> I have a puny machine that does mail for one of my clients. It
> appears that they have a ton of messages in the queue as such:
> messages in queue: 418
> messages in queue but not yet preprocessed: 0
> How exactly would I interpret this data and what do I do about it?
1) Run qmail-qread to see what the messages are and where they are
going. You will get output like this (albeit far more lines - redirect to a
file):
10 Feb 2000 09:21:49 GMT #34686 280 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
remote [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This tells you that there is mail in the queue from [EMAIL PROTECTED] to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] that has not been delivered.
2) Look in your logs to see why the messages haven't been delivered.
Do so by editing your mail log and searching for either the message number
(34686 above) or the recipient. I recommend searching from the bottom up
since message numbers are re-used. The line you find will have a delivery
number (like such):
Feb 10 09:29:36 sassafrass qmail: 950192976.586510 starting delivery 1:
msg 34686 to remote [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From that point, search down for "delivery 1" (or appropriate
delivery number):
Feb 10 09:30:21 sassafrass qmail: 950193021.380168 delivery 1:
deferral: CNAME_lookup_failed_temporarily._(#4.4.3)/
Okay. The message was deferred because qmail couldn't look up the
remote host in DNS. Other causes may be:
Sorry,_I_wasn't_able_to_establish_an_SMTP_connection._(#4.4.1)/
(The remote host is down or not reachable for some reason. Test.)
Connected_to_128.11.23.228_but_connection_died._(#4.4.2)/
(The remote host answered but didn't continue/finish the SMTP transaction.
Either something is wrong at their end, or they're offline and you've got a
proxying firewall like Raptor that screws you up).
Connected_to_207.244.124.137_but_greeting_failed./ \
Remote_host_said:_421_polaris.shore.net:_Too_many_concurrent \
_SMTP_connections;_please_try_again_later/
(The remote host was too busy and politely asked you to try later)
Sorry,_I_couldn't_find_any_host_by_that_name._(#4.1.2)/
(The user mistyped the recipient's address, most likely)
3) Repeat with enough messages to figure out what's going on.
Questions to ask include:
a) Is it the same host that's causing all the deferrals?
b) If not, is it the same error across many hosts?
c) Can I find an obvious connectivity problem with ping or traceroute?
d) Can I find an obvious problem by telnet'ting to the remote machines SMTP
port and manually typing some SMTP commands?
4) Obviously, with this many deferrals, you can shortcut the process
by 'grep deferral: /var/log/maillog'. If they're all
CNAME_lookup_failed_temporarily, for example, you'll want to test your DNS
using nslookup.
--
gowen -- Greg Owen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
