How to flush contents of /var/spool/mqueue

[Kellogg Unix Team]

Sendmail Gurus,

I have 2 servers - servera and serverb which are secured by bastille and run "sendmail -q" on periodic basis. In other words, sendmail daemon is not always running.

Serverb has stopped sending mail because of some problem in firewall rules. While it is being looked into, I see the contents of /var/spool/mqueue directory is growing.

Can I move the contents of serverb:/var/spool/mqueue to servera:/var/spool/mqueue and expect all these mails to be delivered successfully? What steps I need to follow after moving the contents to another server? And, what will happen to "From:" field for these messages?

Thanks
...Manjeet

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi,

If you set the DS line in sendmail.cf on serverb to be servera, then it should send everything to servera, assuming there's no firewall issue between the two. servera should then relay the messages on to the next hop.

The From: field should not change, only the route the message is taking.

rgds, Robin

[Kellogg Unix Team]

Robin,

Do I need to run sendmail in daemon mode on serverA to accomplish this?

And how do I trigger this? Just by changing DS macro on serverB and when cron runs 'sendmail -q' ? Or can I force it to run immediately?

Other thing that I am not sure is if sendmail traffic is allowed between these servers. I tried "telnet serverA 25" from serverB and it failed with msg - Connection refused.

...Manjeet

[Uday_S_Ankolekar]

modify the sendmail.cf file add your serverB name infront of DS flag like this
DSserverb.domain

save and quit sendmail.cf file

restart the sendmail by
/sbin/init.d/sendmail stop
/sbin/init.d/sendmail start

all the queued mails should now move to serverb
look for /var/adm/syslog/mail.log for any errors.

[Geoff Wild]

Yes - if you want the queue to flush automagically - then you need to run sendmail in daemon mode - or just cron a sendmail -q every 30 minutes....

In the /etc/rc.config.d/mailservs

export SENDMAIL_SERVER=1

Then /sbin/init.d/sendmail start

Rgds...Geoff

[Kellogg Unix Team]

Setting up DS macro on serverB didn't help. I guess it was looking for sendmail to be running on serverA and I didn't want to leave sendmail running on serverA. Or maybe, its blocked by our firewall.

I ended up tar-ing contents of mqueue directory of serverB and sftp-ing to serverA. I am running the sendmail queue and see that emails are now being sent out.

Thanks for your help.
...Manjeet

[W.C. Epperson]

Yep. Moving the *f* files to another mqueue spool is usually the simplest way to get delivery done while you're troubleshooting. All the header information is in the files, so the only glitch will be that a discrepancy in the Received: headers for outbound relays.