I am trying to understand what, if anything, cleans out files from the /var/spool/postfix/defer directory?
Everything works great. But then due to a network outage at a remote network a lot of mail to that network is queued. All normal. Working as it should. Eventually the remote network comes back online again. Mail then flows off the system and is delivered. All appears good. Except this means that every one of those messages that was queued now leaves behind a file in /var/spool/postfix/defer. /var/spool/postfix/defer/D/D73642193E /var/spool/postfix/defer/D/DB4B52193A /var/spool/postfix/defer/D/D88F92191B /var/spool/postfix/defer/8/8F28821922 /var/spool/postfix/defer/8/899992194E ... The 'mailq' command shows the queue is empty. Mail is being delivered. Everything is working great. But because I look I can see that all of these files are left behind as orphans. I know it won't hurt anything to leave them there indefinitely. But I am wishing to understand what is happening and why. I have seen this behavior off and on over the years. When a network is offline long enough to push messages into the defer directory then the status files are left behind. It happened again recently. I finally decided to ask about it. Thanks! Bob
