sendmail, command to flush queue?

glock19 · 03-13-2003, 06:19 PM

I want to know the command that will flush the queue for sendmail?

I type /usr/sbin/sendmail -bp and I get a list of the queue. I don't want any of the messages in this queue to go out, so I need to delete them. What is the command to flush out the existing queue?

Thanks!

Tinkster · 03-13-2003, 06:35 PM

From my understanding there *IS* no such switch...
Stop the demon, go to /var/spool/mqueue and rm
them? :)

Cheers,
Tink

glock19 · 03-13-2003, 06:38 PM

Sounds like that's the way to do it.

It's funny, I had so many files in my /var/spool/mqueue that I couldn't rm -f *

I got an error that the rm command couldn't handle that many arguments.

So I had to selectively rm -f dfh7* rm -f Qdh6* etc etc until finally I emptied the directory. Funny.

Tinkster · 03-13-2003, 09:32 PM

Ouch ... open port, relaying? ;)

Cheers,
Tink

fmotta · 03-14-2003, 04:06 AM

I use a brute force method of
echo "" > /var/spool/mqueue
this can happen quickly - however since I don't get a lot of traffic I don't stop sendmail first - if you do have traffic then it is recommended that you stop/restart sendmail

KingRich · 08-12-2003, 08:17 AM

Try "sendmail -q -v"

Quote:

Originally posted by glock19
I want to know the command that will flush the queue for sendmail?

I type /usr/sbin/sendmail -bp and I get a list of the queue. I don't want any of the messages in this queue to go out, so I need to delete them. What is the command to flush out the existing queue?

Thanks!

mmclaughlin · 05-15-2009, 08:32 AM

If you run into a command list too long for rm, try:

# ls /var/spool/mqueue | xargs rm

That will break up the file list into more managable bites for rm.

NetSpiderUA · 08-06-2009, 12:39 PM

find /var/spool/mqueue -name "*fn*" -delete
most fastest method =)

consmith2 · 03-15-2010, 09:54 AM

You can empty the mail file for a user by copying a null file?

In bourne shell:

$ > afile

in C shell

% cp /dev/null afile:

or if you want to "almost" empty a file leaving a few lines:

% tail afile > tmpfile
% cat tmpfile > afile
% rm tmpfile

ritikaladdha · 11-18-2010, 04:47 AM

Hi,

I have around 1000 mails queued up in Nagios /var/spool/mqueue.
I don't want to miss out on any mails.
Is there a way I can push these mails out instead of rm -rf * ? ?

Regards,
Ritika

NetSpiderUA · 11-18-2010, 11:23 PM

i'm using this script to delete selected e-mails:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

for QF in `ls qf*`
do
  blacklisted=`grep "could not send" $QF`
  if [ "$blacklisted" = "" ]
  then
    # trying to resend GOOD letter:
    echo `sendmail -v -qI$QF -d11`
  else
    # permanently deleting BAD letter:
    body=`echo $QF | sed 's/qf/df/'`
    rm $body
    rm $QF
  fi
done

"could not send" - change to any "unwanted text in e-mail".

N.B.
df_LETTER_ID - body of the letter
qf_LETTER_ID - header of the letter