apr 2015 08:44:51 -0500 with

subject "Test" has been postponed because  the TEST list is held. No action

is required from  you; your message will be  reprocessed automatically once

the list owner releases the list.


A list can become held under a couple of different scenarios: 

  • An error has occurred during the processing of a message that has caused LISTSERV to automatically hold the list pending the correction of the error condition. 
  • The list owner or server manager placed the list on hold manually, with the HOLD listname command. 

In the first scenario, both the list owner and the LISTSERV maintainer(s) are notified of the error. For instance, the list may have been made but the directory for its archives may not have been created before someone posted to the list, or a typo may have been made in the "where" parameter of the Notebook= keyword. In that case you would get a message like this:

An error occurred  while  logging mail to  the archives of the TEST list. An

incomplete copy  of the message  might be present  in the archive  file. The

list is being held to prevent further occurrences of this error. Please take

corrective  action  and  issue  a "FREE  TEST"  command  when  you want  the

message to be reprocessed.


Serious error occurred - traceback follows

------------------------------------------

>>> Error X'00000011' opening file C:\LISTSERV\ARCHIVES\TEST\TEST.LOG1504 

<<<

 -> Severity: Warning

 -> Facility: Generic error codes

 -> Abstract: File/major entity not found

-> I/O mode: Record write


which is simply LISTSERV-ese for "the directory referred to doesn't exist". When this kind of error occurs, your LISTSERV maintainer usually has to fix it, and you should contact him or her to do that.

In the second scenario, if you did not place the list on hold yourself, you may want to communicate with the server manager to find out why the list was placed on hold. This may have been done to stop a loop or for some other good reason. When the error is fixed or the reason for holding the list is no longer valid, you can take the list out of HOLD status by issuing a FREE listname command to LISTSERV (where listname is of course the name of your list).