mqueue and mqueue.in have more files than necessary ... should I worry?

[Jeff A. Earickson]

As others pointed out, RTFM before using a new UNIX command.  I didn't
know that +3 could mean minutes on some Linux systems.  I would expect
the syntax to be something like "+3m" for that, so as not to break for
older UNIX systems (Solaris in my case).

I use 3 days because if a message won't go in 3 days, it almost certainly
won't go in 5.  DNS/dead server issues are usually noticed and fixed in
three days.  The rest is typos, replies to spam and bogus addresses.
Get it outta my mail queue!  I also use Timeout.queuewarn=4h instead
of the one day default, to give users a quicker clue that their message
isn't moving (so they can fix their typos).

Jeff Earickson
Colby College

On Sat, 1 Apr 2006, TAC Forums wrote:

> Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 18:16:01 +0530
> From: TAC Forums <tac.forums at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: MailScanner discussion <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
> To: MailScanner discussion <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
> Subject: Re: mqueue and mqueue.in have more files than necessary ... should I
>     worry?
> 
> On 3/31/06, Jeff A. Earickson <jaearick at colby.edu> wrote:
>> First, figure out the maximum time that you hold email before returning
>> it as undeliverable.  Mine is three days, eg "Timeout.queuereturn=3d"
>> in my sendmail settings.  Then cd to the queue directory in question,
>> and do:
>>
>> find . -mtime +3 -print | xargs rm
>>
>> Voila, old files are gone.  No need to stop sendmail or MailScanner.
>
> Hi Jeff
>
> This is great. Worked wonders... thanks a bunch for this...
>
> The default was 5d for my server.
>
> On a separate note, would you care to share why you configured it for
> 3 days instead of the default 5 days that was configured on my
> sendmail configuration?
>
> Regards
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