On Tue, Apr 07, 2026 at 02:29:41PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote: > On Mon Apr 6, 2026 at 5:52 PM BST, Haines Brown wrote: > > By mistake I sent a message (mutt, fetchmail, exim) that was > > missing a From: line in the header. As the result I'm deluged with > > frozen messages. > > > > I understand that the command # exiqgrep -z -i | xargs exim -Mrm > > removed all frozen mail. It does so but the broken message > > continues to be received. > > I'm not sure what is happening exactly, but I think some periodic process is > running and generating *new* mail. Frozen mail is not being delivered, by > definition: so if you are being deluged, then the problem is not the frozen > mail per se, but whatever process is generating both them, and the mail you > *are* getting. > > Can you share any more details about the messages you are receiving? > Ideally, the full mail (including headers) for at least two sample mails (so > they can be compared to each other as well as independently examined)
Johnathan, I surely can, but in so doing I may have found a solutiom to my problem. Note the difference in host names here: >From MAILER-DAEMON Tue Apr 07 10:47:07 2026 Return-path: <> Envelope-to: [email protected] Delivery-date: Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:47:07 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by Iskra.histomat.net with local (Exim 4.96) id 1wA7hr-0003St-1r for [email protected]; Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:47:07 -0400 Auto-Submitted: auto-replied From: Mail Delivery System <[email protected]> To: [email protected] References: <[email protected]> Subject: Message frozen Message-Id: <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:47:07 -0400 Message 1wA7hq-0003Sn-0C has been frozen (delivery error message). The sender is <>. The following address(es) have yet to be delivered: [email protected]: SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined end of +data: 554 5.7.1 <>: Sender address rejected: Null Sender Address is Prohibited ==== >From MAILER-DAEMON Tue Apr 07 10:48:12 2026 Return-path: <> Envelope-to: [email protected] Delivery-date: Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:48:12 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by Iskra.histomat.net with local (Exim 4.96) id 1wA7iu-0003TO-1S for [email protected]; Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:48:12 -0400 Auto-Submitted: auto-replied From: Mail Delivery System <[email protected]> To: [email protected] References: <[email protected]> Subject: Message frozen Message-Id: <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:48:12 -0400 Message 1wA7it-0003TK-0H has been frozen (delivery error message). The sender is <>. The following address(es) have yet to be delivered: [email protected]: SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined end of +data: 554 5.7.1 <>: Sender address rejected: Null Sender Address is Prohibited My current host name is not iskra but Iskra. The host ikra is a different installation of the operating system on a different drive. Pehaps I need to boot it, purge and reinstall Exim from it. -- Haines Brown
