On Fri, Jun 18, 2004 at 09:57:22AM -0400, Bill Moran wrote: > Charles Swiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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
pgpS2gOtTf39q.pgp
Description: PGP signature
