Max Normal Queue Size

[Mike Norton]

I had a large amount of email hit my server last night about 4000 items in the queue, it didnt seem to be clearing very quickly, however I noticed this in the config file :-

# If more messages are found in the queue than this, then switch to an
# "accelerated" mode of processing messages. This will cause it to stop
# scanning messages in strict date order, but in the order it finds them
# in the queue. If your queue is bigger than this size a lot of the time,
# then some messages could be greatly delayed. So treat this option as
# "in emergency only".
Max Normal Queue Size = 800

What actually happens when it goes into this "accelerated" mode ?  does it only deliver the newer messages in the queue, and wait until it is free to send the older stuff, as it did not seem to be clearing the backlog however when I changed the value to 4000 the queue dissapeared in about an hour or so and seems to have been okay since then.

Thanks

Mike