Sendmail and /var/spool/mqueue

[Matthew Seaman]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2004 at 09:57:22AM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> 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?

Sounds like you aren't running a sendmail process to flush the queue
regularly.  Which means that any message that cannot be delivered
immediately will be stuck into the /var/spool/mqueue directory and
forgotten about.

Look at /var/run/sendmail.pid -- the second line shows what command
line sendmail was started with.  Typically it will be something like:

    /usr/sbin/sendmail -L sm-mta -bd -q30m

(You can't use ps(1) to extract this information, because sendmail is
one of those programs that futzes with its argv[][] array as it runs)

Unless you have a -qNNN flag in there somewhere, sendmail won't be
processing any queued messages for you.  Set this using the
'sendmail_flags' variable in /etc/rc.conf if necessary, although the
value I've shown is the default. The trailing bit '30m' is how
frequently sendmail attempts to run the queue -- somewhere between 15m
and 30m is best: don't be tempted to set it too short, or you'll not
give any correspondents enough time to sort out any problems their end
before you try re-sending.

If you end up with a load of messages stuck in
/var/spool/clientmqueue, you've got a similar problem with not running
a MSP queue daemon.  The case is exactly analogous, except that the
sendmail flags are in /var/spool/clientmqueue/sm-client.pid and should
read:

    /usr/sbin/sendmail -L sm-msp-queue -Ac -q30m

and you need to set 'sendmail_msp_queue_flags' in /etc/rc.conf to
override them.

    Cheers,

    Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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