Mails in /var/spool/mqueue

[Herr Jens Weber]

on several hp-ux 10.20 servers i've got a lot of mails in the /var/spool/mqueue directory.
Questions:
1. where do they come from and are they important?
2. is it possible to delete them from the directory?

thanks for solving the problem

[Gerrit Beyken]

Hi,

these entries are mails which cant`t be delivered by sendmail.
You can look in these mails with "more" and find out who are sending these mails.
Also you should have a look in your "/var/adm/syslog/mail.log" to find out what`s the problem of sendmail.
If you don`t want these mails to be send by sendmail you can simply delete them, there is no problem in doing so.
But you should find out whats the problem of sendmail to avoid future delivery errors.

Best regards

Gerrit Beyken

[Balaji N]

hi

any outgoing mails from your server are stored in /var/spool/mqueue directory and are processed by sendmail and sent to the other locationa.

if they are premanently there for some time, then there is a some reason why sendmail is unable to deliver those mails. just try mailq and see if you get any useful info.

refer the /var/adm/syslog/mail.log file which will show details about who is sending this mail.

if you dont need them just shutdown sendmail, delete all the fails and restart sendmail.

hth
-balaji

[T G Manikandan · Accepted solution]

The directory is for mail and it contains all the temporary files associated with mail queue.

MQID--mail queue ID.

dfMQID Data file
lfMQID Lock file
nfMQID Backup file
qfMQID Queue control file
tfMQID Temporary control file
xfMQID Transcript file for session

Just check the mail log for the reason they are undelivered.

You can delete the files if you do not need them

THanks

[Justo Exposito]

Hi,

If you want to change this directory by a new different one, you must to change the sendmail.cf file in the /etc/mail directory.
Changing this line:
# queue directory
O QueueDirectory=/var/spool/mqueue
and thne stop the sendmail daemon and start it again.

Regards,

Justo.