sendmail keeping mails in queue

[Sreejith Kaliyam]

Hi all,

I have some application sending mails to local host.I need to keep this in mailqueus only no need to send or relay these mails for some time. any idea??

Regards,
Anoop

[Thayanidhi]

I don't recommend to stop sendmail daemon. Some system events (eg. EMS) send mails to root.
Look at configuring your application not to send mails.

Regds
TT

[Keith Bryson]

Hi there

If you are sending mails to root@localhost, aren't these going to the root mail account on the Unix server instead of being sent/relayed?

Keith

[Sreejith Kaliyam]

Hi keith,

Yes it is. Any idea how can I keep those mails in queue send to other than localhost?? since root@localhost is working EMS won't have any problems.

At the moment I modified DS macro to non existing host, so mails remain in queue as hostname lookup failure.

Any good way of doing it??

Regards,
Anoop

[Bejoy C Alias]

One way u can add the entry
'root: /path-to-file' in aliases database so the mails for root is appended to that file instead of sending to its actual mailbox. For reading these mails u can simply append this file to ur mailbox file.

[Steven E. Protter]

tools:

sendmail -v -q

This will process the queue in verbose mode and give you a clue why the mail is not moving.

Most common cuases:

1) Bad host resolution. For full internet resolution you need to set /etc/nsswitch.conf to dns and make sure the machine gets valid host resolution answers from the name servers in /etc/resolv.conf

2) Relay issues. To avoid host resolution issues, many set the DS directive in sendmail.cf If you do that you must restart the sendmail daemon:

/sbin/init.d/sendmail stop
/sbin/init.d/sendmail start

The DS directive must point to a valid sendmail server that permits, explicity the host with the DS directive to relay mail.

The error message from the sendmail -v -q command will be instructive as to what the next step should be.

SEP

[Keith Bryson]

The impression I am getting here chaps is that Neil wants the mailq to hold onto certain emails (don't deliver, but hold) but carry on processing others.

Keith

[Sreejith Kaliyam]

Thanks stev for your reply,I believe keith understood my requirement 50%.I want to hold mails send to user@anydomain in queue while delivering user@localhost.

I could achieve this by modifying DS(smart relay)macro to unknown host, Which keeps all mails to queue.

I am not happy with my solution, any good thoughts??

Anoop