sendmail[816]: NOQUEUE: low on space (have 0, SMTP-DAEMON needs 101 in /var/spool/mqueue)

[Brian Killeen_1]

Admins,
I take it from the following message that var/spool/mqueue is low on disk space but when I look at the available disk space with bdf and I get 43350 kbytes free on /var. The message is not coming from another machine on the network so it must be from a local process on my machine. I presume that the process is attempting to send a file to me which has been refused by the mail server. Has anyone seent his before and is there a solution that I might use.

thanx in advance

Brian Killeen

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

The message "needs 101" is probably page or block size, whichever, its between 40-80MB+ so someone is trying to send you a large message. All you can do is increase /var or else let the message eventually get rejected.

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi Brian,

The sendmail.cf option MinFreeBlocks is normally set to 100 - this is what you're hitting. I would probably leave it as is, and try and clear space from this filesystem.

Rgds, Robin.

[E. Wong]

I've seen this before, and opted to tar /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log and mail.log on tape so that it freed enough space for /var/spool/mqueue to proceed.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Brian,

Looks like the /var directory is low in disk space.

Thanks