Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 16:04:10 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sendmail and /var/spool/mqueue Message-ID: <20040618150410.GA82217@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20040618095722.02ff5a1a.wmoran@potentialtech.com> References: <20040617143919.3c0835a5.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <8E443DE8-C090-11D8-A918-003065ABFD92@mac.com> <20040618095722.02ff5a1a.wmoran@potentialtech.com>
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On Fri, Jun 18, 2004 at 09:57:22AM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> Charles Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> wrote:
>=20
> > 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=
=20
> > > don't
> > > really understand what that particular queue is for.
> >=20
> > That is the queue of unsent messages which sendmail will periodicly=20
> > attempt to resend (every four hours, by default). You can try to flush=
=20
> > them via "sendmail -v -q".
>=20
> I appreciate the input, Chuck, but now I'm more confused.
>=20
> When I did this, folks suddenly started receiving emails from two years a=
go.
> 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 be=
en
> 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
--=20
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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