Sendmail and /var/spool/mqueue

[Bill Moran]

Charles Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:

> On Jun 17, 2004, at 2:39 PM, Bill Moran wrote:
> > What does it mean when I have a lot of files in /var/spool/mqueue?  I 
> > don't
> > really understand what that particular queue is for.
> 
> That is the queue of unsent messages which sendmail will periodicly 
> attempt to resend (every four hours, by default).  You can try to flush 
> them via "sendmail -v -q".

I appreciate the input, Chuck, but now I'm more confused.

When I did this, folks suddenly started receiving emails from two years ago.
I'm a bit confused as to _why_ sendmail would hang on to mails from years ago
without either delivering them or bouncing them?  Could the queue have been
corrupt?

Caused quite a stir, actually ... folks were getting order requests from a
year ago.

> > This client is not having any problems getting/sending mail, and the 
> > mailq
> > command only shows one mail in the queue, but I have 3867 files in this
> > directory.
> 
> Hmm.  Sendmail tends to accumulate spam-related bounces which can't be 
> delivered because the spam used forged headers, and I've seen some 
> signs that sendmail doesn't always manage to clean up the queue files 
> of such messages after they can't be delivered for 5 days.
> 
> [ I seem to recall that the sendmail operations guide recommends moving 
> mqueue to oqueue, creating a new mqueue, and then processing the oqueue 
> by hand.  Once that is completed, delete oqueue and any leftover 
> files.... ]

I think this is a good argument for Postfix ...

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com